January 2023 Newsletter
As we continue our efforts to green the entertainment industry, examining all aspects of production is critical. While screenwriters, directors, and actors play a vital role, it's the hard work of people like Brandon Geller, Sustainability Manager at Sunset Studios, accelerating tangible change.
EMA chats with Brandon to learn how studios can follow Sunset's lead and embrace sustainability without impeding creativity.
First off, tell me a little about your journey. How did you come into the sustainability space? Why the entertainment industry?
Like a lot of people, I fell into the field. I was passionate about sustainability when I graduated college in 2008, but I needed to be made aware of it as a profession. So instead, every cover letter I wrote had aspects of sustainability in it, talking about the ideas I had to save resources or raise awareness of environmental issues, regardless of the job. After proofreading one of my cover letters, a friend sent me a posting for a sustainability role at our university, and it ended up being a great fit!
I worked in University sustainability for 14 years and loved it. It was an interesting mix of challenges, from making physical changes to the campus to educating a diverse population of students, faculty, and staff. Eventually, my wife and I moved to California to help with some family responsibilities, prompting the search for new jobs. The entertainment industry drew me in, as I've long admired the power of stories to inspire change, and few places have as broad an influence on the world as Hollywood. If Hollywood could sustainably tell the next generation of stories, it could have far-reaching impacts.
I got lucky in many ways by applying to Sunset Studios. Natalie Teear, the Senior Vice President for Innovation, Sustainability, and Social Impact at Hudson Pacific Properties, which co-owns and operates Sunset Studios, is very forward-thinking. She saw a need for a Sustainability Manager dedicated to the studios and parallels between a studio lot and a university campus. Like campuses, studios have a diverse and highly transient population, so you have to think about how to educate and engage people who will spend a short but intense amount of time on-site. In addition, both campuses and studios serve a wide variety of functions, and the work can be highly sensitive--just as you wouldn't want to disturb a researcher's laboratory experiment on campus, you don't want to disrupt a director's filming on a sound stage. The result is that one needs to be thoughtful about how one makes a change, constantly balancing risks and rewards and ensuring you are keeping your stakeholders informed.
