In Films About Climate Change, the Medium is the Wrong Message
If you’d like, I’m what you’d call an ex-(aspiring) filmmaker, an early vanguard of what promises to be, in one way or another, an eventual mass exodus from the film and television industries. I won’t go into my reasoning behind film and television’s future demise here, but suffice to say, if left to its own devices, the future of film and television is in the hands of peak oil and the collapse of industrial civilization.
The reasons for why I quit the industry are wide and varied, ranging from a strong dislike of narcissism, an aversion to big business (which makes all the necessary high-tech equipment), an abhorence of the massive amounts of trash one sees resulting from a film production, a concern about the ridiculous amounts of energy (read: fossil fuels) that goes into making a film, and much else. It’s the last one that I want to touch upon here, film and television in the age of fossil fuels and the climate change dilemma.
Although I wasn’t aware of peak oil ten years or so ago when I quit film and television once and for all (be it making the stuff or watching it), I was however aware of anthropogenic climate change – which I believed in back then, and still do today. That being said, I had a few problems coming to terms with climate change and the stupendous amounts of energy required to power all the massively blazing lights, cameras, editing systems, projectors, and everything else that went into my chosen line of work. When I finally reached my impasse I decided to say “stuff this” and so I went ahead and quit.
Nonetheless, I’m apparently not much of a trend-setter, and so ten years on the film and television industries still seem to be doing thriving. In fact, last I heard, there’s a new thing out there called (ahem) Nyet-Flix.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/07/in-films-about-climate-change-the-medium-is-the-wrong-message/#sthash.T6Swf3lV.dpuf
