 | By Abby RussoCommunications Intern |
The following blog was written by one of our Summer 2017 interns. For more information about our internships, visit our internship page here.
Critics and fans have heavily praised the Netflix original show Sense8 for its compelling story lines, representation and cinematography. It probably comes as no surprise then that the show is filmed on location across the globe to capture the personality of each of the countries it portrays. Because of the constant travel, I’ve been wondering about how big carbon footprint of the show’s production must be.
Season one alone was filmed in nine cities across eight different countries – Chicago, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Seoul, Reykjavik, Mexico City, Mumbai and Nairobi. For production, the entire cast and most of the crew were flown between cities while directors were tied to individual locations. Scenes that take place on airplanes are also filmed on actual flights between cities. By the end of season one, filmmakers had logged 100,000 miles of flight time or four times total around the globe.
Season two was filmed in 16 cities in 11 countries and it clocked in with more than twice the amount of flight time as the first. The cast and crew finished with 250,000 miles of flight time while producers and location scouts flew closer to approximately 370,000 miles due to pre-production work.
The title sequence of the show also required a fair amount of travel by plane and by car. It was filmed by a camera person and assistant traveling through the eight countries from the first season to capture their essence. That title sequence is only two minutes long, but it is breathtaking.
As a viewer, I have the power to choose the types of art that I want to support, so the amount of travel time logged in production and the environmental effects of that travel are important to me. Air travel emissions currently represent five percent of global carbon pollution. This figure is predicted to increase as more people take long distance flights more often and fuel efficiency fails to increase at a similar rate. Right now, there is no regulation or taxation of their emissions, so air travel contributes on an immense scale to carbon pollution.
Clearly, the carbon footprint of Sense8’s production is enormous. The real question might be whether the art produced is worth it, and whether the producers and directors have chosen the best way to tell this story. Critics might say that the producers of Sense8 have and it’s hard to disagree. Every shot is a work of art and the show tells stories of inclusivity that network television has long avoided. At the same time, the carbon pollution created in the process isn’t negligible. After all, the producers, cast and crew did choose to fly a distance equal to 12 times around the Earth.