Incaseyadidntknow, the incredibly reputable production house and distributor Focus Features is actually the art house film division of NBC Universal.  Among the myriad award-winning films they have produced is uber-green film Away We Go. In conjunction with NBCU’s Green is Universal Week, FilmInFocus caught up with Meredith Bergmann of Green Media Solutions, the company that works with Universal to get green. Most recently she worked on Nancy Meyers’ holiday comedy, It’s Complicated (starring Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep & Steve Martin) and she talked in good detail about the green efforts on-set.

“The goal with It’s Complicated was to try to apply sustainable filmmaking practices to a major motion picture and to figure out what the obstacles are,” says Bergmann. She noted that the difference in scale between Away We Go and It’s Complicated brought to light new issues that the filmmakers, Universal and Green Media Solutions attempted to address.

“We started to realize how important the role of set dressing was when the production used one ton of produce in order to recreate a farmers market. Normally a portion of the produce would be given away, but, however, most would be discarded and would end up as landfill. So, instead, over one ton of fruits and vegetables used during the Santa Barbara farmer’s market scene was…donated to Casa Esperanza, a local soup kitchen in Santa Barbara. That ton of food fed 500 people for a week.”

She also notes that NBCU has teamed up with Rock and Wrap it Up, who will find beneficiaries for all edible leftover food from their productions. “This initiative will: fight poverty by helping to reduce hunger; improve our environment by diverting waste from landfills; and reduce the production’s bottom line by reducing waste disposal costs.”

They also piloted an alternative fuels program during the It’s Complicated production in which they used biodiesel for principle production but also for lighting the stage. Bergmann says, “From May through the end of June we used biodiesel, B20, for both generators for the main stage. There was no flickering. Nobody noticed, nobody knew.” The next step, I’d say, is to tell them and slake any ridiculous fears that biodiesel is any less effective than petro. Just my two cents…

Bergmann also talks about the green efforts over at Jimmy Fallon and SNL as well as the release of the Green is Universal Sustainable Film and Television Production Guide which you can download. Check out the whole article at FilmInFocus.com.

An impressive team of major Hollywood players is behind a new film detailing the birth of the environmental organization Greenpeace. Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure, Cool Runnings, While You Were Sleeping) will direct, Jerry Zucker (Naked Gun, Airplane!) and wife Janet will produce, and The West Wing’s Andy Sorkin has been approached to write the script.

According to the UK Guardian, the story will be told through the eyes of Greenpeace’s charismatic founders, Bob Hunter and Rex Weyler. “We want to look at these unlikely heroes who became activists in spite of themselves,” Janet Zucker told Variety. “Jon likes to make a big adventure movies. And we’ve found that the best way to reach people’s hearts and minds is through entertainment.”

The title of the flick is yet to be determined, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s pulled from one of the two books the movie is being based on; Rex Wyler’s “Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World” and Bob Hunter’s “Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement”

Warriors of the Rainbow anyone?

Director Roland Emmerich’s new disaster movie 2012 is about to hit theaters — and as the Mother Nature Network recently found out, there was an effort to keep the $260 million dollar film as green as possible.

Emmerich, who drives a hybrid and powers his home with solar panels, said “After making The Day After Tomorrow, I said to myself, ‘From now on my movies should have a green footprint.’”

For the production of 2012, carbon offsets were purchased, biofuel was used for generators, sets were recycled and what couldn’t be recycled was donated to Habitat for Humanity. Said Emmerich’s producer partner Michael Wimer, who also drives an all-electric RAV4 “It was important to us. Changes are happening to the planet, and you either take responsibility or you don’t.”

So far, early reviews of the film are playing up its unintentional comedic attributes — saying, it’s so bad, it’s good. “Emmerich supposedly spent $260m to give you the biggest experience for your ticket dollar and in this regard, he has succeeded tremendously, while, intentionally or otherwise, also delivering one of 2009’s best comedies,” said one critic.

Aw, what the hell — we could use a good laugh; especially if Woody Harrelson’s conspiracy-nut character turns out to be as ass-crazy hilarious as he looks online.

2012 opens November 13th.

– Edward Norton speaking in an interview on AintitCoolNews.com about his new documentary By The People: The Election of Barack Obama. The film premieres tonight on HBO.

The upcoming rom-com Valentine’s Day is reported to be one of Warner Brothers’ greenest productions to date. Full details are few but in a recent ABC News article, Shelley Billik, WB’s vice president for environmental initiatives has said that the film’s base camp, where trailers for wardrobe, makeup and the cast are set up, was run on hybrid energy, instead of the gas-guzzling 24/7 generators usually found on sets.

ABC also quotes executive producer, Diana Pokorny, as saying, “Normally you’d walk onto a base camp, and there would be the hum of generators,” she said, “and there were days it would be completely silent ’cause we were running completely on solar power.” Apparently this saved the production 18 metric tons of CO2.

The article included several examples of Hollywood’s attempts to get green and said that “the upcoming star-studded film…was arguably the greenest production yet.” We’ll be interested to see what other steps the production took to lower its impact.

P.S. “Star-studded” is an understatement. This movie has more stars than, well, He’s Just Not That Into You. Want proof? Neither Taylor Lautner nor Taylor Swift are even in the trailer which features Julia Roberts, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Albaand others whose names do not begin with “J” including Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Patrick Dempsey and Ashton Kutcher!

I’ve never seen Troll 2, but after reading these reviews I feel like it’s a must to experience what’s considered a “beyond awful” movie. In fact, regardless of the bizarre vegetarian themes present in the film, this one could possibly rank as the worst film period. It’s that bad that it’s become a cult classic. It’s even worse because it’s also the the subject of a new documentary called “Best Worst Movie” that chronicles the lives of those involved in making it. Netflix, here I come!

Released in 1992, the plot to Troll 2, according to the UK Independent, goes a little something like this: A perfect family who set off on holiday to the country idyll of Nilbog (read it backwards). There they find themselves at the mercy of a village full of paradoxically blood-thirsty vegetarian goblins who plan to turn them into plants and then feed, orgiastically, on their sap.

“Suffice it to say that, if you set any cast member on fire, I would lay down even money that he or she would have a hard time convincing onlookers that it hurt,” wrote one critic. “There are movies that are bad. There are movies that are so-bad-they’re-good. And then there’s Troll 2 — a movie that’s so bad that it defies comprehension,” wrote another.

Vegetarian goblins? Horrible acting? A sex scene inexplicably involving a corn on the cob and a character called Creedence Leonore Gielgud? Sounds like tomorrow night’s feature movie has been decided.

Happy Halloween everyone!

That early taste of director James Cameron’s new scifi epic Avatar has just become a full on meal.

A new full trailer has just been released expanding on the story and pulling back the curtain on the gorgeous alien world of Pandora. As we mentioned earlier, Avatar deals with some very Earth-like environmental conflicts — particularly the battle over rare resources and the displacement of indigenous settlements to get at them. In an interview, Cameron said that one of the major themes he wanted to base his story on was how “advanced civilizations supplant indigenous cultures, in either actively genocidal or more unpremeditated ways.” Check it out below.

Before he passed away this summer, Michael Jackson was hard at work on a concert series he hoped would spark a new comeback for his career. As part of an agreement with the company helping make that dream a reality, hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage was shot of the King of Pop performing, organizing, and directing behind-the-scenes. This glimpse of what might have been has now been turned into a documentary titled This Is It.

With the flick hitting theaters this weekend, early reviews have bordered on the positive. Most have praised the work for pulling back the curtain on Jackson and showing a human side to the performer. “We see a talented singer-dancer fine-tuning an extravaganza, and in so doing we are reminded that, behind all the tabloid craziness and larger-than-life eccentricities, there was still an artist and a person,” said MSNBC’s Alonso Duralde.

No surprise to us, Jackson was also planning on incorporating some environmental themes into the concerts. In particular, for the song “Heal The World”, there’s a filmed sequence that was to play in the background showing the destruction of the Rainforests. We’ve seen such imagery before in Jackson’s “Earth Song” video, — but it appears that he was extending that theme to “Heal” as well. Last week, famed primatologist Jane Goodall said Jackson was inspired to write the song because of the plight of chimpanzees. From the article,

“He wrote what he told me he thought was his most powerful song ever, but it didn’t end up for animals,” Jane Goodall said in a CNN interview Thursday night. “I said to him, ‘You know, Michael, if you want to help, you could do a concert and give us a percentage. Or much better, write a song,’ ” she said. Jackson asked her for tapes of animals in distress because “he wanted to be angry and cry” as he wrote the song, which became “Heal the World,” she said. The original CD cover notes credited Goodall for inspiring the song, she said. But, she added, the Jane Goodall Institute never saw any money from the song.

Considering that Jackson was extremely generous with donations throughout his career, it’s rather odd that Goodall’s foundation never saw any. Perhaps Michael thought he could make more of a difference in other ways.

Click here to check out showtimes for This Is It.

Presenters for the evening included Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart, Kathryn Morris, Ginnifer Goodwin, Olivia Wilde, Alanis Morrisette, Ed Begley Jr., Blythe Danner, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, Dana Delaney, Emily Vancamp as well as Dianna Agron and Kevin McHale from ‘Glee’. Razzi heroes Louie and Vicki Psihoyos also made it back from the controversial screening of their film The Cove in Japan for the event.

Amy Smart and Simon Baker presenting.

It was a pretty lavish shindig with vendors and screens lining New York Street on the Paramount Studios backlot. Tables were lit with faux votive candles, no paper plates in sight as well as eco-luxury gifts and a variety of gourmet and organic foods available all across the outdoor event.

Toyota and Lexus hosted the eco-luxury lounges.

The very excellent Melinda McGraw, from Mad Men and Hank, was on hand and we chatted a bit about how much there is to learn from pioneers like Ed Begley Jr. as well as what she’s been noticing changing on sets in the last ten years. McGraw pointed out that while many scripts are emailed these days it’s still hard to conserve paper with so many changing scripts drafts. Her pet peeve on set? The air conditioning on sound stages. “It does not need to be that cold,” she said. She also noted that she was decked out in all vintage for the evening.

I also caught up with the very talented actress and EMA board member Frances Fisher to talk about on-set habits. She said that because of the largess and temporary nature of film sets it’s hard to know what the better options are for something like craft services flatware. “What’s the impact of disposable plates versus the water used in washing all of these dishes?” It feels like there’s still a lot of assessment to be done on set.

Bill Nye The Science Guy and Ed Begley Jr. both agree that getting out of our cars is the single biggest thing that we can do to help the environment. Nye, back at the EMAs after a few years away, also said that he rides his bike everywhere much to the amusement of his friends. He also has a powerful solar set up at his house which allows him to sell electricity back into the grid.

Derreck and Beverly Joubert, National Geographic’s current Explorers in Residence (definitley in the running for ‘best job ever’) also launched the Big Cat Initiative last night which aims to protect the world’s big cats, starting on their home continent, Africa, but also spanning the world, bringing together governments and NGOs to save these rapidly vanishing creatures.

Along with honorees Branson and Mraz, winners for the evening included Better Off Ted, Brothers & Sisters, The Cove, Food Inc., Disneynature EARTH, The Lazy Environmentalist and Biz Kid$.

Highlights of the evening included a sneak peek at the upcoming 2012, Alanis working her way through Jason Mraz’s extensive list of eco-accomplishments and Cedric the Entertainer’s attempt to get the crowd to relax. I can also say that I hope that Blythe Danner and Sir Richard’s broken limbs heal quickly. What troopers!

Check out this exclusive clip of Jason Mraz performing “I’m Yours”.

Jack Johnson is one lean, green, music-playing machine, and he’s about to prove it!

On October 27th, “En Concert” will officially be released — a film chronlocing one leg of Johnson’s 2008 “Sleep Through the Static” tour.

Here are the Razz we were pretty much obsessed with the Static tour, thanks to their use of biodiesel buses, coaches and generators and their above and beyond recycling and composting efforts.  The tour also offset more than 4,000 metric tons of carbon through donations to renewable energy sources and programs that save jungles and forests.

About the film, director Emmett Malloy said:

“Getting a shot of him is kind of similar to getting a shot of the Loch Ness Monster; it’s a rare occurrence. Surprisingly, he let our cameras really join him on this tour. I just knew that I better keep a guitar or surfboard in his hands, because with either of those weapons he seemed to never know we were there.”

Visit Jack Johnson’s website to pre-order a deluxe edition of the film, a CD and a 60-page booklet of photos from the tour. All the proceeds will go to fund the Kokua Hawaii Foundation and the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation – an organization that supports environmental, art, and music education around the globe.

Keep up the great work, Jack!

via: treehugger.com