Sargent-Disc Celebrates albert’s Planet Placement Launch

Sargent-Disc celebrated the planet’s birthday and the launch of its partner albert’s new resource Planet Placement. It looks at how content within film and television can raise awareness of climate change through sustainability messages on our screens.

The 4.5 billionth birthday party for Earth was introduced by albert’s Head of Industry Sustainability, Aaron Matthews, “In the face of a climate catastrophe, we are here to put our planet in the spotlight and celebrate our resolve to protect it”.

BAFTA/Agne Bekeraityte

Former Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Conventionand founder of Global Optimism, Christiana Figueres, reminded attendees that they can help tackle climate change by moving forwards with a mindset of determination, creativity and innovation: “The members of BAFTA use the power of human stories to create a world worth living in. It is time to use that power to help address the most daunting challenge of our times:  climate change.”

Following Christiana, BBC News correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti and Deloitte partner, George Johnston, took to the stage to share the research albert and Deloitte did together to identify the frequency of key sustainability themes within subtitling data from the BBC, Sky, ITV and Channel 4.

“Through the use of advanced data analytics technology and natural language processing, it is now possible to analyse hundreds of thousands of lines of subtitles and, for the first time, capture society’s exposure to key environment sustainability issues when watching TV. This data can be used to inform broadcasters’ strategies for communicating sustainability and climate change goals to the general public.“George Johnston

BAFTA and albert expect to publish the report later this year.

Planet Placement:

The Planet Placement website was officially launched by Co-Founder of Futerra and co-author of Planet Placement, Solitaire Townsend, and BAFTA award winning director and chair of Directors UK Steve Smith.

“Conversations about sustainability and climate change are at the forefront of our culture, from making sustainable lifestyle choices to the global climate strikes, but we’re not seeing these stories on our favourite TV shows. There is a huge opportunity for the screen industries to tell the stories of this generation, help make positive environmental behaviours mainstream, and reach audiences in meaningful new ways.” Solitaire Townsend

Planet Placement aims to challenge and inspire the creative community to create world – changing content. The screen industries have a crucial role to play in solving climate change, and have the unique opportunity to shift mindsets and make positive environmental behaviours mainstream.

Find out more at www.planetplacement.co.uk

The evening was wrapped up by BBC’s Director of Content Charlotte Moore who said, “We know there is a real hunger amongst audiences, of all ages, to find out more about environmental issues and arm themselves with the facts. So in the years ahead we will commission programmes which challenge and inform audiences, and over the next decade we will build up a collection of online resources and archive about our planet and the environment in which we live.”

Sargent-Disc Official Partnership with BAFTA albert

Sargent-Disc is proud to be an Official Partner of BAFTA albert, the organisation working to make the film and TV industries more environmentally friendly. The partnership enables albert to hold quarterly events each year – most recently the Greenzone at Focus: The Meeting Place for International Production – in order to promote sustainable production and encourage the industry to become more eco-friendly.

Sargent-Disc is working towards a sustainable future by investing in and promoting the use of low carbon production office technologies within the Digital Production Office®. These include Payroll, Payslip, Payscales, CrewStart™, Digital Purchase Order as well as the Production Card.

Photo Credits: BAFTA/Agne Bekeraityte