I know what you’re thinking, “Global warming is a big corporate guy issue”, I’m just a small production company in any town America. But in today’s every changing world everyone should think globally and act locally. My company Wonderdog Media,  a production company in the Seattle/Tacoma Market, is trying to help reduce our carbon foot print on the this planet called earth.

About a year and a half ago, my wife and business partner Olga and I sat down and asked what can we do here at Wonderdog to think globally and act locally. After a thorough examination on how we do business, we’ve concluded that the immediate changes we could take that would have the most impact on our environment was in the reduction in the amount of media stock used in the company.  In the eight years we have been in business, Wonderdog has been utilizing various formats: mini DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO,  Beta sp, DVDs  you name it even 3/4inch. We have way too much tape stock and still do! I suggested we should look at the tape-less cameras.  Back then the only real camera on the market was the Panasonic HVX200P (now there is the Sony EX camera), so we invested in our Panasonic HVX 200 P2 camera and 3 P2 cards-an investment well worth it.

It took some time to get up to speed on the “new“technology but after a few weeks, I was shooing 85% of my projects on P2 cards SD and HD. After my first shoot I was wondering why I didn’t do this sooner.

How does shooing on P2 cards help global warming you ask?
No more UPS trucks hauling my tape stock to my office every 3 to 5 days, no more tape stock also means no more plastics (case, Tape) made with Oil.  Also the cost savings of tapeless is huge.

The next thing I purchased was a fire Store FS 100. This is a 100 gig hard drive that connects with my camera via fire wire and allows for more storage and longer shooting times, and with firmware updates can shoot variable frame rates now and is real nice for longer shoots. The FS-100 can hold 100 minutes of  DVCPRHD. The advantage of the FS-100 is that it also works with my other fire wire cameras. Since I have bought this drive, I no longer shoot with tape stock on any of my other 6 cameras. Unless the client has specific requirements for the use of tape stock or if we are a gun for hire and tape is a requirement. Other than that no tape.

One advantage of the fire store unit is that it can shoot in native AVI, AVI Type II, QuickTime and Avid OMF files, which allows for faster access to edit the captured footage.  It also allows the ability to post clips via ftp or burn dailies on set to the client for them to view that evening on there laptop.

I live for the day when I can shoot direct to disc and upload the files to any client any where in the world.  Life without shipping charges and hassles would be bliss No more Fed Ex charges just imagine how much that would save a year!  Fortunately most of our clients are local, and this allows us to save a lot of time and money while doing our part to reduce Wonderdog’s impact on the environment..

One of the things that has changed for us going tapeless is that we need loads of computer storage space. We have expanded our storage tenfold since 2003. We currently have 15 TB of storage which allows us to have back-ups on our back-ups. You must have a real tight naming convention to keep all these files in order or life will suck!

Olga came up with the idea to convert all of our paper work in the interactive form maker program of the latest Adobe Acrobat version.  All of our invoices, bids, contracts, project tracking is now an emailable interactive electronic form. Going paperless has allowed us to save huge!  We spend less on paper which means less waste to local landfills, less trips to the local office supply store and saving on auto fuel usage. Our accounting software, Quick Books allows for each employee, officer, and vendor to digitally track time for company projects, and billable hours. Each week the logged timer files are emailed to Olga for AR/AP processing.  These files are easily processed through the accounting software.  There is no need for double entry of timer activities. Our clients just love the emailed bids and contracts!  There is a quick turn-around to approve bids, and process work orders.  Clients can even pay their bills online!  It truly is a win win for the client and for the company as there are no checks to write, no envelopes or stamps, less paper, less carbon, are you starting to see a trend?. 

Another thing in the office we are doing is with faxing. We have a client that sends and receives 12,000 pages of faxes a month, 12,000 pages, that’s a lot of paper! As they did we decided to move to efaxing.
What is an E-fax? E Fax is an electronic fax or email fax. When a client sends a fax it doesn’t go to our fax machine it goes to the person needing the fax via email.  We now can fax from our laptops and desk tops, a client can fax me a script and I don’t have to move, I get an email in my Outlook with an attachment of the fax.  Each employee has there own personal fax number so they can get there faxes from where ever they are via email. Our clients really love this feature. I even had clients when I’m on the road with them have there office forward a fax from  there office to my laptop then I forward the mail to them with the PDF attachment. Another advantage to E fax is accountability. You immediately know when and where a fax was sent.

In today’s production environment we all have high speed internet at our office, and a way we can take advantage of the band with is we have converted all of our phone lines to Voip. Voice over Internet protocol. Our Voip modems connect to our traditional Lucent partner phone system and our clients don’t even notice the difference. Having this technology allows for a substantial cost savings on a monthly basis. Another  benefit is simulring. This allows up to 7 numbers to ring at the same time when a client calls our office. No more missed gigs.

When our lease was up we spent a few months looking for office space keeping the green in mind we decided to choose an office that had lots of sky lights giving us sun up to sun down natural light. When we moved in to our new production facility this year the savings was immediate saving on our electric bill, another thing we did was to convert all of our incandescent light bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs, not only saving us money, but helping the environment.

In our future are LED production lights. We have a 2 year plan to replace the majority of our production lights with energy efficient LED lights.  No more sitting under hot 4 hot 1k lights not only good for the bottom line but good for everyone we share the planet with.

It is time for all of us to our part big or small to make less of an impact on the planet we call home, if not for us for our children I have 6 so I really need to. Even if global warming isn’t your thing you can make simple changes to your office and daily production routines that can have a positive impact on your carbon footprint and your bottom line. With everything sometimes there are larger costs up front but the Savings you reap will go along way to reduce your carbon foot print and help the planet at the same time.

With that money saved go buy the newest gadget for your camera, or that much needed vacation.

Online Resources:
www.adobe.com
www.quickbooks.com
www.Panasonic.com
http://www.ge.com/products_services/lighting.html
www.firestore.com
www.lowellights.com
www.vonange.com
www.flolight.com
www.efax.com
www.microsoft.com
http://www.ledlightbulb.net/
www.kinoflo.com
www.litepanles.com