Reality of Change

If you're looking for some shows to watch over the holiday that you can feel good about, check out this timely article by Claire Elise Thompson at Grist, which includes a handful of reality TV recs by yours truly. Sam Read of the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance leads the article by dropping knowledge about sustainable production practices, what's achievable now, and some of the co-benefits of producing sustainably. All really great stuff! Hope everyone has a wonderful 4th.

*PROGRAM DROP* June 25th (conference DAY 1) Discover the impact of local storytelling on climate change and sustainability at the 2024 #HollywoodClimateSummit with our panel: “Centering Local Stories: Unscripted Television.” 🌍✨ Sponsored by the Hot & Toxic powered by the Gas Leaks Project campaign, this panel will dive into how regional narratives connect with national-level discussions, from hometowns featured in mainstream entertainment to pathways for local community storytellers to reach larger audiences. Join Pattie Gonia (Co-Creator, Go Gently), Bonnie Wright (Co-Creator, Go Gently), Jonathan Scott (Co-host & Executive Producer), Patrick Weiland (Executive Television Producer), Baratunde Thurston (Host & Executive Producer, America Outdoors), and Marina Jurica (Meteorologist & Environmental Reporter, CBS/KCAL) as they share insights on framing climate information through local stories. Don’t miss out! Grab your tickets now at bit.ly/hcs24tix! #HCS2024 #ClimateAction #UnscriptedTelevision #Sustainability #EnvironmentalEducation #Storytelling #CommunityImpact

This week, alongside the Hollywood Climate Summit - or - as some have been referring to it "Hollywood Climate Week" haha -- The Hollywood Reporter is putting out their annual sustainability issue. When they approached Ali Weinstein, Heather Fipps, and myself to write a piece, the concept that kept coming up was the breadth of climate storytelling leaders, experts, and definitions that currently exist. Being conveners who are learning from and amplifying all types of research and strategy, we figured what better way to celebrate our amazing partners in the climate storytelling ecosystem than to create a guide that links out to their work! Shoutout to: Good Energy Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)’s Rewrite the Future, Rare, Hip Hop Caucus, The Center for Cultural Power, The Redford Center, Hollywood, Health & Society Climate Spring, Futerra, Intersectional Environmentalist, , DOC SOCIETY, NDN Collective, Harmony Labs, Reality of Change, Grist, Cinereach and more. Of course, no op-ed or book can fit in every climate storytelling expert, so if you have other organizations and leaders doing this work that you want to spotlight, comment below ✨ PS --> The amount of times I've responded to people who don't understand what I do in the climate and social impact media spaces with "making activism sexy" has now been validated in this title. See ya'll tomorrow at the first day of the Hollywood Climate Summit 📽 🌲 https://lnkd.in/gFTjcScf

Reality of Change and Rare's Entertainment Lab are honored to be working with some of the best unscripted producers and production/studio executives in the business to chart a course for a more sustainable sector both on and off screen. Today, we announced our amazing unscripted advisory committee participants in The Hollywood Reporter's special Sustainability issue, which you can read here: https://lnkd.in/gf_2GQYt The advisory committee includes 44 Blue Productions, Alfred Street Industries, APG Pictures, Back Roads Entertainment, Blind Nil, Boardwalk Pictures, Chicken Run Productions, Common Ground Studios, Critical Content, DAT's Entertainment, Intuitive Content, Lighthearted Entertainment, Inc., Magic Lemonade, Margot Station, MFP Inc, MGM Alternative, Evolution Media (an Amazon MGM Studios Company), Mission Control Media, Inc., MorningStar Entertainment, OBB Media, Scout Productions Inc., Sony Pictures Television's The Intellectual Property Corporation, Unger Media, Velvet Hammer Media (VHM), Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, Wrigley Media Group, and key executives formerly of Participant. It continues to be the greatest pleasure working alongside my friends Ellis Watamanuk and Laurel Tamayo at Rare and Paul Hewitt on press. More to come!

If you're interested in learning about climate action in our industry, and if you want to know how to integrate sustainability into your workplace (behind the scenes and/or on screen), join me, Ellis Watamanuk, and a bunch of other cool folks at the virtual Seeds of Change event from the CBC in a couple weeks! The online event takes place on June 19 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET. You can get your free ticket here: https://lnkd.in/ggHVmTq9 Thanks to Lisa Clarkson for inviting us to be a part of this!

New Good Energy study out today! It's a collab with Dr. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson & Colby College that looks at climate in the 250 most popular films of the past decade. Guess which movies were 10% more profitable? Those that passed the Climate Reality Check! Shout out to Good Energy's Bruno Olmedo Quiroga & Carmiel Banasky - who led on the development of the Climate Reality Check and edited the report - as well as EJ Baker for the (always) gorgeous design! Excellent Fast Company story by Joe Berkowitz:

Happy Earth Week! I’m so happy to be able to finally announce the exciting news that my organization Reality of Change has partnered with Ellis Watamanuk and Laurel Tamayo of the Entertainment Lab at the global environmental non-profit Rare to organize an advisory committee focused on climate and sustainability in unscripted tv. The advisory group is made up of a number of unscripted production companies and studios operating in the US who are concerned about climate change and want to elevate sustainability both in front of and behind the camera across our industry. We’re already getting to work identifying what this sector needs in order to accelerate these efforts in ways that prioritize entertainment and encourage seamless and successful adoption. I’m grateful to have so many truly amazing people and companies involved in this – both long time friends and new ones – who will be driving the conversation on methods that we can employ to support the entire industry to this end. Within the next couple months, we plan to share a list of participating companies and individuals once that list is finalized (we’re still growing!). There is a lot of inspiring work already being done by others, and a tremendous amount of work still ahead, so if you are interested in being involved or otherwise supporting these efforts, please get in touch. For all those already involved: Your positive responses to this from the very beginning, and the widespread passion we’ve encountered in all our conversations to this point, have been by their nature incredibly hopeful. This is something most people want – the stats back it up and our conversations have proved it. Now we look forward to working with you to get it done. Thank you to Kirsten Chuba and Julian Sancton for sharing this story!

Thanks to Sammy Roth at the Los Angeles Times for including me in this great piece on Good Energy 's much-needed new tool, the Climate Reality Check (a Bechdel-Wallace test for climate change). Congratulations to Anna Jane Joyner and her team for coming up with something that is both easy to employ and will have a meaningful impact on the entertainment industry!