The Future is Green: A Guide to Sustainable Film Sets with Max Hermans

Welcome to On Production brought to you by Wrapbook. Today I'm joined by Max Herman's the founder and CEO of The Green Shot. Max transitioned from a career and location management to create a platform that combines budget management with environmental impact assessment in the film production world. The green shot aims to provide productions with real time cost tracking and detailed environmental impact data. Max, it's great to have you here to discuss how the green shot works and its role in today's production landscape.

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0:53  

Thank you, Cameron, thank you for having me today on the podcast are very much looking forward for the discussion here. Well, I

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0:58  

want to know the origin story Max, what led you to develop the Greenshot after years and location management and production.

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1:05  

First of all, I come from Europe. And so location management, he is quite different than what you understand location management in the US and UK. Here we really have all the logistics, security, energy and transportation management under our belt. And so that's where it all started from, I had to compute quite interesting budgets on very short timeframes. And there were no tools who are actively try and collect that financial data possible. That led quite quickly to the sustainability management. When we started, we realized with the data set that we acquired the precision and the granularity we had in the information. And once much with different calculators carbon calculators around we had the most effective presses and granular data available to process a carbon footprint. Let's

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1:50  

talk more about that. So how does the green shot blend real time data tracking with production activities? And what were the major hurdles in really achieving this breakthrough from an integration or technology perspective.

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2:02  

So first of all, we build the Greenshot with the wind to have benefits for every anybody taking part on a production. So as crew members we are always used to work with whatever the production needs us to work with, Hey, we build a system that crew members actually want to use as they keep the same system across any jobs they will have in the industry. So we managed to decentralize the data acquisition using this scheme, meaning that every crew member shares, and called expenses such as all the strivers audits, accommodations, anything that's happening with them is being shared in a real time manner by them, so that we can consolidate and aggregate that data at top level for the producers. On top of this in Europe, it's quite hard to navigate the carbon footprint of predictions as every country has its own scheme for reporting. So the friendly data and the UK all of them are reporting on different schemes, calculators and certification. So our job as a company is to be the place that consolidates all that data, and then maps it was all the different certifications, as well as the budgeting. That's

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3:06  

super interesting. So Max, I mean, I would love to hear a case study specifically for our listeners who are primarily Americans working here in the States, can you really help us understand sort of a European case study where the Greenshot really markedly changed? How production approached both sort of the budgeting finance side, and then the sustainability side as well, maybe working across different nations in Europe, etc?

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3:29  

Yes, definitely. So as a US producer, you would commission a theme to happen in different countries in Europe, let's say that you're going to shoot in Spain, France, and Belgium, those three countries will have different tax and fiscal laws across the board. And so by using the Greenshot, we'll have a consolidated view of the budget tracking of the regional spends on every of those country, and having everything consolidated in real time, wherever you are in the US, that allows you to track the money in real time to see in advance where you are in the different cash rebates tax credit that you would be eligible. And with the management of the payroll that we have, you have also alive you have the payroll across the different members working from these different countries.

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4:13  

That's awesome. I think the vision is very aligned with sort of how we think about the future of back office management in the payroll and financial services space. I'm curious what the response has been from your clients, you know, regarding the Greenshot, especially from sort of teams aiming for greater environmental responsibility.

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4:33  

The response has been great because people have been fighting with different systems in different countries, sometimes different languages. And so I think that a lot of people were waiting for a solution that aggregates all the data in one single place. One thing to know also is that because we were one of the last one to the party, we are the ones that need to build the interfaces with whatever existing systems were already in place, and also general accounting for the production companies you're going to work with. So the response overall has been very great. Also, on the sustainability side, I think we are one of the first to be the mature tech to try the data related to carbon data. There's a lot of consultancy agencies out there, and we are going around with them to provide the first tool to use.

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5:16  

So Max, I'm wondering, you know, for the green shot, are there any new features or expansions planned for the green shot that you can share with us?

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5:23  

Yeah, so we just recently announced the acquisition of a company called saint jewel in the US. So that's our first step in the US and Canadian market, we are not deploying the production and the account the accounting or payroll software in the US, we're only focusing on sustainability. We were just accepted as members of the MIT lab. So that's the AI Lab of the MIT. And we are building an AI enhance feature for the sustainability tracking of productions wherever they are in the world. So those are the new next big releases we are going to come up with,

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5:56  

that's great. I mean, any this is a, you know, a dangerous question to ask any tech entrepreneur. But what's the release date of that? Do you think, oh, release

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6:05  

date is always a tricky one, what I can say is that we are already building and we have already quotes and proposals out there to studios, people that have been beta testing for over a year. So you will see it at the end, late summer or early q3 of this year, the AI model that we are adding to it is really an edge that we are having here in the entertainment industry. And what's been interesting, also is that we have other industries that have been reaching out to us use just exactly the same feature that that's

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6:32  

awesome. I'm really curious, you know, Max, from your perspective, having worked in the industry, seeing what life is like on set? I mean, how do you think filmmakers should consider managing costs while also sort of addressing environmental concerns, it's quite

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6:47  

straightforward equation. So the more you spend, the more you will be emitting carbon. The other thing is that sustainability saves money, people have a hard time getting it at first, but once they truly experience it, then they shoot in a more sustainable manner, me as a supervising location manager when I entered the production office, and I asked the UPM to be more sustainable, they were not much responses that but when I entered the office, and I said that a great plan to save money, then a lot of people would sit down and listen very carefully, then you would roll out the plan where you announced or you will better manage the energy resources, or you bet the manager, the transportation, the waste, the gateway isn't all of those issues from a money perspective. So all of these can be really optimized on the set. And by the way, it always lessens the carbon footprint of the production. So addressing it from the money angered is really more effective to producers and anyone out there producing than from the sustainability angle. That's

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7:44  

great. Now, Max, I think you were telling me before you started recording that you're in Brussels today, are you traditionally in Europe? Do you come to US, Canada? How do people kind of interact and follow the resources and the product that you're developing at their Greenshot? How can people learn more,

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7:58  

we saw that the green shot two years ago now, we were three people back then we are 60 people today across the US, Canada, France and Belgium. I was born and raised in Belgium. So this is what I call home. But I am traveling a lot, especially to London in the US recently.

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8:13  

That's awesome. So our podcast here is really focused on sort of the meat and potatoes, the tactics that go into production. I'm curious, just from your thoughts on kind of European production, how you think it's maybe markedly different than American production, or just any sort of insights that you have having been on both sides of the admin operation side of production, payroll, finance, and then also having worked in locations as

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8:36  

well. Yeah, so I do not have much experience on set in the US. But I can tell from the European perspective, it also by welcoming us members here, that there's been a shift in the last year or so with with the strikes happening and the risks that has been taken by studios by launching production in LA, we've seen more and more US production is being shipped overseas, the workforce a cost a little bit less, I guess, there's also tax rhetoric and public financing incentives that happen here. What I would say is that the European industry has been obviously a little bit less gigantic as the US one for a lot of years. And so all of a sudden some countries Belgium included, so a lot of money in flow coming here. So we had to train a lot of new members, get new vendors and get the industry in a row to service all those productions. We've seen the industry being very versatile here and adapting a massive shows happening in France in theory, but up is obviously also by German Netherlands. So the European industry is adapting really quickly. And there's a lot of public funding and financing available.

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9:39  

How are you seeing Europe sort of managing this new demand like art? Do you feel like the crews are crewing up well like are looking at how is Europe responding? Are they doubling down on incentives? Do you see like that this is a shift that's going to remain quite permanent of people building their productions in Europe or do you kind of see it flowing back to the US in the next couple of years. I think

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10:03  

the industry from a high level perspective has been quite smart in how to manage it. Rather than saying okay, what come next release upwards but new US money here to build us shows at the state of France is one of them that negotiated with the streamers, they didn't need to invest that money in low production. On the other end, we've seen streamers, having massive success with some productions like tax, Lubin, for example, who kasseri Barbados such productions here. So I think there's a good mix between the US money that allows us to produce way more productions and have more European content being produced and shipped back to the US. So I've seen way to the dynamics of reward from the stream as that. And also from the crew perspective, it's quite great here to have experience on shows of 50 or 100 plus million dollars coming to Europe, but because those were not common at all, in the landscape here, Max

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10:55  

help you understand. So like, if there's an American film organization that wants to bring their production to Europe, let's say that they're an indie film, maybe $15 million production, not a large studio gig, what sort of the best, in your view way for them to set up and get operating in Europe to be producing compliantly with crew payroll, sustainability reports that are requisite for the various countries in Europe like to kind of walk us through the process of somebody from the states wanting to sort of bring up production to Europe and how that would work with working with the Greenshot.

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11:31  

Yeah, so I was about to say I seen the best way for us to get a production service that works with we insured already to get it covered from the US perspective, you get the money funded over there, the first job you would have is building the financial model, hey, with the different building up with a different tax rate and find public financing available. There are a lot of competition here as in the Canary Islands are one of the best incentives out there, the moments from there, as a US producer wants to get everything in order the production service identified here, by using the Greenshot, you would have a real time view of everything that's happening on a daily basis. So you could connect on the UI by the delay at nine in the morning in follow every very exactly every spend that was made every forecast that has been produced paywall to the pennies on what has been a paid any overtime and whatnot that has been spent, my experience on said was basically to see producer sometimes overseas, spending money that was already bent at swear was just that they didn't get the info in time. And so you know, that goes when you go drop, and you go to collect all the costs there and you realize that, you know that money wasn't consolidated in that. So that's how I would produce it there.

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12:40  

That's right now max to follow up on that question. So I know that a lot of the offshoring of productions here in North America are in part because there's just phenomenal locations in Europe. There's amazing stories to tell globally. And it sounds like you guys can be a part of that. But then there's also these dynamics economically on labor and on just various production costs. Are there particular types of things in Europe that filmmakers should be aware of? Like you mentioned, the production service organization or the Greenshot that can help producers sort of navigate the territory there. But you know, an American producer may be very used to American guilds and unions, what sort of considerations should an American producer be aware of in terms of the complexity of filming in Europe as compared to the states?

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13:24  

So the complexity here is quite high. So first thing is I would suggest you to produce over there to get somebody that knows a lot about it before getting his full set, as there's a lot of I think there are some countries with unions that are quite strong. Some countries have no unions at all. Belgium's doesn't have unions, for example, very strong unions in the members were in France, it's a it's a by law, the number of hours and the pay that you get is defined by law, there is no negotiation happening there. So it's really on a country by country basis. Also, sometimes you would have words from another country that would apply in a third country. So for example, I'm in Belgium, I'm going to work come with sweet Swedish would have a deal signed by Swedish law assigned by Swedish law, but that when they come over to bed, that depends on the number of hours per day, or maybe, but only to the things that are defined in other countries in Belgium. So overall, I would say the complexity is quite high. It's very country by country basis. And you will have to get it sorted before you get you step over and not get surprised.

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14:27  

Very, very helpful. Well, Max, thank you for joining me on On Production, sharing a bit about your story, working on set as a location manager, really stepping into entrepreneurship and building these technologies that fully kind of integrate this data stack and really empowering producers to film across the pond, so to speak. Thank you so much for joining me.

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14:47  

Thank you Cameron, Looking forward.