How The Sun Powered an Ad for the Sunshine Coast in Tourism World First

We sat down with the Light + Shade team to learn about their commitment to sustainable production and how they came to partner with BCM Group to create a tourism world first.

Co-founder, Joshua Zaini, says: “Environmentally it’s been a pretty devastating couple of years in Australia, from extreme bushfires to record breaking floods. These recent events have encouraged us to assess our impact on the environment and look for ways to produce work in a more sustainable way.”

Light + Shade made a commitment in 2022 to work towards the goal of becoming a carbon neutral production company.

Josh Zaini commented: “We decided to do this not only because we wanted to, but because we feel like we have to. If we’re going to survive as a business and as people we need to look at ways of mitigating our impact on the environment and work smarter into the future, it’s something that the whole team is really passionate about.”  

The first step in this journey was to power their Brisbane based studio with solar, becoming the first integrated Production and Post company in Queensland to do so.

Q> What changes have you made so far ?

Co-founder, Matt Bamkin> We’ve covered every square inch of our roof space with a 30kWh solar array. The system takes our office, where we run all our Pre/Production/Post from, off the grid. We’re producing so much excess energy that we’re offsetting the rest of our operations, so far taking the equivalent of almost 14,000 kilometers off the road and almost 4,000 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Josh Zaini> In addition to this, we’ve implemented a recycling and composting system to ensure as little as possible goes to landfill. We’ve also installed a solar powered electric system in our Production Van, allowing us to power all the elements of the Camera Department from the sun. This is just the start and we’re planning on rolling out further initiatives over the course of 2022 and 2023 until we are not just Net Zero but Carbon Neutral.

Q> Can you tell us about how the solar powered campaign came to be?  

Josh Zaini> A project came across our desks that aligned perfectly with what we are trying to do as a Business. BCM Group had a project for Sunshine Coast tourism, their idea was to power the campaign using the very thing the destination is known for, it’s sunshine.

Q> How did it come to life?

Producer, Emma Horne> It presented us a great opportunity to test the waters and see if we could actually power a large scale TVC using only renewable energy. We looked into many potential ways of powering the ad, we needed to ensure we had enough energy to run all of our lights, charge our batteries, run laptops, kettles, irons, everything that is needed to power a shoot of this scale. It had to be portable, user friendly and cost effective.

So we ended up going with a 5kw solar generator which had eight large solar panels on the roof and an internal battery. The generator traveled with us to nine locations over the three day shoot and while the main unit were filming, the panels would be set up to harness the sunshine and power each scene.

Q> How did it go ?

Josh Zaini> The system worked perfectly and did everything it promised it could. What was most exciting was that we proved to ourselves that not only could it be done, but it could be done in a way that was really quite simple and cost effective. It’s a great platform for us to build from.

Q> Were there any other environmental measures taken ?

Matt Bamkin> With a tourism project such as this obviously there was travel involved. The agency, crew and client took steps to travel sustainably while in the region and the client engaged Earthcheck and Reforest to remove emissions generated from aspects of the production that were not able to be solar powered.

Q> Do you think this will affect how you work going forward ?

Josh Zaini> Definitely. Especially in the Tourism space, where we believe sustainable holidays and travel will be a big thing in the next few years. It will be something that people actively pursue, so to champion the Sunshine Coast regions eco credentials and commitment to sustainability just felt like the perfect match and I think other destinations will follow suit.

Q> Was the solar powered ad a world first?

Josh Zaini> From what we can find this is a Tourism world first, but regardless we’re hoping it will be something that becomes more common across all sectors in the future. We were very fortunate to be involved in this project and we’re excited to push this further and see how we can evolve our sustainable production approach to reach our goal of becoming carbon neutral.