Last Friday, 25 November, the European Advertising Film Production Associations General Assembly was held in Brussels, where a new vision and mission were agreed upon.
Work continued on a document of Basic Principles of Audiovisual Production, which, in addition to those already in force in Spain, would add payment responsibility, inclusion-diversity and sustainability.
The three important new principles are:
Sequential Accountability
“The entity that hires the production company must take responsibility for paying them.
Some agencies, in some countries, seek to hire production companies on the basis that they are only responsible for paying for the production if their client pays them. This is unfair and incorrect. Production companies have no control or knowledge of the agency’s financial arrangements with its clients. It is up to the agency to manage that and contract to pay the production company the budget without conditions that would pass the consequences of clients not paying the production company.”
Commitment to Diversity
“We are committed to creating workforces that are inclusive, accessible to all and truly representative of all sectors of our society. It is important to us that we not only recruit employees from under-represented groups, but also retain their positions in our workplaces by developing safe and supportive work environments. As well as being a socially responsible course, we also believe that greater diversity is fundamental to developing our creative offering and communicating with every part of society in a way that is a benefit to the clients and agencies we work with.”
Commitment to sustainability
“Production companies are committed to working with agencies and advertisers to help them assess the potential environmental impact at the planning stage.
This principle is being worked on with the IACP and we all work hand in hand.
The commitment to green production
This is an increasingly critical area. The aim of the PIC-E is to have a system that works in all countries, so that there is consistency in expectations and reporting.
The meeting was updated on Adgreen, the system developed in the UK and other approaches.
In addition, the focus should be on key elements such as size of equipment, number of shooting days, travel (and in particular flights) and not on disposable items etc., which are a small element and should be dealt with as responsibly as possible anyway … .
Information on the (potential) environmental impact of a production is much more useful at the stage when the production is planned than afterwards. We agreed that we should use that to persuade clients to take environmental impact into account when deciding where to film.
The next meeting will be held in Greece in spring 2023.
