What is the Screen Carbon Test?
Climate Change is probably the greatest existential threat humanity has ever faced, and we believe it is therefore the responsibility of filmmakers and other artists to address this monumental challenge in their creative work.
The Screen Carbon Test is designed to measure how well a film or TV show acknowledges and addresses the issue of climate change since the United Nations asked all countries to declare a Global Climate Emergency in December 2020. It seeks to expand upon BAFTA Albert’s editorial criteria to:
- acknowledge that the natural world exists,
- to show negative environmental behaviour as negative character traits,
- to have at least one character do something to make the world a better place.
To explore this on a deeper level the Screen Carbon Test employs a 3-part Likert-scale questionnaire to rate and compare the environmental credentials of different films and TV shows.
The first set of five questions explores how well the film or show acknowledges the natural world and the problem of climate change.
The second set of five questions explores whether the film or show tries to understand and explore the scale of the environmental challenge, and the way in which the impacts of climate change and environmental depredation are not always felt equally.
The third set of questions asks whether the filmmakers or any of the characters in the film or TV show assume responsibility for trying to find solutions to the many problems surrounding climate change and environmental degradation.
The higher a film scores on the Screen Carbon Test questionnaire, the stronger its climate credentials.
NB. To reduce 'tick bias', some of the questions are scored on a scale of 4 to 0 and others from 0 to 4.
Rating Percentages
Credits, code and contacts
The Screen Carbon Test rating system was conceived and developed by Filmmaker and Film Educator, David Griffith from Timelock Media Ltd and Dr Inge Sørensen, Senior Lecturer in Screen Industries and Media Policy, University of Glasgow.
The lead system developer from the College of Arts is Phaedon Koutsoyiannopoulos.
The prototype for the site was developed by Keshi Li and Xin Zhou, MSc Comp Sci dissertation students (2022-23) at University of Glasgow under the supervision by Dr Tania Wallis (School of Computing Science) and Gordon McLeod (Digital Learning & Innovation, CoAH).
The website uses code with low environmental impact and is programmed to minimise data traffic between external databases and the tool in order to reduce environmental impact and lower energy requirements as much as possible.
Questions and press enquiries should be directed to Faidon, David or Inge.
Funding
The Screen Carbon Test is entirely non-profit. It was awarded initial funding from Screen Scotland’s Film Education Programme in 2021 and from University of Glasgow’s AHRC Arts Impact Accelerator Account (319944, 2022).
