This week on The Tie-In, Zena sits down with Kent Hayward, a filmmaker, author of Green Filmmaking (Routledge, 2025), professor of production at California State University Long Beach, and co-founder and Vice-Chair of the Green Film School Alliance (GFSA).

Kent traces his path from visual effects work on models, miniatures, and composites to teaching production. Seeing how much material big shows sent to the dumpster after wrap started him thinking about what his film students could do with it. That idea became an extra-credit assignment, then a conference talk, then a book.

He explains how he frames sustainability for student filmmakers as good producing: using time and resources efficiently, being scrappy, and problem solving. He also shares how he brings climate storytelling into the writers’ room through small, everyday moments on screen, and how film history, from the Lumière brothers to Godzilla to Flow, reflects our changing relationship with nature.

We also get into the top practices his students use on set, from reusables and thrifting to carpooling and meatless meals, plus PEACHy 2.0 and the Green Seals GFSA students are earning. Kent shares how he’s learning battery power for student productions, what’s next for GFSA’s sustainability career pipeline, and his students’ plan for a bicycle-powered screening.

Perfect for film students, film educators, independent filmmakers, producers, and anyone curious how the next generation is learning sustainable production from day one.

Topics: green filmmaking, sustainable film production, film school curriculum, climate storytelling, Green Film School Alliance, PEACHy checklist, EMA Green Seal, battery power film sets, independent filmmaking, student filmmakers, film education, CSULB.

🌱 Connect With Our Guest:

Green Film School Alliance: https://www.greenfilmschoolalliance.com

Kent Hayward on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kent-hayward-b599441/

Kent Hayward on Instagram: @lekent_hayward

Green Film School Alliance on Instagram: @greenfilmschoolalliance

Kent Hayward on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1712857/

🎙️ Connect with our hosts:

Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/

This week on The Tie-In, Zena and Mark sit down with Jonathan Bricklin: an entrepreneur, filmmaker, writer, and co-founder of SPIN ping-pong social clubs and the Little People Social Club (LPSC), opening in Lower Manhattan. Jonathan shares how a ping pong obsession at 30 turned into nine social clubs, and how a short film he made in college planted the seed for LPSC decades later.

He walks through the vision for LPSC: parlor games scaled for little people, a main bar with a lower serving counter, a private room inspired by Elvis's Graceland billiards room, a speakeasy entrance, a disco dance floor, and week-long trial memberships priced by height.

The conversation also turns to energy. Jonathan spent time as a door-to-door solar salesman in Texas, and he just finished an '80s-style romantic comedy screenplay about a solar salesman who fills a 10,000-acre ranch with solar. Along the way, he and Mark get into gravity battery storage, the SmartFlower solar tracker, balcony solar, and the future energy mix.

Perfect for entrepreneurs, hospitality and venue designers, filmmakers, and anyone interested in community building, human connection, and creative storytelling.

Topics: social clubs, members clubs, community building, human connection, inclusive design, venue design, hospitality, entrepreneurship, SPIN ping pong, Outlaw Pickle, pickleball, solar energy, battery storage, climate storytelling, filmmaking, New York City.

🎙️ Connect with Jonathan & LPSC:

🌐 littlepeoplesocialclub.com

🌐 lpsc.love

📸 Instagram: @littlepeoplesocialclub

🏓 wearespin.com

🎙️ Connect with your hosts:

💼 Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

💼 Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/

👉 SUBSCRIBE for more sustainability and clean energy content from inside the entertainment industry.

This week on The Tie-In, Zena sits down with Elly Ventura, Manager of Circularity & Customer Engagement at World Centric and a US Composting Council Certified Composting Professional, to talk about what it takes to get compostable foodware back into the soil.

Elly traces her path from a family farm in Ohio, through athletic training and psychology, to a decade in solid waste management in Vermont. She explains how that background shaped her people-first approach to sustainability conversations. She breaks down what it means for World Centric to be a pure-play manufacturer of only certified compostable products, how California’s county-by-county packaging rules shape what vendors can sell, and why every composting facility sets its own acceptance list.

We also get into the difference between biodegradable and certified compostable, how pilot programs help composters build confidence in processing new materials, how extended producer responsibility laws could help compostables reach price parity with conventional plastic, and simple ways anyone can start composting at home.

Perfect for event producers, catering and craft services teams, sustainability coordinators, foodservice buyers, and anyone curious about how compostable packaging and composting infrastructure work behind the scenes.

Topics: certified compostable packaging, composting infrastructure, organics management, circular economy, packaging regulations, extended producer responsibility, biodegradable vs. compostable, foodservice packaging, World Centric, US Composting Council, home composting, soil health.

🎙️ Connect with Elly & World Centric:

🌐 worldcentric.com

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elly-ventura

💼 World Centric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/world-centric/

🎙️ Connect with your hosts:

💼 Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

💼 Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/

👉 SUBSCRIBE for more sustainability and clean energy content from inside the entertainment industry.

This week on The Tie-In, Mark and Zena catch up with returning guest Kerri Coombs, former gaffer, longtime energy consultant, and now tool designer at the GreenShot, about GridPro, the free power-planning app she built to replace generator guesswork with real data.

Kerri breaks down why productions keep running massive diesel generators at a fraction of their actual load, how GridPro lets crews drag and drop their equipment onto a map to instantly see energy consumption, emissions, and fuel costs, and what happens when sustainability planning becomes a shared, real-time picture instead of an after-the-fact report card.

We get into the friction points that keep clean energy technology sitting on trucks unused, how data-sharing is finally breaking down old industry walls, and a live walkthrough of the app itself — including a real grid tie-in at Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Perfect for gaffers, electricians, production coordinators, sustainability coordinators, UPMs, and anyone responsible for power planning on a film, TV, or live event production.

Topics: diesel generator alternatives, battery-powered film production, power planning software, energy consumption modeling, base camp power, clean-energy entertainment, sustainable film production, hybrid generator systems, solar trailer modeling, film crew tools.

🎙️ Connect with Kerri & GridPro:

🌐 gridpro.app

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerri-coombs/

🎙️ Connect with your hosts:

💼 Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

💼 Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/

👉 SUBSCRIBE for more sustainability and clean energy content from inside the entertainment industry.

What does sustainability actually look like backstage on Broadway? Molly Braverman, Executive Director of the Broadway Green Alliance, joins Zena and Mark to break down how theatre's culture of resourcefulness and reuse is shaping its approach to sustainability.

Molly traces her path from stage managing Wicked's national tour to leading the BGA, and walks through the organization's two-lane approach: greening the craft of theatre itself, and using storytelling to inspire audiences to take action. She covers the BGA Binder Project (10,000+ binders kept in circulation), a textile and prop reuse program that's diverted 31,000 pounds from landfills, the annual Earth Day concert in Times Square, and BGA's new "Climate Talk," a free, comedy-driven 30-minute presentation touring schools and theaters this fall.

She also previews the U.S. adaptation of the Theatre Green Book, an international sustainability standard already used in 17 countries, and shares why she sees theatre's budget constraints as a creative advantage rather than a limitation.

Perfect for theatre professionals, production managers, sustainability coordinators, and anyone curious how the performing arts are building climate action into the culture of live entertainment.

🔗 Connect With Our Guest:

🌐 Broadway Green Alliance: https://www.broadwaygreen.com

💼 Molly Braverman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-braverman/

📸 Molly Braverman on Instagram: @molly.braverman

📸 Broadway Green Alliance on Instagram: @broadwaygreenalliance

🎙️ Connect with our hosts:

💼 Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

💼 Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/

👉 SUBSCRIBE for more sustainability and clean energy content from inside the entertainment industry.

#BroadwayGreenAlliance #Broadway #SustainableTheatre #GreenTheatre #TheatreGreenBook #Wicked #Hamilton #EarthDay #SustainableEntertainment #GreenProduction #TheTieIn #FilmIndustry #TVProduction #ClimateAction #CircularEconomy #ZeroWaste #SustainableProduction #EntertainmentSustainability

What if the most powerful tool for teaching regenerative agriculture wasn't a documentary, but a love triangle?

Kelsey Crane, debut author of The Vanishing (Book One of The Exiles series) and a certified permaculturist trained through the Rodale Institute, joins Zena and Mark to talk about how she turned years of soil science and permaculture study into climate fiction for teens. Kelsey walks through her path from studying regenerative gardening to writing a hopeful, solutions-forward YA novel and why she believes storytelling can carry practical sustainability lessons further than a lecture ever could.

🌱 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

— How a personal health journey led Kelsey into soil science and permaculture study

— Why she calls entertainment "a brilliant Trojan horse" for teaching regenerative practices

— The real-world permaculture concepts (composting, biochar, water systems) woven into her fiction

— Why she chose to write climate fiction as inherently hopeful rather than dystopian

— What it took to self-publish a debut novel and build a reader community from scratch

— How beta readers and advance reader copies shaped the final book

Perfect for entertainment industry professionals, sustainability-curious readers, YA fiction fans, and anyone interested in how storytelling can make regenerative practices approachable.

🔗 Connect with Kelsey:

🌐 theexilesseries.com

📸 Instagram: @artforartssake

🎵 TikTok: @thewildwriter

📝 Substack: @plantarevolution

🎙️ Connect with your hosts:

💼 Zena Harris on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/zenaharris

💼 Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rabinmark

👉 SUBSCRIBE for more sustainability and clean energy content from inside the entertainment industry.

#KelseyCrane #TheExiles #TheVanishing #ClimateFiction #YAFiction #Permaculture #RegenerativeAgriculture #RodaleInstitute #SustainableStorytelling #TheTieIn #HopefulStorytelling #DebutAuthor #ClimateStorytelling #SustainableEntertainment #IndieAuthor

🎙️ Zena Harris and Mark Rabin are back! Catching up on what's been on their minds, from AI's growing role in daily work to wildfire season out West.

🌱 WHAT'S IN THIS EPISODE:

— Mark's summer in British Columbia, powering Friends Club, a 350-person mountain arts gathering, with solar and batteries

— Why everyone now effectively has a handful of AI "employees and assistants" working alongside them

— Mark's Mount Rainier backpacking trip, and the wildfire that closed the area days later

— On-the-ground conversations with production teams across middle America for Greensburg Group's industry insights

— Highlights from Pacific Northwest Climate Week

— What's coming up this fall, including more Burning Man interviews

Perfect for anyone in film and TV production, clean energy, sustainability, or entertainment who wants a quick read on where the industry is headed.

🎙️ Connect with our hosts:

Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/

👉 SUBSCRIBE for more sustainability and clean energy content from inside the entertainment industry.

#TheTieIn #Sustainability #CleanEnergy #AI #WildfireSeason #PNWClimateWeek #FilmIndustry #TVProduction #EntertainmentIndustry #GreenProduction #RenewableEnergy #BurningMan #ClimateAction #SustainableEntertainment #ClimateTech #SolarPower #BatteryStorage"

This week on The Tie-In, we're here with Brandon Geller, Director of Sustainability for Quixote and Sunset Studios (part of Hudson Pacific Properties' portfolio), where he oversees sustainability across facilities, fleet, trailers, and mobile power.

Brandon walks through how legacy Star Wagons trailers are being converted into solar-electric power sources, how trailers now "daisy chain" to share power with each other, and how camp plugs let productions power craft services or EV chargers straight off a trailer battery. He also breaks down the bespoke dashboard his team built so transport coordinators can monitor battery life in real time, and so studios like Netflix and Disney can pull sustainability reporting data on demand, plus the carbon-neutral letters Sunset Studios now issues to productions that shoot on their soundstages.

We also get into where the real friction is: not the technology, but asking people to work differently, and why base camp, not set, is where the biggest energy footprint on a production actually lives.

Perfect for production sustainability coordinators, transport coordinators, UPMs, studio facilities teams, and anyone curious how clean energy is actually getting deployed on working film lots.

Topics: base camp decarbonization, solar trailers, battery power film production, studio sustainability reporting, clean mobile power, Sunset Studios, Quixote, carbon neutral productions, food donation programs, film industry sustainability data, EV charging on set.

🎙️ Learn more about Sunset Studios, Quixote Trailers and Hudson Pacific Properties:

💼 LinkedIn: hudson-pacific-properties-inc

💼 LInkedIn: sunset-studios-global

💼 LInkedIn : quixote-studios

🌐 Sunset Studios: SunsetStudios.com

🌐 Husdon Pacific Properties: hudsonpacificproperties.com

📸 Instagram: @Quixotestudios, @sunsetstudios.global, hudsonppi

🎙️ Connect with your hosts:

💼 Zena Harris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenaharris/

💼 Mark Rabin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabinmark/