Make it Reel Big in Mountain View … Regional Film Office Video
The Purpose of the regional video, which is embedded on the homepage of our Mountain View Regional Film Office website (www.mountainviewfilm.ca), is to shine a spotlight on the partnering communities that include the Town of Didsbury, Mountain View County and the Town of Sundre to showcase our film friendly region that provides an amazing variety of environments and settings. The video shows our breathtaking unique natural and rural settings from mountains, prairies and rivers, to town facades that can easily be transformed into Western, 80ties or other decades due to unique buildings, facilities, businesses, street – and landscapes.
Our Target market is twofold: a) to attract location scouts, film productions, talent and companies that cater to the film industry, in particular tech talent b) to attract visitors that are fans of film, shows and the movie industry, catering to film tourism.
While attracting talent and more movie productions to our region is the main purpose, from an economic development perspective the project caters to business retention as much as it caters to business, investment and residents attraction.
The Video is about 3minutes long and was taken by drone as well as handheld video camera and edited so that it has an excellent flow, showcasing our various areas in a comprehensive and exciting way. The background narrator in the video is telling the stories of our communities and the region in context of the film industry. The video provides an excellent feel and overview of the filming opportunities. While the website has a translation tool, the video is in English only. However, even international visitors to our website that may not be versed in the English language will be taken by the beauty captured in the video. The video provides an excellent introduction as to what to expect when looking at filming, relocating or visiting. It shows the many amenities in our communities; visitors will be surprised as to what our rural areas have to offer. The video is a teaser to wanting to learn more about the area.
Results: The video has worked incredibly well according to compliments and feedback we received since its launch back in March. Investment and filming inquiries, in addition to talent, students and individuals that are interested for various reasons in our partnering communities have increased by 80%. As the initiative is catering to the film tourism industry, an increase of visitation has been felt this summer, with businesses reporting an increase of traffic between 10-15%. The Didsbury Museum noted that their number of visitors reached over 400, double from last year. The last film production in Didsbury injected approximately $600,000 into the community. While analytics, including social media numbers are important, the true impact and successes are measured in hard numbers such as increase in revenue, visitations and inquiries.
The video was in part funded by a grant and the biggest Challenge we encountered was the short turnaround time to satisfy the federal grant requirements and to get the Mountain View Film Office project completed. Therefore not all seasons were captured. The other challenge we experienced was the implementation of an analytics tool, to have more insight and measuring the views.
We are continuing to add photos/videos to our image library to keep the site up to date and relevant.
Video URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FB5RGe4upcQ&feature=sharec
