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February 28, 2011#

Mons Film Festival: Screen Tourism

OpenBrolly attended, spoke at and led a workshop at the Screen Tourism conference in Mons last week.

The industry days on film tourism were agreed to be successful, sharing best practice and demonstrating the emerging technologies.

A number of conclusions were drawn, not least that solutions must reflect the visitors’ needs and that engagement of the tourist, through social media, was the next step in developing a film tourism product. The importance of film goers understanding where a film was shot was illustrated – perhaps a condition of local funding and assistance could be prominence of the location in the credits.

OpenBrolly provided a review of the changes in technology: we are in the middle of a major transition to mobile devices, geographic and context described information. In addition, social media, has to be considered in any tourism product design and marketing strategy. New technologies, such as video delivery, QR codes and augmented reality offer exciting ways of delivering content but are not without their real-world constraints – such as mobile operator data caps and slow speeds in some areas.

OpenBrolly will continue to develop examples of film tourism solutions and David Sim is speaking again at Screentourism 11 – Friday 18th March 2011, The Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, London W1

January 27, 2011#

MovieMed (Film Tourism) 2011 – Ouarzazate in Morocco

Ouarzazate - MovieMed 2011
Right to left:
Dr Philip Long – Leeds Metropolitan Univ.
Geoff Wilcock – OpenBrolly
Emmanuel Duval – Atout France
Cristobal Jarillo, president of Morocco Mundi (Spain)

MovieMed is a network of countries surrounding the Mediterranean looking at film production and film tourism.

Geoff was asked to discuss Internet technology innovation in film tourism. He explained the need for map based information to deliver useable services to tourists, The increasing use of the smartphone was accelerating this change.

He discussed how information held by various partners could be combined, using the Internet and social networking, to deliver engaging tourism products and services.

October 27, 2010#

Major new iPhone App launched for UK’s largest national park

Visit Cairngorms

We are pleased to announce that the iPhone app for the Cairngorm National Park, developed by OpenBrolly, is now live. Press coverage is in this article.

This particular contract had an interesting set of technical challenges to overcome. There is no 3G mobile phone coverage and limited 2G coverage (i.e. no coverage in some places). The client wanted to be able to guide visitors to accommodation, attractions and restaurants across a huge geographic area and therefore location-relevant results were required. Up to date information is essential, particularly for special offers and events.

We addressed these challenges through load balancing data. Pre-loading all the data was not an option – it would rapidly become out of date and, in any case, the volume of data would have meant that the app would have to have been downloaded over WiFi (an Apple restriction) rather than anywhere with a mobile signal. Instead the app gradually populates with information, always looking for the latest information if it can get it.

You can download the application from the app store for free. Search for “Cairngorms”.

May 13, 2010#

MovieSite Mobile for iPhone at Cannes 2010

We are pleased to announce the demonstration of MovieSite Mobile at Cannes 2010. The App delivers real time information to people on the move in the Film and TV industry.

Screen agencies and film offices can plug it straight into their core information.

We will be available to meet in Cannes from Sunday 16th.