The more we have looked at film tourism the more we have become convinced that it should become work integral to screen agencies and filmcommissions. Doing it that way means additional work load is minimal but the benefits large.

What are the benefits?

The benefits can be enormous, particularly for non-commercial agencies. Creating a wider relationship with businesses outside of the creative sector has a lot of ‘political’ benefit. A wider range of businesses, and  more of them, understand the value of the service. Also, you can form better relationships with tourism oriented businesses and agencies who often also have significant influence.

Oh, and of course there is the economic impact which is easier to measure if you have relationships with the tourism sector.

We, at OpenBrolly, continue to develop new ways of delivering valuable information and services for film tourism as part of an integrated service.

Useful links:

Kent Film Office Movie Map

MovieSite demo Movie Map

The Independent article

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

The Kent Film Office and Screen South hosted a reception to celebrate the premier of ‘The Calling’ starring Brenda Blethyn. Brenda congratulated Gabrielle Lindemann and her team at Kent in their work; we were please to hear her mention the MovieSite databases.

We, at Open Brolly, had the opportunity to discuss our model for a sustainable and quality Tourism product using our work with MovieSite and Social Media.

Northern Exposure

On Monday 8th June Northern Exposure went live. It is the combined crew and services database for Northern Film and Media, North West Vision and Media and Screen Yorkshire. Open Brolly have worked with the three agencies to harmonise their service over the winter and spring.