Sometimes a city looks its best from the air.
Orange County tourism marketers say drones tap true avian-level elevations to produce compelling footage for video uses, from social media and city promotions to cable TV travel shows and news broadcasts.
Destination marketing organizations, or DMOs, in Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Irvine have used drone footage for recently released videos.
Individual hotels are also getting into the aerial act, and Laguna Beach has an extended piece of about 11 minutes—most destination marketing videos are 30 seconds to 2 minutes long—produced by a private individual (see “Labor of Love” box, page 24).
Companies that produce drone video footage are often OC-based in what’s becoming a burgeoning bird’s eye-view industry.
Live Birds
Newport Beach & Co. runs TV programming, production and promotion efforts under its television unit and has used drones for events that include April’s Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race, the Wooden Boat Festival in June, and the Christmas Boat Parade, the last of which has also streamed live drone footage.
Chief Executive Gary Sherwin said drones are a natural for the city’s ocean-going events because nothing else can get that material; the DMO has its own drones and people to run them and has used them to market the city in many ways.
“It makes for great visuals when you can fly along the coast, zoom in on the Back Bay, and so on,” he said. “But let me emphasize that it’s not just ‘aerial video’—it has to be compelling content.”
Drone work has covered Hyatt Regency Newport Beach’s summer concert series (see related story, page 1) and the city’s Wine & Food Festival in late September (see related Q&A, page 14).
Drones give the latter event’s vendors, which number in the hundreds, greater impact than ground-level video alone, the group said.
Sherwin once flew a tiny recreational drone overhead and indoors during the group’s annual dinner one year to highlight its work in that area.
He’s board chairman of industry trade group Destination Marketing Association International and said the droning of destination marketing is a global trend.
“All over the world—they’re all going to this kind of technology.”
Future Look
Visit Anaheim released a video in April that used drones to present Anaheim Convention Center, Hilton Anaheim, Anaheim Marriott and Sheraton Park Hotel via video for corporate clients. The hotels combine for about 3,000 rooms, and the video notes the 10,000 rooms within a half-mile of the area (see related list, page 16); dining, shopping, nightlife and breweries; the House of Blues at the GardenWalk retail center; and the convention center-hotel campus’ Grand Plaza.
Senior Vice President of Marketing Charles Harris said the video is shot in 4K—four times the resolution of current HD displays.
The video cites the “1 million square feet” available at the convention center after a 200,000-square-foot expansion opens in September.
“It’s a fresh look and an update” on a citywide video Visit Anaheim produced in 2014.
Widened Horizons
The Visit Anaheim video is on the group’s YouTube channel. It recently had just 33 views, but that’s not the point. The focus is on clients who bring tens of thousands of visitors, and marketers plan to use such films in multiple media.
Visit Huntington Beach has new drone-based videos running in two ad campaigns, one that started this month to target leisure guests and one launched in March aimed at corporate clients. It also plans other uses.
“Footage can be shared with media,” said Chief Marketing Officer Susan Bryant Thomas.
“We house our b-roll here, so it’s more cost-effective for media outlets,” said Senior Digital Marketing Manager Jake Schultz.
B-roll is supplemental video, often in broad or generic strokes, used by broadcasters to introduce or transition between segments of news and other shows.
Schultz said that having the material also lets the DMO decide what gets used. “We know what the video is, and we can ensure its quality.”
A daytime talk show hosted by comedian Steve Harvey and a Travel Channel show hosted by Samantha Brown have used some of Visit Huntington Beach’s drone material.
The new video highlights hotels and resorts, the downtown, the beach and pier, and retail center Pacific City. Drones flew at four different times of day for variety.
Smaller Scale
Marketers Travel Costa Mesa and Destination Irvine used drone footage in standard marketing videos, and at least one OC hotel, Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point, has done drone work.
Travel Costa Mesa developed a piece last year with a quirky, syncopated sound that focused on retail, food and theater, the “three pillars” of its “City of the Arts” efforts. Footage shows Segerstrom Center for the Arts at night.
Destination Irvine’s three videos, with the slogan “The Center of Orange County,” were hosted by lifestyle blogger Jill Wallace and ran on CBS digital platforms in California and two other states, using drone video of Irvine Spectrum Center’s Giant Wheel at night, Jamboree Road, housing and wilderness areas.
Monarch Beach Resort produced the five-minute video “3 Perfect Days” after the formerly flagged property went independent last year. The resort said “drone footage was helpful in the storytelling” and “capturing … beautiful views.”
How-To
Drone work is getting easier.
“In the old days, you’d need a helicopter, a pilot and a photographer,” Thomas said. “It was very costly.”
Besides, said Clive Tollman, owner of Digipulse Video Production in Irvine, which shot Visit Huntington Beach’s footage, “‘bird’s-eye’ views are from the ground up to maybe 200 feet. Helicopters aren’t bird’s-eye views. Birds don’t fly that high.”
Mark Robinson, chief executive of Revolution Aviation in Newport Beach, which runs helicopters out of John Wayne Airport, noticed a shift away from helicopter video work about three years ago as people started to learn drones. Clients still want multiple cameras and higher altitudes—helicopter work—but he also offers drones.
The work requires special permitting for the airspace, and there are privacy issues to consider, but flying a camera-equipped drone “is just like shooting with any other camera,” Visit Huntington Beach’s Schultz said.
Costs vary based on video length, film format, voice talent or music rights, and editing and production.
“Production time is where the cost comes in,” Harris said. “You have to stitch everything together.”
Visit Huntington Beach got its video, which it plans to use through next year, for $28,000.
