Making and Selling a Travelogue (page 2)

Finding buyers for your tape must be your first consideration. Local subjects will interest local residents, and they'll buy tapes to send to friends or relatives (particularly those abroad). So when you cover a locality, your own or otherwise, make sure you include shots of people's homes.

Use your commentary to say things like, "This is Walnut Street in which the houses, built at the turn of the century, are set in large pleasant gardens," etc. This entices the owners of the houses to buy and generates some useful word-of-mouth advertising. For some free advertising, remember to encourage a local newspaper to attend the shooting. Stage a newsworthy event that will provide good copy or an interesting photograph.

The biggest buyers of travelogue tapes are those tourists who possess VCRs but don't own their own camcorders. You offer them a souvenir of their travels which will revive pleasant memories and give them something to show their friends.

To tap this market, display your tapes in hotel reception areas--if possible on the front desk. You can usually arrange this with the hotel owner; offering a small cut will often seal the deal. If possible, hang a wall poster showing a color photo-enlargement of your tape packaging.

Label the tape boxes attractively with a color picture on the front. For small quantities, try embellishing a master photograph with stick-down lettering, then re-photograph the finished artwork. You can reproduce the labels can as re-prints, or duplicate them on a color photocopier. Compare costs. For really professional work, you should have the labels commercially printed.

The great thing about making taped travelogues is that each tape sold brings the producer a profit without further work--a great inducement to break into the market! And the sales will continue for a long period if you're careful to exclude anything that dates the production.

Making travelogues, like most serious videomaking, should never be regarded as a one-person operation. To get the best results, it's essential that you undertake the project as a team--however small. This way the producer sheds part of the load while benefiting from other people's support and advice.

Some popular tourist attractions already have specific videos available, but the vast majority of sightseeing stops do not. Videomakers with the time, talent and persistence to tap into this growing niche will reap the rewards.

You could be one of them.

Bernard Wilkie, a Videomaker contributing editor, designed special effects for the BBC for over 25 years.

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