Exciting Venues are Open and COVID safe in Southern Nevada – Come Visit!

Exciting Venues are Open and COVID safe in Southern Nevada – Come Visit!

Recently we were pleased to be part of a federal grant to Travel Nevada awarded to the Las Vegas Territory organization, to produce marketing videos showcasing that venues and attractions in Southern Nevada from Mesquite to Laughlin, the “Las Vegas Territory”, are “ Fun, Open and COVID Safe”.

Southern Nevada is More than just the Las Vegas Strip

Often people think of Las Vegas as only the “strip”, however, it is a vast area of urban and rural attractions, unique experiences, and adventures that often both visitors and residents don’t know exist. The first goal of this project was to feature those types of experiences and let people know that Southern Nevada is open and ready for business.

COVID Safety Protocols Implemented

The second major goal was to capture the COVID safety protocols that these venues and experiences had implemented to provide a safe environment for guests and employees.

The message was “We are Open, We are Safe, Come Enjoy the Fun”

Unique experiences we produced videos for include visiting an actual gold mine in El Dorado Canyon, getting up close to lions and a giraffe that paints at the Lion Habitat Ranch in Henderson, kayaking down the Colorado River and camping out at Desert Adventures in Boulder City, riding super fast go-carts at the Las Vegas Mini Grand Prix, operating a backhoe at DigThis, visiting and sampling craft breweries at the Booze District in Henderson and so much more; 24 videos in all.

This is a PLAYLIST of what was produced.  First on the list is a 43-minute composite video of modules followed by 23 approximately 1-to-3-minute videos of the individual venues and attractions.

We are interested in your input on the videos and the project so feel free to comment. 

An Almost Impossible Time Frame!

Originally the project required completion by December 31st but ultimately to be available for a virtual trade show for travel and meeting planners, needed to be finished by December 3rd.

With the grant only awarded in the first week of November, this put a tremendous strain on determining the venues to be covered and developing logistics and scheduling in time.  Plus, with a drastic reduction (to only 20%) granted from what was requested in our proposal amount, compromises in what could be done

With little chance for profit, we still felt obligated to support the organization and all the venues and attractions struggling during the Pandemic and decided to move forward at a near break-even price point.

A volunteer member from Las Vegas Territory was designated to produce the venue selection and scheduling.  Because of the reach effort needed, that wasn’t completed till November 18th and we began location recording on the 19th.

Planning and Experience is Important

The key to the success of anything like this is planning, experience, and putting consistent systems in place.  With over 30 years of experience and knowledge of the area including many of the venues because of other LV Territory projects we’ve completed, we had an advantage over many other local production companies which helped to make this possible.

To start we selected and prepared the needed shooting equipment well before we started. That included the main camera for interviews with wireless microphones and a battery-powered hard drive recorder/monitor, several more smaller gimbal cameras and GoPros for what is called B-roll (footage of what the subject is talking about), battery-powered lighting, and a drone. Charging batteries the day before, getting recording media prepared, all of above plus packing everything took close to two days.

Next, we built a file system for moving files to three editing workstations and building the same directory system on each of them for consistency. As part of this, we built an archive system for all files combined on a hard drive. Next, we located content from prior Las Vegas Territory projects we had produced/might need and put that on the archive hard drive. We loaded the archive hard drive with files from the cameras as the interview days completed and copied those to the three workstations. Thus we were prepared for editing.

There were basic questions that each venue would be asked and once interviews started, we adapted to specifics of the venue and what the interviewee wanted to talk about.

Once editing began, three editors worked at the same time to turn out the individual segments with supervision ensuring consistency and speed.

In total, our effort was around 170 technician hours not counting supervision with probably another 40 hours for scheduling and logistics

We Did It!!!

With a schedule that batched shooting of numerous venues in the same days and a tremendous amount of effort and travel plus ultimately 3 editors completing modules simultaneously we were done in time and the virtual trade show was a success with our video featured. The videos will also be used for other purposes to market amazing experiences possible in the “Las Vegas Territory”

We remain dedicated to helping local Southern Nevada businesses succeed with our live production, virtual event production, and VR 360 capabilities

Please leave comments on your thoughts.

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2 Responses to “Exciting Venues are Open and COVID safe in Southern Nevada – Come Visit!”

  1. Richard and team Aardvark did an amazing job on a very short notice, not only for LVMGP, but for our other Territory members as well. Each video is well put together and contains just the right amount of information regarding our COVID safety protocols. Visitors have many many safe options for attractions and tours when visiting Las Vegas, and these videos are an excellent source of information. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

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