The Town of Lake Cowichan is one step closer to producing a promotional video for the Cowichan Lake area after a local film producer showed up at the town hall last week.
Producer Nick Versteeg, who helped orchestrate productions of ‘Once Upon a Day... Cowichan’ and ‘Resilience’ outlined his proposal to council at last Tuesday’s Finance and Administration Committee meeting.
The move comes after an instigation by former CVRD Area I (Youbou/Meade Creek) director Klaus Kuhn who presented the idea to council last month.
“I was approached by Klaus Kuhn to do something on the economic development of the Cowichan Lake area and a promotional video,” said Versteeg at the meeting. “We have an enormous amount of footage already shot at the lake from Resilience. The key would be to find a couple of business people, who have established themselves here, to tell a story.”
The video would likely be 10 minutes long.
“The video would show what the area has to offer in housing, schools, recreation and business opportunities, but just as importantly it will show the quality of life in the Cowichan Valley,” wrote Versteeg in his proposal. “We will film beautiful shots of the lake, town and surrounding area as well as a series of interviews with people living there. They can explain why they chose to live there and we also learn about other opportunities in the area.
“We suggest the modular video approach, which means creating a generic video first that can be modified to a variety of needs. One video segment could focus on housing, schools and amenities and another segment could focus on attracting business opportunities to the area.”
The project would cost $7,810 according to Versteeg.
Mayor Ross Forrest tabled the idea of getting corporate partners involved.
“I think a lot of people could benefit from this,” said the mayor at the meeting. “We’ll definitely look at it. Look at Klaus, him and his wife came down one weekend and bought a house on the lake.”
Versteeg was all for the mayor’s idea.
“Once Upon a Day only cost the CVRD $3,000 as we approached lots of businesses,” said Versteeg who confirmed that Once Upon a Day has received “165,000 hits all over the world.”
Superintendent Nagi Rizk asked of the time frame it would take to produce the video.
“That’s up to you,” said Versteeg. “I suggest we film in the summer. We need to make a plan of attack first, who to interview, what you would need and that all has to come from council. We have to identify what you would like for the area. If we filmed in the summer, the production would be ready by September.”
Coun. Bob Day wanted to know if the video would be made available for distribution by anybody.
“Absolutely,” said Versteeg in response to Day.
“Once you pay for it, you decide where it goes. The goal would be to get the message out there and you would be able to promote it via your website.”
Versteeg also confirmed that the video could be made in different languages or with subtitles, so it could be sent to countries all over the world.