INTRO SEGMENT

For all its beauty, the underwater world is typically one that gets omitted from destination marketing strategies, and professional quality underwater video content is usually quite scarce. Yet the underwater experiences and marine world around Costa Rica are some of the most unique in the world. Despite this, scuba diving operators in Costa Rica’s more remote areas and marine parks are struggling to sell out trips during their peak season, with many divers and ocean lovers being unaware of just how incredible Costa Rica is beneath the surface. With ocean based tourism becoming exponentially popular, and scuba diving certifications rising well over 1,000,000 each year, individual’s are becoming increasingly reliant on video content to inform and fuel their desire to travel, and the need for beautiful awe-inspiring underwater content is at an all time high.

This proposal is intending to fill this gap and address the general lack of professional quality underwater video content in Costa Rica, by promoting not only the natural world, underwater activities, and the incredible marine experiences surrounding Costa Rica, but also the operator options, and the various exploration styles within a series of promotional films.

This new proposed destination marketing piece will bring a fresh and exciting perspective portraying Costa Rica as the premier underwater scuba diving destination in the world, both as a means to experience awe-inspiring underwater encounters and as a base for exploring some of the best wildlife spectacles on offer. The promotional films will be designed to inspire international underwater and ocean based travel for both young adults, and middle aged ocean lovers.

The content produced from this film project could include;

• Producing a hero destination marketing film showcasing Costa Rica as the premier destination for underwater tourism, guiding scuba divers and snorkellers through a range of different awe-inspiring wildlife experiences; and

• Producing a series of standalone regional, experience and operator based films, showcasing each individual destination and its respective underwater activities within its own story, such that it can be used as a standalone promotional piece for each respective region, experience and operator (an example standalone destination marketing piece our team shot for Tourism Queensland is shown below).

PROJECT GOALS

• Create a series of awe-inspiring films showcasing Costa Rica as the premier destination for ocean travel. Films shot to portray the customers experience and perspective;

• Create content designed to increase awareness of the beauty and uniqueness of Costa Rica and its ocean based experiences;

• Create film content designed to be seamlessly integrated into Visit Costa Rica’s current marketing strategies;

• Capture beautiful visuals of Costa Rica’s individual destinations, accomodation and operator options, and ocean attractions above and below the water in full 4K;

• Create a library of 4K video content for use in future destination marketing campaigns;

• Promote international underwater and ocean based tourism to Costa Rica; and

• Create content designed for distribution across multiple online platforms and film to accomodate both full wide screen film viewing and social media cropping.

PROPOSED DESTINATIONS

We are sure you likely already have a range of operators and destinations you’ve been looking to shoot and promote, and we are more than happy to discuss those ideas with you! But for completeness, these are the ocean destinations and experiences that we are proposing to capture as part of this destination marketing campaign.

• Cocos Island. The remote Cocos Island National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre and a haven large pelagic wildlife and sharks. The waters around the Cocos Islands are some of the richest in the world, and it’s a scuba divers paradise, with the deep walls and currents bring a wide variety of massive marine life, Whale Sharks, pelagic species and sharks. The main attraction of the Cocos Islands are the schooling Hammerhead Sharks that swarm the island in the hundreds. It’s a spectacle that draws divers from all over the world to see. This destination is accessed by liveaboard dive boat only, offering divers the unique experience of living at sea while they explore one of the worlds best dive sites.

• Catalina Islands. These rocky volcanic outcrops are home to crystal clear waters and offer scuba divers fascinating underwater topography to explore. Large caves and natural arches encrusted with vibrant corals are home to a variety of bucket-list marine life including turtles, reef sharks, and dozens of Mobula and Devil Rays, and the massive Pacific Manta Ray.

• Cano Island Biological Reserve. The Cano Islands offer divers some world class dive sites, and the chance to dive with Manta Rays, Bull and Nurse Sharks, turtles, schooling fish and a range of other pelagic species. While wildlife is the main attraction, the island is also home to some of Costa Rica’s best and healthiest coral reefs.

• Bat Island. This dive site is not for the faint-hearted, and is a lesser known shark dive offering scuba divers the chance to dive with massive Bull Sharks. It’s located just off the mainland, and in addition to the sharks that reside around here, divers should expect to see massive schools of fish, and large numbers of pelagic species and rays.

• Tortuga Islands. These protected waters around the Tortuga Islands offer divers and snorkellers of all experience levels a myriad of marine life, clear water, and interesting rock formations. There’s additionally a number of shipwrecks here that are a big attraction for divers and snorkellers to explore.

• Gandoca Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge. This wildlife refuge is one of the best areas for snorkeling and scuba diving in Costa Rica. The regions tropical bays and lagoons offer a wide variety of bucket-list wildlife from turtles, manatees, and dolphins, and the often uncrowded bays are also home to a wide variety of fish life.

• The above destinations encompass the best of what Costa Rica has on offer for scuba divers and ocean lovers. These destinations are home to a range of unique wildlife experiences that draw ocean travellers to Costa Rica from all over the world. Should you be interested, there are also a wide variety of additional regions and sites in Costa Rica that also offer world class diving. We’d be more than happy building out a larger list of sites with you and your team should you be interested. Diving in Costa Rica is often done either by liveaboard dive boat, or from shore with travellers staying in dive resorts.

PROJECT FILMING DATES

The peak season for diving and filming Costa Rica is between May to November, which is when the schooling Hammerhead Sharks are found at the Cocos Islands, and there’s increased shark activity during this period throughout most of the other sites as well. The dry season however does bring more of the other pelagic wildlife close to shore.

Depending on the final deliverables, and the remoteness of some of the destinations, the estimated total time required on each location will vary. It is likely that we would need at least 3-4 days filming for each of the remote locations including travel time, allowing for a minimum of 2 days per dive site that we wish to feature. Noting that Cocos Island is only accessible by longer trips around 8-10 days long due to it’s remoteness. This will give us enough time to capture a range of underwater content, and maximise our chances of capturing unique and awe-inspiring underwater wildlife experiences, in addition to a range of contextual and narrative content from above the water. Depending on the total time spent on location, the estimated required time in post production is likely around 1.5 days per day spent filming. Finally, we operate with a small team of 3 to 4 people, including crew and talent to minimise disturbances to other visitors and are very confident shooting around ordinary trips and operator schedules.

SAMPLE PROJECT DELIVERABLES

• Produce a 4 to 5 minute guided film, showcasing and guiding scuba divers through some of the best diving destinations in Costa Rica, filmed from the customers perspective both above and below the water;

• Produce a hero 1 minute commercial film portraying Costa Rica as the premier destination for underwater travel, filmed from the customers perspective both above and below the water;

• Produce a series of 1-2 minute standalone films from each destination, showcasing the operators, and underwater experiences;

• Produce a short 30-45 second version of each full film designed to be displayed on social media channels;

• Produce a 4K selects reel featuring a large sample of the footage shot. Footage designed for use in future campaigns and film applications;

• Deliver a range of standalone shots cropped for social media; and

• Provide RAW footage and Premiere Pro files for use in future campaigns.

OUR COMMITMENT

Filmmaking is more than just our jobs, it’s our passion. We strive not only to meet the project brief, but to out perform ourselves and to continually push our filmmaking limits. What this means is you’ll get our absolute all on this project.

We only take on work that aligns with our core values, as this allows us to truely embrace the project and carry it out with a degree of passion and purpose that allows our projects to be the greatest success they can be.

WE CREATE VIDEOS THAT PAY FOR THEMSELVES

We don’t set out to just make beautiful videos, or even simply to tell a great story. We strive to combine both of these elements with a direct effort to increase visitation to our clients destination. We use our video to fill in gaps in existing destination marketing strategies and campaigns, and cover a content niche that’s so commonly omitted from these strategies.

Creating content, films and destination marketing packages takes a lot of investment. But how much worse is that investment if there is never a return on it! We see countless other production companies make this mistake over and over again, by making generic videos and essentially placing a new skin on content that already exists.

Let’s do something different.

We see video as an incredible opportunity to make a meaningful investment that has great returns if done correctly. By tackling a new niche and getting access to an entirely new world of content, i.e. the underwater world, this opens marketing doors allowing strategies to be implemented targeting an entirely new subset of potential travellers - ocean lovers.

Better yet, we are offering this in addition to topside content creation.

NEXT STEPS

The next step would be to set up a call and discuss any questions you may have, or adjust the proposal to better align with your specific marketing and content needs.