Destination video has one enemy: the montage. Drone over the skyline, slow-motion barbecue, a jazz trumpet, fireworks. Every city has that film and nobody remembers any of them. The tourism video that moves a booking is about one specific thing a visitor can do on Saturday.
The Kansas City angle
Kansas City's visitor economy runs through a handful of concrete decisions: a weekend around a Chiefs or Royals or Sporting KC game, a conference at Bartle Hall with a free evening, a family trip built around Union Station, the zoo and the museums, a food trip for barbecue and the Crossroads. Each of those is a search, and each search can have a film.
Attractions, districts, hotels and the destination organization itself all need the same thing: footage of a real day, in season, with real visitors in it. That footage is what a Kansas City crew can shoot across a year and a fly-in crew cannot.
One visitor itinerary, filmed as it happens
We would pick one itinerary and film it end to end with a real group: the Friday arrival at the hotel, the streetcar to the River Market, the Saturday game, the Sunday at the Nelson-Atkins. Two shoot days, small crew, no permits beyond the venues' own. The film is four minutes for the destination site and the conference bureau, cut into a thirty-second spot per stop.
The second shoot day, in a different season, is what turns it into a year of content instead of one video.
What to actually make
- An itinerary film — three to four minutes, one real trip, for the destination and the hotels that host it.
- Per-stop spots — thirty seconds each for the attractions, districts and restaurants in the itinerary.
- Meeting-planner cut — the same footage re-ordered for conference bureaus and hotel sales teams.
- Seasonal verticals — the same places in October and in April.
What it costs in Kansas City
For most of the businesses in this post the right starting point is the Brand Package at $10,000: two shoot days and a set of films built to run for a year. Destination work is almost always the two-day package because the season changes the footage. Every package is published on our brand film page, and the video production cost page explains what moves the number up or down. There is no travel fee anywhere in the metro, Overland Park to Lee's Summit to Lawrence.
How the shoot works
It is the same two people on every project, Josh and Brandon. We scope it on a call, write the shot list, show up with lights and a lav mic, and stay out of the way of your customers. A first cut lands in about two weeks with unlimited revisions after that, and you own every frame, including the raw footage on request.
If this is your business, the brand film page has the packages, the examples and the calendar link. If you are not sure which package fits, this is how we work and why the prices are on the site.