An ad campaign using original short films to highlight the sights and delights of Hot Springs started as a bit of extended education for one of Marketing Director Bill Solleder’s employees at Visit Hot Springs.
To give her more experience with film, Solleder got the employee a spot in Low Key Arts’ six-week Inception to Projection filmmaking program, led by Jennifer Gerber, the former executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.
Nonprofit Low Key Arts organizes the Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival and runs KOHS, a solar-powered community radio station.
After learning more about Inception to Projection, Solleder had an idea. “I asked if we could sponsor one of [Gerber’s] programs and give the students a prompt: Make a film to promote Hot Springs.”
Eight students in Gerber’s program ended up making short films that premiered at the Malco Theater in January and are a part of social media pushes in Dallas, Chicago and Memphis. Next, they’ll be screened next week at the 50th annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Jonesboro.
“We wanted to give a camera to eight filmmakers and let them tell a story about their community,” Gerber said. “We wanted to see it from the inside out, and that’s what we’ve done here.”
The youngest filmmaker was John Sullivan, a Hot Springs High School student. After a class focused on how to pitch film ideas, more than a dozen film students presented their ideas to Gerber, Solleder and two Little Rock advertising veterans, Waymack & Crew Director Dan Waymack and CJRW Creative Director Wade McCune. The panel chose eight films to pursue, and all of the students worked in various roles in all of the films’ production.
“It’s a wide variety,” Solleder said. “There’s comedy, there’s film noir, there’s one that’s a documentary, and some look more like traditional commercials.”
Ashley Missile’s “Ultimutt Vacation” has a computer-savvy dog named Pecan engineering a Hot Springs vacation for herself and her humans. Lexie Mosby’s “Experience the Wonder” includes just about all of Hot Springs’ attractions, from lakes to trails to pubs to casinos to Oaklawn. “Relax” by Jon Huggins depicts a surprisingly fond meeting between Al Capone and Bugs Moran in a Hot Springs hotel in 1929.
“Oh Romeo” by Sullivan and “Fill Up in Hot Springs” by Stacy Pendergrast portray Hot Springs’ mineral water as an elixir for girl and beast. “See Steve” by Ethan Ledesma tracks a missing groundhog who “needed a vacation, just like everybody else.” Kris Ellis’ “Path of Totality” centers on the coming solar eclipse, and “New Beginnings” by Christopher Millham touts a future of “endless possibilities.”
Solleder said he was unaware of any other destination marketing organization that had worked with an emerging filmmaking program to promote tourism. “It’s a fantastic story,” he said.
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