2022
So Google sent a 4-person team to come and film! So many people have enquired how this came about, so here are the details.
One day in the New Year I received an e-mail from the Google Local Guides people, saying that they had seen that I was very active as a Local Guide, and they might like to talk to me a bit more about that. Could I give them a phone number to contact me?
It was a bit tricky to find a time when someone in California and someone in Europe were both awake, but we finally got together for a video chat, and spent 30 or more minutes talking about what I did and why. I was told that there was a shortlist of several locations and the beautiful town of Estepona in Southern Spain was on this shortlist. Now to wait!
After several months and a few more e-mail contacts, they finally decided that they would come, and they picked a date. That weekend was the weekend of the annual Romeria del Rocio - the first day of the Pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Dews, with a big procession in town with all the ladies - including me - in our frilly flamenca dresses.
So that was a good date to choose.
There was a team of four that came, for three nights, with what a video-keen friend of mine described as "Top notch gear". Here are two photos of them with their cameras and other equipment.
As you can see, they had a drone, which caused great excitement in the town!
They were a delightful team. Very competent, very professional, and just very nice people. As they walked round town all day and all evening, carrying their heavy equipment, people spoke to them and they always answered in a friendly way. Everyone was delighted to see the, they knew that they were filming the town as I had spread the word on social media.
Estepona is so pretty that they didn't know where to look to film the best views!
They interviewed loads of local people
They went to loads of places in the town
They filmed the procession
And the beach promenade
And we had a nice meal when it was all over
They then took all their film - there must have been 50 or 60 hours of it - back to Google for the final editing and production of the video - just 4 minutes long! How very clever to reduce all that footage to just that small amount.
Although the video concentrates on the photos that I have posted, I am actually more proud of my reviews, nearly 1,000 of them. And they mostly aren't just 5 or 6 lines, but very long, almost like magazine articles in fact, really giving people a taste of places that I visit, that I know, that I love.
Here is a link to my reviews and photos: https://goo.gl/kV74Yb
And here is the final polished video that Google came to Estepona to make:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTutOoRhubo
I hope that you enjoyed reading about my experience with the wonderful Google film crew, that you enjoy watching the video, and above all that you too continue to write helpful reviews and post beautiful pictures to help everybody to get to know this marvellous world that we live in!
Best wishes
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