Lights, Camera, Action – Bath County Is Getting Ready For Its Closeup

Warm Springs, Va – Lights, Camera, Action – Bath County is getting ready for it’s close up. Bath will be part of a documentary series called Back Roads to History. Virginia Public Television produces the series and a documentary on Bath will be filmed this fall. Maggie Anderson is Bath County’s Tourism Director.

“I’m excited because it allows us to tell the story of Bath County from the historical perspective, but also allows us to entice tourists to our area by talking about the history and how it has created the community that we love so much” says Anderson. “I’m looking forward to finding the right story to tell.”

“We have such a rich history here whether it’s the natural beauty and the George Washington National Forest. We also have an interesting history through the development of our lodging facilities, whether it’s the Warm Springs Inn as the first courthouse, jail and judge’s chambers or The Homestead itself which is one of the loveliest and most well regarded resorts in the United States.”

Both Alleghany County and Highland County already have documentaries produced as part of the series. The success of the Highland video convinced Anderson to participate in this series.

“It has been the single most successful title in the series” says Anderson. “And talking to my cohort Carolyn Pohowski and how great a response they received to tourism and to visitation to the area as a result of folks looking at the video on PBS. It was the best way to sell this product to us.”

Bath’s documentary will debut on Virginia Public Broadcasting Stations in the spring.

“We’re basically making a mini-movie” says Anderson, “so we’ll start with the script. We’ll decide the critical pieces of information that we want to cover. We need to determine the visual. Some of them will be historical photos and some of it will be actual photography of the area.”

“We’re arranging for the producer to come and do aerial shots, probably from a helicopter but we’ll see, to get some of the beautiful vistas that we have here in our area. It’s going to be a 30 minute piece and believe it or not, hours of film need to be produced for a 30 minute production.”

In addition to airing on all Virginia PBS stations, in several guaranteed time slots, the documentary will also air on special Dish Network channels. And it will be available for purchase on DVD.

“I think this is going to be a wonderful vehicle to talk about the County of Bath, its history and it’s attractiveness to tourism in a very interesting way,” says Anderson. “We can’t make it a travelogue, it’s not a travelogue series. But I like the concept of taking our history which is what has created us and made this community that we are, sharing that with folks and having them respond to it and want to come here.”

The majority of the filming for the documentary will take place over the weekend of October eighth.

Story By

Heather Niday

Heather is our Program Director and Traffic Manager. She started with Allegheny Mountain Radio as a volunteer deejay. She then joined the AMR staff in February of 2007. Heather grew up in the Richmond, Virginia, area and now lives in Arbovale, West Virginia with her husband Chuck. Heather is a wonderful flute player, and choir director for Arbovale UMC. You can hear Heather along with Chuck on Tuesday nights from 6 to 8pm as they host two hours of jazz on Something Different.

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