I think these are great examples of what can be done with the Canon 5DMkII and Canon 7D.

Shortly after Scott’s request I was watching this interview with Vincent Laforet. Vincent’s comments about getting started really resonated with me (at 2:20 in this video). He says, “Keep it simple…It’s not about the gear it’s about learning how to sequence stuff together… learning to tell a story… the timing and how the clips live together. The best way to learn this is use your iPhone to get the video and iMovie to edit sequences together.” By the way if you think that Vincent’s comment about practicing on your iPhone is a bit wacky, take a look at this video that was completely shot and EDITED on the iPhone.

Vincent also talks about watching other’s video and dissecting it trying to understand what the shooter and editor has done to create the video. I’ve experienced this. Since I started shooting and editing video I started looking at movies in a totally different way. I love to analyze the clip lengths, transitions and how the clips are put together, how the story is being told and how the effects are being done.

So here’s my list of bare essentials for getting started creating real estate video:

1. Any one of the recent cameras that shoot video: 720p or 1080p (HD) is nice but I don’t think it is essential. The 640×480 480p format are very acceptable for web usage.
2. A tripod with a head that is made for video: You want one that pans silky smooth, something like a Slik U9000 video tripod. Regular tripod like you use for your still shots are not made to pan smoothly.
3. A video editing application like iMovie on the Mac or Windows Movie Maker on Windows: Both are free. There are tons of other video editing applications but either of these will get you started out just fine. These applications combine video clips with various transitions, trim clips, add and adjust an audio track and create title frames and overlays. They also allow you to add stills and control Ken Burns panning to some extent.
4. A video hosting site: YouTube is free and easy to use but some of your clients may think it has a chintzy “Walmart look and feel” because of the huge diverse subject matter the site is known for. Here’s an earlier post where I list many of the alternatives.
5. You’ll need plenty of harddrive space: Video generates lots of large files. If you don’t already have on you may want to get an external hard drive to keep your video files on.

With these four items you can embark on starting to practice. It takes a bunch of practice to create video like the examples I featured in the last video post.

I can understand why this is such a hot topic, even though almost everyone has video capability in their still camera these days, getting good results with real estate video is far from easy! It’s actually VERY difficult and takes skills very different than shooting stills. You have to tell a story with text or audio, you have to get good in focus video that doesn’t shake and you have to edit the whole thing together with pleasant transitions and audio for an audience that is used to seeing 10 or more hours a week of professional top quality video.

I want to expand a bit on John Nilsson’s example and give a bunch other examples of what Realtors and real estate photographers that are doing with real estate video:

1. Ty Matthau, Louisville, KY
2. John Quarles, Birmingham, AL
3. Fred Light, Nashua, NH
4. Saint Jean Laurent, Antibes, France
5. Tony Meier, Redmond, WA
6. Allan Mackenzie, Brisbane, AU
7. Stone Home Photo, Toronto, CA
8. Charlie Dresen, Steamboat Springs, CO
9. Brett Clements, Brisbane, AU
10. Quentin Bacon, San Francisco, CA
11. Rhett and Link

The bottom line is that even though putting together a strong video is challenging, more and more photographers are learning video skills and applying it to marketing real estate and getting great results. Doing video isn’t for everyone but when done well it can be a huge benefit to marketing a home.

John uses a 5DMkII and combines the stills, video  and sound track with iMovie on the Mac. He is in the process of getting a voice-over sound track done for this. This particular version is not in HD because John was having trouble getting iMovie to upload in 720p. While 720p would be a little crisper than this 480p version this version will probably be faster loading for people that don’t have a really high bandwidth Internet connection.

I think John’s combination of video and stills with background music is a great example of what you can do to market a property with just the simple basics. Notice that much of the video is selling the neighborhood and area as much as the particular property. Also, video is used sparingly and just where there is some movement to capture.

Thanks John for letting me share your video!

Brett’s comment is worth highlighting. Brett said:

“To date, we’ve produced over 6,000 real estate videos in our little corner of Queensland alone and we have a new Crew just starting up in Miami, Florida. The difference between the two markets is, in Australia, VPA (vendor Paid Advertising) is well-established. This means there is ’slightly’ more money to go around. The advent of technology like the 5DMII means we can bring two skill sets to the table, simultaneously – cinematography and photography, delivering more bang for the buck. Providing you don’t go overboard and launch full HD sized 1920 x 1080 files, I find video over the Internet – even with third world Australian speeds – more than acceptable. I certainly don’t go rushing home to watch a slide show on my TV. The role of video in property will change. I see a blend of both arts. There are scenes where video kills. Like. Anything that moves. And there are other scenes which demand the power of photography in terms of flash/image blend/HDR etc. Like print working with other forms of media, there is a time and a place for everything. Nothing will ever kill the simple beauty of a well-framed photograph that captures the moment. And I doubt nothing will ever convey the power of an F18 taking off than cinematography.”

Well said Brett! I think this approach of using a blend of the best of both still and video reflects the growing popularity of creating videos that mix both stills and video that I discussed last week.

Brett’s platinumHD.tv top 10 page has a good selection of “propvids” that illustrate the level of work that Brett and his crews do. Even though Brett says opportunities to shoot this kind of video, even on the Australian Gold Coast have decreased in the last couple of years, my all time favorite property video is the video on Brett’s top 10 page called “The Penthouse at Reflection Tower II”. If you can’t find it on the site there’s a youtube version here but it’s not HD. An interesting thing about this video, besides the amazing shots and production, is that Kristine Lehmann, the lady appearing in this video, was was the actual listing agent (this property was for sale two years ago or more) for this property! She’s not an actor. You rarely find this talented listing agents!

You can create a YouTube video from just a bunch of still photos. Also, you can mix stills and video. This is an example video I did of my neighbors solar panel installation to get some attention on our neighborhood web site. This is not done to sell a home but the concepts are the same. In this video I mixed text frames, still photos shot with my 5D MKII, time-lapse video shot with my Canon G9 and HD video clips shot with my 5D MKII and then put in a audio track. There is no reason you have to have any video included to do this but you can if you want.

Since the my HOA has been wining about how “terrible” solar panels look, my objective with this video was to show the home before the solar panels were installed, show a short sequence of installing the panels and then show the home at the end of the installation. You can hardly tell the difference visually. I wanted to document this with a short, light video.

So how do you create a YouTube video? There are now a bunch of ways to do this:

1. iMovie on the Mac: This is what I used for the example above. iMovie comes with the Mac and is easy to use. You just drag the stills and video into iMovie and then set the transitions and length of time you want each still image on the screen. Then when you are finished iMovie uploads the video straight to YouTube.
2. Aperture on the Mac: Aperture works much like iMovie. You can mix stills and video and audio, then export as a movie and them upload to YouTube.
3. Lightroom on Mac or PC: With Lightroom, you can export a still image slide show and then upload the uploaded file to YouTube. Lightroom also allows you to add a audio track and has some pretty cool features to set the slide transitions so the slideshow matches the audio track exactly.
4. Windows Movie Maker: This is a free download for Windows XP and Windows 7. I’ve not used this extensively but WMM seems to do most of what iMovie does.
5. Picasa for Mac or PC: Picasa has some editing features but is pretty weak in the editing department.
6. Fotomagico on the Mac: This has some pretty amazing features!
7. Proshow Gold on PC: This is also a very popular and very powerful way to create videos.

The point of doing a video version of a still photo slide show is mostly to have a few minutes of video that you can upload to YouTube. Although it’s not all that high a quality (you can upload HD video to YouTube) compared to Flash slide shows, but it can be seen on any device and it’s away to get more attention. Some agents want to have a YouTube video of their listing. It’s pretty quick and easy and if done well will really impress you clients.

My wife (a 25 year Realtor) and I were viewing Quentin’s video and the counter-point, red-neck real estate video that Scott sites and commenting on the fact that with Quentin’s life-style video there is really nothing of any significance that the Realtor can add by being in the video talking. Her insight was that the reason you DON’T want the Realtor in the video talking is you want the potential buyer to make their own personal interpretation of what they see in the video. Marketing a property is about getting the potential buyer to project or visualize themselves in the property. Quentin’s life-style approach with simply great images and a light audio track is an effective way of doing exactly that. A Realtor in the video pointing out that “this is the kitchen” is a total distraction from what you want to be doing with marketing.

Thanks Scott for the outstanding post and examples!

My answer was, “The market for real estate video is, I think, large. The problem is that it’s more difficult to shoot video   than shooting stills. You need some special equipment and there is a lot to learn when you start shooting video. You need special editing software and there are hosting considerations. There are only a relative handful of real estate photographers that do it now but those that do it well and market it well are getting business.”

This is my take from talking to a lot of real estate photographers and agents and looking what’s being done on the multiple and on agent’s sites. I’d like to hear what everyone thinks and get a feel for how much video is being shot.

From what I see agents eat it up when it’s available and marketed well. What do you think? ]]> http://photographyforrealestate.net/2010/02/23/what-is-the-market-for-real-estate-video-how-many-are-shooting-video/feed/ 39 http://photographyforrealestate.net/2010/02/02/a-knockout-time-lapse-video-of-vancouver-bc/ http://photographyforrealestate.net/2010/02/02/a-knockout-time-lapse-video-of-vancouver-bc/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:11:38 +0000 larry http://photographyforrealestate.net/?p=4103 Thanks to David Lenhert for sending me this link to a beautifully done time-lapse by the David and Dan Newcomb  and the Interlife Project, of Vancover, BC.

Vancouver is a beautiful city and is coming to life right now because the 2010 Winter Olympics that start Feb 12 in Vancouver and Whistler, which is the  my all time favorite place to ski. This video is full of all the iconic shots of Vancouver. Be sure to watch it in full-screen 1080p HD for maximum impact!

I am particularly aware of the epic amount of work that went into a 4:57 minute time-lapse like this since I’ve been shooting a lot of time-lapse video recently. I’m still working at creating time-lapse with no flicker or jerkiness. These kind of time-lapse sequences are taken with a still camera shooting a frame every 2 seconds or so. So 5 minutes of 24 FPS video is a compilation of about 7200 still frames. I’ve been using the Beta Lightroom 3.0 to process my time-lapse sequences. Lightroom 3.0 has a feature that you can select all the images in a sequence that you want in a video and it will create a MP4 video of the whole sequence. Lightroom is a natural place to create time-lapse video since you are able to do image adjustments and sync them to every image in a sequence before creating the video.

This little commercial is a kick, but it’s just the “tip of the iceberg”. This commercial was done by Rhett and Link over at ilovelocalcommercials.com. These two guys show the power of a video camera and great ideas.

I’m sure there is an opportunity here to adapt this simple style to selling real estate or promoting a real estate agent.

Thanks to Michael at naturalight.us for the link to this video.