123 N Chester Street- Real Estate Tour

homestar_kevin

homestar_kevin

Well-known member
Here is a real estate video tour I shot Saturday and edited yesterday. 24 hour delivery.


Have been trying to get this going as a business for a few months now.


Shot on a t2i with a tokina 11-16, a Nikkor 50 1.4, LCW Fader ND


Still need to do a few more to get it perfect, but I was very happy this home was occupied as I had only done a model home up until now.


Any thoughts?








Category: Ad / Commercial






A tour of an occupied home in the Hampstead View development by Chesterfield Associates.




Located in Butcher's Hill, a neighborhood in Balitmore, MD.


 
That is some wobbly stabilizer work. That aside, stabilizers can be great transition shots from room to room, but don't forget about your tripod. 80-90% of what you need to do in a real state video can be done on a tripod, though other dramatic accessories like jibs and sliders can be useful as well.

A note about real estate videos: occupied homes rarely look good for camera and often require a whole lot of set design. The garage looked terrible, as did the "workout" room. Clean them up! Get bulky items out, and make them look invitingly furnished. The real estate company should be able to help with this. The problem is that you're trying to make small spaces look larger, so really big items that take up most of the space simply diminish the room. Plus, rooms that have random things scattered around (such as the garage) should be avoided or should be cleaned up to be presentable.

Remember: the point of a home tour, whether virtual or in person, is to allow the potential buyer to see themselves living there. This needs to be a "perfect world" scenario, and every detail should look furnished enough to look like a home but clean enough to allow the viewer to insert themselves into the space.

Now, other than that? Many of your edits were essentially jump cuts, and adding a cross-dissolve doesn't make it look better (example: the first two shots of the exterior). Cutting half those shots would help, and would also shorten the piece (3:00 was rather long for what this shows). I would not have started with stabilizer outside, but rather slider for decent movement: push in with a tilt up. No need to tilt up then back down.

Some of your close-ups don't help the piece at all, such as the detail of the front corner of the stove with towels and the sweep of the bathroom counter's lineup of lotions and soaps. With the bathroom, again it's all about set design: get rid of those bottles! Simplify the counter space and make it look inviting, not "lived-in". Same with the kitchen: I'd have taken most of the stuff off the counters. The liquor bottles may actually be a turn-off for some people... a bottle of wine subtly tucked into the corner is a little more classy and a little less off-putting. And brightly-colored bottles of anything are distracting, so use olive oil and balsamic vinegar with more muted labels (greens, burgundies, and browns). Bare walls in the bedroom are also less than "homey" and should have a couple of basic art pieces added for the video. And for the rooftop patio, I would do everything I can not to show the HVAC units on the patio. Shoot around them.

Some of your shots, by the way, were edited so quickly that the cross-dissolves on either end lasted longer than the actual clip, so it's a bit hard to see what's really going on.

I'd also drag a couple of lights along. Use them to bring up shadows (even a 300w on the second floor landing, shooting down the stair case, would have made the shot at 1:45 a bit warmer.

Last, the opening cards were too short for the amount of text on them. There was no time for reading all of the pertinent information.
 
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Happy to help.

One other thing: the 50mm doesn't serve you well for medium shots here. For such a small space, I wouldn't go tighter than 28mm. If you want to get tighter on details (such as a properly-dressed counter space, or trim work on cabinets/doors/mantle), then the 50mm can come into play.
 
Hey Kevin. I'm actually doing something like this in the Los Angeles area with a partner. We're focusing on Commercial properties, and high end residential. What stabilizer were you using?
 
What is the point of the titles, BTW? Will this video be shown in isolation from any text description? That's where the info should go, where it won't go off the screen at a particular moment in time.
 
Pyland said:
Hey Kevin. I'm actually doing something like this in the Los Angeles area with a partner. We're focusing on Commercial properties, and high end residential. What stabilizer were you using?
Click to expand...

I'm using the glidecam hd-1000, but am considering stepping up to the hd-2000. I've used it before and it seems to like the weights I'm using more than the 1000. Still undecided, just trying to get rid of the pendulum effect. Regardless, I certainly still need more practice to get my set up dialed in.

Gary Huff said:
What is the point of the titles, BTW? Will this video be shown in isolation from any text description? That's where the info should go, where it won't go off the screen at a particular moment in time.
Click to expand...

The video is shown and featured on sites where it's isolated from text description. It's featured on real estate listing sites in addition to the realtor's and developer's sites.
 
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