Cheapest/Easiest way to get this look?

D

dust'n the callipygous

Well-known member
Here's the site: http://www.platinumhd.tv/

I'm currently a real estate photographer, and I'm looking to add video tours. That company above makes some of the best I've seen. I know they use combinations of 5Ds and 7Ds for all their shoots. Do you think they're setting up softboxes? They have a lot of light in most of these houses. I'm guessing a lot of the bulbs are switched to daylight balanced, but they must have some extra fill light in there as well.

Anyway, my initial thoughts are to bring a ton of daylight balanced bulbs, put them in all the sockets, then do two passes through the house (one panning rooms on a tripod, the other with a steadicam). It should take about 30 minutes on a smaller house. My only concerns are that I still won't have enough light, and that swapping all the bulbs will just be a huge hassle. What do you think these guys are using? Should I get some LED floods and bounce them off the walls? Or should I just white balance to the indoor lights, make sure the blinds are shut, and overexpose everything just a little bit so that it looks white and clean?

I'm trying to find a way to make these economically feasible. Brisbane (where these guys are from) is apparently the largest market in the world for real estate photos and video, so people are willing to pay more for it there. Around here, you have to go for volume, or you wind up broke. I don't know anyone offering video tours at more than $400, so this is usually a same-day-edit kind of deal. The low cost shows, too. They're usually pretty bad quality, with blown out windows, auto-exposure, terrible color casts, and poor composition. I just want to offer a much better product, but I don't think the market is ready to pay a big premium, so I still need to keep my costs and time down. Way down. We're talking $250 - $500 per house.

Any tips, recommendations, ideas on how they get their houses looking like they do? Maybe I just need to hire a guy with a swanky Australian accent to do my voiceovers
 
if the video is good... Your time is worth much more than 250/house. If a video helped me sell my 250000 or 500000 house_ a 1000 video woyld be worth it
 
Don't forget to use a wide angle lens. It'll show more of the room in the shot and make everything look bigger and more spread apart.
 
WildTrackDave said:
Don't forget to use a wide angle lens. It'll show more of the room in the shot and make everything look bigger and more spread apart.
Click to expand...

I could never forget that. I mostly just use two lenses when I shoot photos of houses. Most of the shots are from my tokina 11-16. I'll be using the same setup for video as well. So any verdict on how they get that look? Should I just bring bulbs and overexpose?

As far as pricing, I'm in the same predicament most freelancers are in. Should I have low rates to compete and offer a little bit better product, or should I offer a much better product at a higher price point and risk losing a large volume of customers? Maybe I should just go all out, that's probably what most people on here are going to recommend. As my pricing stands now, real estate video is definitely cheaper than my usual hourly rate.
 
When were just starting out as a company and brought in our first Red camera package a few years ago we dipped our toe into the commercial real estate market, but concentrating only on projects for the real estate developers. We low balled a few projects by coming in around the fifty to seventy five grand mark doing little five to seven minute promo videos until we built up enough of a name to get more lucrative television and feature work.

Up until then, developers had been bringing in folks from Toronto and Vancouver and paying over a hundred grand for the same work that I knew we could do for less and with higher production values even though most of everything could be shot in a weekend.
 
dust'n the callipygous said:
I could never forget that. I mostly just use two lenses when I shoot photos of houses. Most of the shots are from my tokina 11-16. I'll be using the same setup for video as well. So any verdict on how they get that look? Should I just bring bulbs and overexpose?
Click to expand...

I'd recommend a Photoflex softbox, the large dome type. I saw reference to a Photoflex "starlite" package for around $300, the box is a bit small, but may work for something less than a gazillion dollar house... or buy two packages...

The major thing to remember about the softbox is to get a 'continuous' light box, I've used the 'stobe' boxes for years, but I'd be reluctant to put more than a 2-300 watt bulb in it, which is what the strobe modeling light is...

I use to subscribe to the "Architectural Digest" magazine just to look at the pictures and figure out the lighting.

There is also Westcott which sells a line of softboxes, but despite their giving the Wife somee small sponsorship for some of her seminars, I don't know the line all that much, especially
in regard to continuous lighting and max wattage they can take.
 
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I'll look into those for sure. Craig, do you have any links to some of that footage? That's a lot of cash, definitely a different market than residential, and something I can look onto later on. I'd like to see what a $100k real commercial real estate bid looks like
 
dust'n the callipygous said:
I'll look into those for sure. Craig, do you have any links to some of that footage? That's a lot of cash, definitely a different market than residential, and something I can look onto later on. I'd like to see what a $100k real commercial real estate bid looks like
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Yes, I've still got links to clips of different rezzed down footage from that shoot. In fact I posted some of them on this site back when we were working on them.

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/cd1.html

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/d2.html

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/d1.html

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/cd2.html

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/d3.html

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/cu1.html

http://digitalcinemacenter.com/cu2.html

The final video was rezzed down to blu-ray for a touch screen system in their sales office.
 
Hmm

Hmm

Virtual tour videos (not to be confused with crappy picture "virtual tours" from back in the day) are where we started with my company, but we don't do real estate because it's just too low rent. We tried breaking into the high-end real estate market but our cheapest packages start at $1,600, and that's really cheap I think, but that market didn't really pan out.

This is an example for instance: http://jlbmedia.com/villabonita/

That is done with minimal lighting, just a crew of 2 people, though we usually would use 1 person on the cheapest package. The more expensive package would have a crew of 4 and jib, dolly, more lighting, more time spent at the property and in preparation, etc.
 
Looks to me like they are using a single big soft light of some type set behind and above the camera position for general fill. Possibly a fluorescent bank that they can change out lamps for color temp. Other than that, natural and practical lights. For a cheap fast solution I would use large china balls with high CRI photo grade CFL lamps hanging off of a C-stand.
 
Yea, I was going to say that in the shots I saw, there's a LOT of natural lighting, and maybe some fill. But there is a jib involved, steadicam, and maybe a slider or basic dolly of some kind. These people are spending real money to make these videos, and I would bet they are earning a nice paycheck to shoot them too.
 
I have a business that focuses on 'cinematic' virtual tours - http://cinematicwalkthroughs.com/. Business has slowed considerably since the market cooled off in 2008. My experience is that most agents are spending their own money on advertising (and have claim that they cannot 'write off' such expenses, as other businesses can). They area very comfortable with the $75 circle pictures tours that make most human beings feel more like vomiting than buying a house. Some see the value of better options.

Thankfully, where I live and do business, the houses range from $500k for a 'knockdown' to $8mil+. It has been my experience that higher end virtual tours simply cannot be justified on anything under $1million selling price.

Recently, I had a homeowner pull me aside on a tour and say that they went with this particular agent because of the video tours. Nice compliment. Thing is, I am not signed to any single agent. They could have had my services with any agent they went to.


Jason
 
What do you charge, if you don't mind me asking? I'm now thinking of basing mine of the list price of the property instead of just square footage. Your sample looks like all natural light, but i don't see too many issues with color casts from the tungsten bulbs inside (big windows really help). What do you do when you don't have so much natural light from big windows? Nice dolly shots too. I used a slider for the first time in my last one. I really need a full-on dolly like you had. I felt pretty limited with only the 3-foot range for anything other than close-ups.
 
Here's my first attempt:
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I AGREE


I had some color casts and a little too much camera shake. Other than that, how is it?
 
dust'n the callipygous said:
i guess i don't know how to embed a video. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4gujXapvyU
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In terms of lighting I think it seems pretty good. Nothing struck me as blowout, or blank blacks. Since the dominant color of the house seems to be 'yellow'... what can I say... maybe just a hair 'desat' on yellows...

On certain camera techniques...

For tracking shots where the film plane, lens, and background walls remained approximately parallel things where ok for me.

But on the ceiling to floor shots, or the slow pan in confined spaces, the change of the wall's parallels distracted me. The space clearly is cramped, and using the short focal length lens probably appropriate for stills, but with the movement, the distortion was 'really obvious' to me.

Perhaps less 'grand' movements, and just slight tracking into a room, or the like would mitigate that.

In another thread mention was made of using lenses that have slight tilt and displacement capability. While not a 'view camera' full swings, tilt, and lens/film displacement, such a lens may allow you to keep everything in parallel relationship, and just move the displaced lens 'down' or 'up', to show room height, rather than just using the tripod/hand held technique.

The other way to do that is to have a small crane which adjusts the camera's platform to maintain the parallel relationships.
 
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