C100: Just finished up my first real estate shoot - opinions please!

[dustylense]

Great work Dustylense! What was your main lens? Is that a Glidecam 4000 you're using? Why bother editing onsite? Is there a hurry? So you're doing one home per day which includes the stills and edit right?

How much are those homes going for? I've given up on real estate except for commercial developers. I've found realtors too cheap but I see that you've found some deep pocket ones.

Thanks

The long moving shots are the Defy G5. Mostly use my Canon 17 tilt shift. Edit onsite so I don't have to edit at home. Shoot a couple scenes, ingest, shoot two more rooms, ingest and start editing, shoot, ingest edit. That what when I get home I can finish it up in 1/4 the time. No hurry, just getting it done so I can move on to the next shoots. If it's a stills/video shoot I can do it all in one day, but usually two days to keep from breaking down. These homes are over $1 million.

 

[ejdge]

It's because your trying to deal with the real estate agents. The money is shooting new homes and dealing with the builders. Real estate agents in a hot to mild hot market don't even need a video as the home will sell itself. Builders however have to compete with each other and have more money.

Now you can provide a package tailored to real estate agents, but it going to have to be cheaper if you want to work more often. But getting in with a couple builders in your area will get you larger budgets. Try to get them to cost share with the interior designer and the architect as videos help their marketing departments as well. You package of above will sit far better with a builder than any real estate agent.

Great information and thanks for the direction! Mind if I ask how you got in with home builders for video work? Never even thought of that as the only people who have approached me are real estate agents. I would much rather work with builders as real estate agents seem extremely stingy and want a video for a ridiculously low price.

 

[dustylense]

Great information and thanks for the direction! Mind if I ask how you got in with home builders for video work? Never even thought of that as the only people who have approached me are real estate agents. I would much rather work with builders as real estate agents seem extremely stingy and want a video for a ridiculously low price.

I have been shooting stills for builders, architects, designers, ad agencies for 20 years. How did I get in? I knocked on the door. If they didn't answer, I knocked on the next door. Then I went back and knocked on the door again. Eventually somebody answers. It's kind of like picking up girls at a bar. You just gotta keep asking and eventually one will go out with you. No fear. Get a decent portfolio together and market it. Facebook them. A secret, I don't even have a website anymore. I use Facebook and other social media. This way my industry always sees what I'm doing with my update posts by being in their face. So when people ask me for my website, I direct them to my Facebook and tell them to add me. This way, I can reach out back to them and stay in their face every week. They find they have something to shoot, who will come to their minds? No fear. All they can say is "no thanks, not at this time" or "when can I get you booked". Just like meeting girls....

 

[nedcam]

Dustylense: I'm doing the same with LinkedIn, send my updates and my clients and prospects then see them.

The look of your videos is sharper than what I have been getting out of my C100. Is it because you're mainly using a prime? Are you bypassing the AVCHD codec and going to an onboard recorder? Anything special in post? Wow, that looks nice. Subject matter helps.

Iggy: I had tried to crack the real estate market a few times and the only way to do it is the way Dustylense is: Dealing with deep pockets. All clients can be divided into one of two categories: Those that are spending their own money and those that are spending the company's money. Real estate agents, even wealthy ones, look at the cost of a video as coming out of their commission. Developers of subdivisions are a different story, on a higher level, they're used to looking at proposals with many zeroes.

I learned this lesson in spades back in 2000. I was getting real good at QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality). I invested in the gear and software, you take 18 photos over 360 degrees on a special tripod head and then the software stitches them all together. The viewer online can take their cursors and actually pan around. I started doing Civil War battlefields, etc. and trying to sell them, basically melding my hobbies with making money. I went after the upper end real estate market and had some success with commercial developers and found how stingy the retail agents were, even in the affluent suburbs. Then iPix came out which took two photos and their software stitched it together. The realtors were paying freelancers $20 a shot, so a 10 room house would gain you a $200 day.

So good luck going after that market. I found them too cheap.