Check out my partner's post! TJ Hedges' has some of THE BEST pointers if you're looking to improve your shooting/editing skills.
Everyone has seen the virtual tour by now. You know, the one my friend Lane Bailey calls the typical "Powerpoint video." Great for content but unless your up at 2 a.m. and bored with buffy the vampire slayer your not going to sit through 7 minutes of watching this stuff. Of course the music will aid in curing your insomnia.
What makes great video? Content, content, content. The old addage is true.
In every listing there is something that is appealing to a potential buyer. The job of the video shooter and editor is to bring this out in an entertaining way. Because in many cases that job is preformed by the agent you are the expert in discovering what that "something" is.
That means that all there is left to provide is the entertainment portion.
How do we do this? Here are a couple of hints:
1. Make it short. 90 seconds to 2 minutes is plenty. While shooting remember to find items that are going to stay with the home. In the edit think in 5 to 6 second shots for a wide shot and 3 to 4 seconds for the tighter material.
2. Never, I repeat never use elevator music. Find stuff that people would actually listen to. Caution do not use copywritten material. This can lead to huge legal problems and fines you do not even want to think about. There are several options for quality royalty free music out there. So, get your google on and do a liitle search for royalty free music.
For further hints check out our video tutorial on this subject using the flip camera
http://www.wellcomemat.com/video/28E1FBCB43
Tara,
Another thank you for some more helpful information. I will be checking out TJ later today.
Glad to hear it, Don. I always learn something new from TJ...he is a wealth of knowledge in production!
Great, now I have to subscribe to TJ, too? Fine... I'll go do that. And I call them PowerPoints with funeral music.
Tara-thanks for pointing me over there...I subscribed to yours, but not TJ's!
Ya know, I just realized...you can be TJ too LOL!
Jeremy- Yep, I too, am "TJ"! But you'll get different info from the "other" TJ :-)
Lane- Thanks for the detail in regards to your description. That IS actually more accurate!
Hi Tara...Thanks for sharing here in the Rain..I just took my first Video this week, a waterfront scene in our City,Victoria BC. It Worked better than expected for a fist shoot, no audio(should have, but was not thinking), so I uploaded it to YouTube and there added music...well it sounded better than no audio. I'm using a Casio EXS880 with 8.1 Mega Pixel Camera with a Video Option, however it does not seem to have a pause button, so you guessed it, rather than shooting going down halls and stairs into rooms, I stopped and started which created several mini Video clips. Is there a easy to use editing software program to stitch my room shots or should I just buy a Flip Video...Help from Victoria BC, wish you were here to show me, or even better be my video company. Nobody is doing Video here for every listing, and certainly not Blogging them. I'm having success with my Blogging and see using video had an awesome tool to further set myself apart from other Realtors online.
Cheers, have a great Summer weekend!
Fred- I'll chime in here. Still cameras kind of provide a delema in the video realm. While they list 8.1 megapixels or such and such a resolution, no video that you will shoot with them will be above 72 dpi resolution. Even the consumer level HD cameras are really an illusion. For more info on that subject Christian Sterner from WellcomeMat posted a great article on this subject
http://realestatevideo.wellcomemat.com/2008/08/08/hd-video-marketing-scam/
Most of these cameras use a compression format (a funny way of making pictures fit on the camera,) that is not compatible with editing programs. The reason, They are designed primarily for still images. Video is just a marketing scheme.
As a result there are a whole lot of people out there like you looking for a solution where there is not an easy answer. But let me give you an easy way to move forward. The cheap way is the Flip Camera. It is the camera we are currently working with in our on line training. It is inexpensive and there are many solutions for editing. On the PC Adobe Premier, Sony Vegas and even windows media are solutions. On the Mac imovie, Final Cut Express or Pro, Adobe Premier and Avid Express can give you great capabilities.
The camera costs about $100 and you can pause it and use the onboard mic for capturing audio.
Any of the editing software above will give you the capability of adding music, just make sure that it is royalty free music that you have the rights to use for your video. Here is a site where you will find several options for music that you can obtain for free.
www.freeplaymusic.com
Hope this helps. Stick around for more training in coming days...