It’s usually either one or some of several technical reasons or internal organizational.

Internal Organizational

Many large realtor groups have their own technology department that doesn’t seem to be as concerned about the success of their individual agents as they are about their brand’s awareness factor. Brand awareness has a lot less impact on home buyers than it does for soft drink buyers or running shoe buyers. This leaves local realtors locked into a You Tube Branded Video Channel that is a lot more about promoting The Group, than it is helping the agent serve their clients.

Buying and selling a home is not at all about national branding. It’s location, location, location. And the local agent needs custom ability to manage local assets, not be pigeon-holed into a national profile.

As someone who has both bought and sold homes, and shot many realtor videos for showing, I can safely say that the public is no longer overly impressed with national branding when it doesn’t make sense. All they want is great customer service and the ability to either view as many homes as possible in their area to buy, or show their home to as many relevant buyers as possible. And, who does that better than an agent who works hard for them locally, using the best possible tools.

The best possible tool for managing real estate videos is a versatile video management application that was actually built with the small business in mind, not as an afterthought. And that brings us to the second half of this article.

Matters Technical

Even with the recent prolific increase of video into our society, most folks, both young and old, just haven’t been trained to shoot good video. And, the average age of current realtors doesn’t help the odds for good video to be employed in capturing the next batch of homes to be marketed on the web. So, many realtors (my opinion is that most realtors) find it difficult to even take the first step towards capturing homes on video. And for a good reason; there are a lot of new technical hurdles over which they need to .. hurl themselves.

- What type of camera?
- What other gear?
- How long should the video be?
- Will I need to and can I edit it after shooting?
- What about sound?
- Then, how do I get the video on the web?
- Will I be able to handle all of the videos that I will be generating in just the first quarter of the year?
- Is this expensive?

Setting aside the asset management application for a moment, there is a large difference in the professionally shot home or commercial property video, and one shot by a novice. There are several really good tips that can help the novice’s video have a greater impact, and progress the novice shooter into a realty video pro, in time. Here are six powerful tips;

1) Perspective. What could possibly make a house with low ceilings (these never show well compared to a taller roomed home) look even shorter” Shooting a video from your shoulder. When the video camera is held on a shoulder or at shoulder height, as opposed to a foot or two lower, the perspective magnifies the shorter rooms. Also, the camera should almost NEVER be zoomed all the way out. This can “FISH EYE” the lens perspective and creative the illusion of crooked walls and ceilings. Zoomed all the way out can be used for natural, outdoor landscape views, never close up structural; unless you are shooting Hobbit homes which are all about curves.

2) Lighting. Sufficient, complementing lighting when shooting indoors. For most situations you want enough light to show good detail and color without washing out important areas. Too much light in the wrong areas is very distracting as it turns super white into a bloom of nuclear brightness that is basically just wasted video real estate; no pun intended.

The color of the light is important also. Light always needs to be managed unless you are shooting in a light neutral area, like a non-windowed room, with white walls, floors and ceilings and perfectly balanced and placed area lighting; in other words, a photography studio or well-lit medical examination room. Open and close curtains for different views to greatly minimize the blinding effect of outdoor light and color coming through the window. Shooting at oblique angles to the window instead of directly at it can also help reduce video blindness when featuring a room’s interior.

3) Movement. Zooming in and out a lot is never a good idea. In fact, unless one is a pro, it should always be avoided. Even pros avoid zooming unless there is a specific reason for it. The zoom feature on any camera is mostly for setting up the shot, not for use during recording.

Fast pans, tilts and trucks should be avoided. Panning is the left/right movement of the camera as it moves on its center of axis in a horizontal arc, tilting is the up/down movement on a vertical arc, and trucking is moving the camera forward and back as if it were on wheels.

It’s best to use a tripod and execute still shots and very slow sweeps of a room. Humans experience larger areas in smaller vignettes of information. Shoot larger areas like you would decorate them; in smaller bights. This also creates a better impression of a home as it would be lived in.

4) Detail. Highlighting complimenting details like antique surfaced lighting, Italian tile, special trim molding, premium fixtures and counter tops turns a boring home into a featured joy to behold.

5) Sound. Don’t record any. It is completely unnecessary and creates way more work than it’s worth to produce clean, useful audio.

6) Leave them wanting more. If you show too much, there is no reason for them to actually see the house, and since nobody buys sight-unseen, you are setting yourself up for failure in the long term by reducing the number of good matches. The old fashioned truth of the test drive is still true today. If you want them to buy, they have to walk through the front door first. And, the best way to get them there is to only give them a taste during the preview stage. The home video view should never replace the walk through.

“Why not simply show them a photo, then?” Thank you for asking. The answer is, because the properly shot video is way more powerful than the photo in creating a thirst to actually be in the home. Humans want to touch that cool looking texture in the kitchen and stand over that down draft range, or stand in that awesome master bath, or look out of that window at the green sloping grassy hill overlooking the pond. This is accomplished far and away more easily with the properly shot video. The major difference between photo and video is movement. Photos don’t move through a room. And, if you are going to simply take stills and create movement with them in a video or animation program, it is actually simpler and less time consuming to just shoot the short video.

The bottom line on the video length is that a short, one or two minute video is way more powerful to the closing bottom line than is a 5 or 10 minute video. Larger homes with lots of extras shouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes long. Smaller homes should be about 30 seconds.

The brilliance of this less-is-better practice is many fold;

-Less storage space and up and download time for setup of the video collection every week

-Less time spent narrowing down The List of properties to show

-Less resources spent on video shooting and editing.

I obviously support hiring a pro to handle the video shooting end of things, and if you can find one who is familiar with web video and real estate, then you have found a precious commodity. The video pro should understand that they will not make the standard industrial rate of $1,000 a finished minute; but be paid after each sale of the video listed properties on an agreed upon amount. I suggest flat fee per unit based on the complexity of each shoot. I have a two tiered system for the 30 second video and the two minute video. Generally, the shorter video takes about 30 minutes to shoot and the longer ones can be up to a couple of hours.

The relationship is a two way street financially, just like any other service vendor agreement. The Real Estate Video Pro needs to understand that the realtor already has a lot coming out of that commission and can’t afford a Hollywood Producer’s salary. And the realtor has to understand that the Real Estate Video Pro also has to make a living on the time spent on each project. To me it is a matter that the video tech suffers in equal measure as the realtor does in a lite video market. If there are no properties moving, nobody makes any money. If there are properties moving, then there is lots of work and everybody is happy.

The Video Management Application

If there were a tool that allowed you to;

- choose exclusive control of where the video was shown; either your office or in the client’s home

- view voting and reporting results on each video

- replace, upload and take down videos regularly with only a few clicks

- control all your video assets from one inclusive hub, whether the videos were uploaded to YouTube or a Cloudfront server

- show videos on your custom branded site. Example; “Portland Remax Realty”

- make your videos secure so that others’ could not steal them

- post advertisements or promotional images and links

- completely customize the player to match the site

- categorize videos into relevant channels like price range, neighborhoods or regions, structure type, or cross reference as applicable

- mass distribute to multiple outlets with one click of the UPDATE button

- show 1 or 1,000 videos a month with one low price; $14.99.

would you be interested?

If you are serious about video, or just want to try it, you need to visit www.EZWebPlayer.com for a free trial of the best video management tool available, and the only one with the no limit, flat fee structure.

Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

BIO

Stu Marks is a contributing editor for several online forums including Adventure-Crew.com, Chicago Examiner and IncreaseSalesWithVideo.com. He has a fine arts degree from The Chicago Art Institute/Illinois Institute of Art at Schaumburg and specializes in business videos for the web. He began his career as a TV cameraman in southern Oregon in 1977 and has worked at network affiliates in both TV and radio on the west coast and in the Chicago market. He is an accomplished voice over talent, media designer, graphic artist and photographer. You can link up with Stu at www.linkedin.com/in/stumarksezweb

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