Don’t Slide Show Our Video
By WellcomeMat on Mar 14, 2008 in WellcomeMat
posted by Christian Sterner
I’ve recently seen a lot of videos that don’t take enough advantage of handheld/steadicam shots, and I have to admit disappointment. There is a time and place for tripods, but-when used as a crutch-tripods do massive injustice to video as a real estate sales tool. In short, pivots are very capable of making videos look like slide shows.
Are we being like scared American Idol contestants, so terrified to cut loose that we are doomed to failure, or are we here to prove our medium and tie the fragments of a home together? Don’t slide show our video!!
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On Mar 15, 2008, Dave Weiss said:
You’re so right, Christian.
One of the things we intentionally do in our videos is go hand-held without any stabilization technology, either.
It’s the NYPD Blue technique. Remember that TV show?
The result is that you get an authentic video that has an additional element of energy. Also, if you quicken up the pace of the video by cutting between various types of shots, you get a much better finished product without steadicam or tripod use.
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On Mar 15, 2008, WellcomeMat said:
It’s videos like yours, David, that make me proud to be part of the video revolution.
I cringe when I see tripod-ridden video tours. They render the medium impotent, and will serve as the most formidable argument against paying a premium for video tours. I don’t know if it is inexperience with a camera, or fear of looking like an amateur; but the tripods need to go whenever possible.
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On Mar 19, 2008, Dave Weiss said:
One problem the novice video producer has is trying to edit their piece as they shoot it. They try to make a video that is too perfect, and they try to do it one take. I say this from experience, because I did this exact thing until I learned from the pros on our production team.
Once you sit through the entire process of planning, shooting, and editing with us, you learn quickly that you can do all sorts of crazy things with your camera that you wouldn’t normally think of doing.
Zoom in, zoom out, rack through the focus (hard to do with a consumer grade camera, but doable to an extent if it’s all you have access to), tilt your camera on an angle a bit, even point it toward the sun a bit and pull away, or don’t even use the camera’s zoom - just walk toward your subject and stick your camera in their face or put the lens right up close to whatever your subject is. If you use a small hand held camera, simply extend your arm - it’s low tech zooming. but it looks great!
But the point is that you can take all sorts of shots, and even try multiple techniques for a single shot. Go ahead and use a tripod for a shot, then re-shoot it again without the tripod.
Tip: Don’t turn the camera off and on while shooting - start it and let her rip, unless your are breaking down or setting up a shot.
The reason for all of this? You’re going to edit down your 3-5 hours of video into a 3-4 minute finished product, and you’ll never know what cool little nuggets of video you might have missed if you just plopped your camera onto a tripod and “pre-edited” by pushing the record/pause button all the time.
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On Apr 2, 2008, The Real Estate-XChange said:
Dave,
You do learn a lot from watching a production/edit crew deliver a few products. I’m down in Virginia Beach/Chesapeake and can relate to the topic of this entry with painful examples. What kind of camera do you use to pick up your content?
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