(Deep Breath) Fear Of Real Estate Video Production, You Have To Face The Facts.

Joan ... Discontinued Flip cameras not good news. The camera is too small for me to feel balanced and fluid in pans, zooms in and out. Forget you being on camera and stay behind with just your voice making the appearance so your hair can look like a rats nest and its okay. A standard image of your with your logo, contact information can be a slide heading in and out so that takes care of powdering your nose. Let the property and local event be showcased and not a live you in the beginning. You are started, have the video bike with the training wheels and using it is what counts. Video of a condo is way way different than covering a 400 acre Maine farm with water frontage though and you can not zip through it in two minutes if I want my buyer from 8 hours to get enough to want to actually gas up and come walk it for real. Bigger bait with larger acreages, farms, storefronts. Will check Jessica Edwards out!

P&W ... Here here for Kenny. He is great but way way over used. Glad you checked in. The common theme of being nervous to be on camera is easily cured. Don't be. Put the property and the local video event front and center and again, a slide with the same mug shot of the two of you with contact heading in and out with a still, slide and then you are not sweating, fidgeting and wondering what to do with your hands if it is not natural. You are right about the hot tub scenario but SADE, Al Green, Marvin would get my vote for background mood creation under the stars by a lake in that hot tub.

Cal ... Thank you! There are many areas I come up short but video with background in broadcasting is something I only got better at with sheer numbers of trial and error. Close to 500 videos working their heart out is how you polish the rough edges, get rid of the broken glass rugged shards surrounding the final creation. Early video will be awful, will take longer. But if you stick with it, many don't and you shine.

Ginny ... Your videos would have your unique personality and your real estate buyers could put a voice to the marketing you do, see you laugh or roll your eyes on whatever you are bring them today to feast on.

Jennifer ... In Active Rain you are not alone, I will help you and send me an email with problems or when you need some suggestions. Steve did and he is available to help too. We all go through the same growing pain, learning curve and have to reach out, ask for help. Not our nature but saves boatloads of time, frustration.

Don ... You can buy a video camera for $200 that will work fine. Or you can tripod the point and shoot and thing short edits. Editing is the biggest chunk of new information to swallow and to develop a technique. Power Director served me well for years. The software is $60 unless you go whole hog with the Sony Vegas full blown suite which you will never use, need and that has a vertical 90 degree learning curve unless you have been around a video editing console before and have the training.

Steve ... I think over worked, to the max pressed to the wall stress agents, brokers can groan and think not one more task to my over booked day. Until they realize wait a minute, a well done home tour video means more folks tour it on line, more exposure which means more, quicker sales. So the time pays big dividends and pull back on other time suckers not getting results. What works in one market is not the norm in another so ten two letter words. "If it is to be, it is up to me" to figure out what works, is fun and helpful in the long run. If nothing else do a who are you video with one view tripod hit the record button. No one else can tell your story better and there is no script to learn when it is you. Who are you is the first start. We had a My Piece of Maine series. Old, not the resolution we use not but bandwidth availability a few years back was a little more frugal and this was fine at the time. Time to do a new one. Your next video should be a FAQ about your area, or dispelling myths that come up in email, phone and office conversations a lot. Again, addressing many with just one person is possible now. We all have outdoor recess voices that are loud, far reaching with our zillion watt blogging platform. The littliest of agencies have the same playing field now and no money needed for multiple media buys to achieve it. Just blog, and like voting in Chicago, blog often slanted to search engine robots, spiders that feast on your message, strong steady signal.

Pacita .... You have to learn to swim in the deep end. (Buddy system) I'll help you. There you go, you're doing it..GOOD! No it is as simple as that. The number one reason real estate agents, brokers, REALTORS tense up and fear is because they think they have so little time to devote to it. And many of our tasks used to be there, done, chop chop. You could do a list of ten things in twenty minutes with three quick emails here (CC'ed to others to save time) and along the way to the showing you hit the post office, took two more images to replace snow ones etc. Once you edit you can make the same easy snap snap done maneuvers, dance steps. But istart looking at hey, this video is an open house saving the buyers money, time, gas. And the buyer can get in to more places, and if you do a better job with the imagery, video, copy, maps, aerials and community promotion, your creations are going to shine. Very brightly out of the rest of the herd. These videos save time... everyones. Your's included.

So start small. You have a standard open and extro for all your property listing pieces. Before before you venture in to those you start those point and shoots of a few snippet community pieces. You are at the Boston Marathon or Bruins hockey game and live in New England. You shoot three seconds of an opening shot of the sign for the Marathon or the overhead clock for a Bruins home series game. You have a tripod unless you can be awfully steady or you use a monopod, have a bleacher railing to steady the shot. The next shot is a five second pan (sweep) of action, running or during a hockey game and the bench of the two teams each, then another loop of action sandwiched between. You capture a few but not know ing which ones you will use until you watch with the cutting knife in the editing room. You transition a few and end with a shot of the scoreboard. Just natural sound, and bag the yack yack yack real estate agent's play by play for this one. You are just saving the viewer, listener a seat next to you at the event. You transported them to the event for a short time. Beam them over. Energize Scotty in the transporter room.

The Marathon the same way, you show the sea of people, the viewer hears the sounds of the city along the course,  maybe a close up shot as runners head by your camera advantage. Or you climbed a tree, are on the back of a pickup bed or on top of a camper that has the ladder built in to get there. It's the shot perspective that helps to deliver the punch. You shoot a long shot of the twisting snake like cluster of runners bobbing up and down. Cut to a shot of the Boston cop on horse or get creative with a close up of the horses head and pull back to see the white helmeted officer holding the reins, standing, watching over the runners. The horse snorts, paws at the pavement or jerks his head. The viewer knows this is not a neat still shot, it is 30 shots or more per second with natural sound so you see a life horse, hear him and he is an accessory to the video event. What you or I would see if at the event and swerving our head around to notice things. These shots all build the video. It could be a 30 second total video.

Then you catch the bug to create more and your next one will have this element added that you did not even consider in the last one. It becomes fun not a chore to create the videos. You stop fighting and pulling back on the reins. Start with see dick see jane community ones, not see the agent, broker, REALTOR go on and on because that is the only kind of video that many think is quick easy and promotes. Or that someone would want to watch. They don't and the numbers of the views so this. Or lack of SEO applied too.

The buyers get tired of yacking broker unless you have the audio in the background of video that is more interesting than you or I to gawk at. I have a face for radio I guess is the expression. I like Sony video cameras, Sony Vegas software but cyberlink power director is neat too and what we did the first part of the 500 video series with. Anything but movie maker that comes on a PC. Wrote a great AR blog post, but never got the gold star, grab your own Amber Diamond Award. Post it.

Phil .... Your welcome. Missy Caulk commented on another video blog that a video she labored over took four hours and concern on time involved. Your first videos like early anything you do is time consuming because you don't know your way around the process and learn one by one the steps to streamline the process.

Brenda ... If you can plane the learning curve, make real estate videos that are worth watching, you will actually save time put in to old ways the real estate buyer is not herding to as all there is any more. The buyer wants the show and tell live video, not read read read.

Bruce ... Marketing is the real fire I like to stand next to. Deliver of the local information, the property listings and way way reined back branding to not turn off the real estate buyer. The buyer wants his on line experience in lots of ways, needs many types and breakdown of properties, etc. More complex but the video, real show and tell video hits the list, one by one of what they want, will get. Camera, as long as not a one size fits all point and shoot does not have to be pricey. Get an older Sony where the price is not paying for the new technology and start shooting. Start with local events first and get your video sea legs. Ebay has many in your price range that are hardly used or a foreclosed store that "repackaged" the brand new item but has to sell it as "reconditioned".

Jon ... Longer is needed to make a person drive or fly many states and time zones away too! To do the property and area event justice! Natural sound, easy going delivery and real life full motion video that is edited to keep the pace and avoid boredom or jitters.

Toni ... Thanks for stopping in and together we can get you up to speed with more. Video is the star media player that buyers want, sellers need.

And how long the do it yourself real estate video should be?

Good going Gayle Rich-Boxman Fishhawk Lake Realtor (503)755-2905 ! Sony Vegas or Cyber Director, alternate but there are a slew that work depending on the learning curve time devoted. Remember to register your real estate video drone!