How to make your video drive Buyers crazy and turn them away
by Wayne Clark, The Reel Estate Network
Video on the web is now the in-thing for either promoting your business, reaching out to friends and relatives, or just promoting a listing. When it comes to your business, and attracting buyers, you would obviously want the best, but in some cases you can just drive them crazy and turn them away.
According to Television Weekly magazine, more and more viewers are switching from television and watching video on the web now. There is more original content, and the quality of the content is getting better all the time.
There are now dozens of video sites to upload and view videos, and yes, they are competitive. Many of them rely on traffic to their sites to generate income. To do this they all offer many different ways, and standards of uploading your video and converting it to a viewable media.
The Techniques
The first way is to shoot your video on your cell phone, or maybe use your daughters Hannah Montana camera you got her for Christmas. The format that you shoot your video in can make a huge difference. Most inexpensive digital cameras now will record the video in an mpeg format, and make it easy for you to upload it directly to YouTube. You can also use your own personal camcorder, edit it, make an mpeg, and upload it. Make sure it’s a 1-chip camera so you get lots of pinks and grey in your shots, those are my favorites. Use a camera with auto exposure so you get lots of color, and light shifting when you move the camera around. Also, make sure you don’t use a tripod, or god forbid, a steadicam, which would take away all the shakes, and bounces.
If you are going to have audio, use the on camera microphone, that’s what it’s for, to capture noise. Using a high quality microphone can be expensive, and no one cares about audio anyway. We all love to hear those loud background noises, camera noise, and those incredible echo effects. It takes a lot of training and experience to achieve those. If you decide to put some music on, make it boring and sleepy. You can search the web and find lots of computer sounding midi files to use. You could also use one of your favorite songs to spice it up, no one is going to get mad at you or sue you for copyright issues. Never purchase original music, or have someone compose something original, that is way too expensive. Having a professional voice over is only for companies who want to present an image of professionalism. Your buyers will understand that only the best can afford that.
Lets don’t use any lighting or reflectors, they only get in the way and are cumbersome. Again, I love those dark grey shots, with lots of dark shadows with no detail. Besides, that might mean that you might need to have someone help you.
Don't get creative! Sometimes its just easier to take a few snaphots on your digital camera, us a software program assemble them with a few wipes, and fades, and pretend that its a video.
Now above all let’s not focus. It only adds to the effect by keeping it soft. That way the viewers will not be able to see all of your mistakes.
Don't worry its not that hard. Anyone can shoot video, just like anyone can sell real estate.
Getting it on the web
Now that we have figured out how to save a lot of time and money by following these simple rules, let’s move on the hard part, getting it on to the web. Since there are a lot of video sites out there, let’s pick the most popular, YouTube. Set up an account with YouTube, it’s free, and start uploading your videos. After you upload your video, you will have to wait, as they need to re-encode it for FLV (flash video). Don’t forget to add the tags, these help viewers on YouTube find your video. We all know everyone is looking on YouTube for the latest listings and homes for sale, or Realtors giving out important information.
YouTube encodes your video to a format that is 320x240, converts the audio to mono, and uses a data rate of around 200 kbps. Now compare that with a DVD, which has a data rate of around 8 mbps. This makes it easier to achieve even a better video to drive your buyers crazy, as it can get pixilated, lose detail, and sound terrible. It gets even better when they stick that big YouTube logo in front; telling everyone that you’re in the same league as all those cute birthday parties, funny kitten movies, and skateboarders breaking their bones.
There are of course other video sites that do strive to produce extreme quality, such as Wellcomemat. Some sites like Crackle love those big HD videos. You don’t want to use these unless your video is of good quality. As they say, garbage in - garbage out, and they would be a waste of time. You also would have to know how to properly encode those videos so you get the best results, like embedding metadata and keywords right into the video itself. This way the search engines could find your videos independently. All this can take some work, as they are constantly re-writing white papers on the best formats of encoding and could take a lot of reading and research and even attending seminars. Then there is the software which sometimes can get a bit expensive. Imagine having a video on your website, or streaming all over the world, in near DVD quality, and no YouTube logo on it. Now that just might make some buyers watch, and that would suck. If someone accidentally found your video by doing a search, and they were across the country, or even halfway around the world, that might cause some problems for you. They might call you in the middle of the night, and we don’t want buyers like that.
Copyright 2008, The Reel Estate Network
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