Real Estate Filmmaking
Learn how to showcase property like a pro.
Join Karl and the team film on location in a stunning property with ocean views. As he works to make the property look its absolute best on video, Karl teaches you a host of useful tips and techniques to help you produce your own pro-quality real estate films.
You’ll cover essential equipment, including lights and modifiers, as well as things to consider in terms of camera settings, focal length, and exposure.
Staging the property to optimise its appeal is a key aspect of the process. Karl shows you how to remove unsightly clutter and add tasteful props to create occlusion and accentuate a home’s best features.
You’ll also learn how to plan your shoot to make the most of the available natural light at different times of day, what frame rate and lens to use, the value of drone footage, the importance of point of view, and much more.
Watch the stunning final edit below, or at the end of the class.
In this class:
- Real estate filmmaking techniques
- Equipment and props for real estate filmmaking
- Frame rates and lens choices for real estate filmmaking
- Lighting tips for filming interiors
- How to balance interior and exterior exposure
- Drone videography
- Removing unsightly clutter and reflections
If you enjoy this class, be sure to check out Video Camera Stabilisation, Aerial and Drone Filmmaking and Interview With Architectural Photographer Sean Conboy.
Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.
Comments
Hi Team,
Am very new to videography and the video has given me great insights. I am confident on the angles to shoot etc. Also understand to add the artificial lights but will have to experiment in using. But the real daunting part it the actual camera settings. Especially because you film outdoor and indoor in one shot. Would you be able to explain in more detail the exact settings with any filters, F stop, ISO, Focus and fps and shutter speed. Just as an overal insight. Thank you and truly appreciate the support. Thanks Priscilla
Hi Priscilla,
I was mainly shooting at around f8/f11 so I had sufficient depth of field and then before I filmed the shot I would move into the planned shot slightly and focus on the main area that needed to be sharp, as 90% of the shots are very wide the depth of field is good at those apertures, for the reveal style shots from behind walls or other foreground elements I would pre focus on the area that was being revealed and then move behind the wall or what ever item was in the foreground ready to do the reveal.
Filters wise I only used a polariser on a couple of outdoor shots to saturate up the sea and sky (you could use a grad filter outside if it was bright daylight and the sky was blowing out compared when getting the rest of the scene exposed correctly) indoors I don’t find filters are required.
Filming one shot going outdoor to indoor to keep the exposure in the ball park throughout, lighting is definitely the best option so you can light up inside to match the outside exposure, I was filming on a Sony a7s3 which has 10bit colour and in SLOG3 giving me a flat image with the more range and colour information to more easily pull up and down the highlights and shadows, so if the exposure is close enough for both indoor and outdoor you can adjust the grade in post production, key framing it so that it changes between indoor and outdoor gradually so its unnoticeable (I demonstrate this and all the other editing considerations in the ‘real estate walkthrough’ class for this video). In this I did find in a few shots the windows were still a bit blown out though so I masked just the windows to pull them down and keyframed the position of the masks so the grade adjustments for the window would stay locked on to the windows.
ISO I always aim to keep as low as possible or switch to the other native ISO if you camera has dual native ISO. With ISO it depends on your camera really if you need extra exposure and you have to use the ISO its just what you camera is capable of before it gets too noisy/ grainy, on the Sony A7S3 I wouldn’t want to go much higher than 1600 unless I was jumping up to the second native ISO of 12800. If you have literally no other option but to ramp it up and have grainy footage there are plugins (I use Neat Video) that can clean your footage up very well.
Regarding FPS and shutter; if you are filming in normal speed (not slow mo) you don’t want to go much high than double your frame rate, so being the UK I film everything at 25fps meaning I wouldn’t go higher than 1/50th really otherwise the footage will look unnatural and kind of jittery as there will be little or no motion blur (our eyes see with motion blur) and you 100% can’t go below your frame rate otherwise the footage will be jumpy and unusable, if you are filming in slow motion (which I do for quite a lot of shoots to help smooth out the movement and give a more elegant feel) as long as your shutter speed is higher than your frame rate you can go as high as you want really, you do not need motion blur on slow motion footage as it is not natural looking footage as we see the world anyway, with slow mo the higher the shutter speed the more crisp slow mo will look.
Hope this helps,
Ben