Million Dollar Listing in San Clemente, CA

Joined
Dec 19, 2013
Messages
11
Reaction score
0
I used my DJI Phantom to help film and edit an elaborate virtual tour for this million dollar listing in San Clemente. It's a little bumpy on some parts, but it's pretty good for the most part. Some feedback would be great from a group like this!

http://youtu.be/9ZvdAYUbMMg
 
Here is what I would do:


Get a tripod or mono-pod and do better pan shots.
Use still photos. After a while the tracking shots distract from what your intent is.
Stabilize the footage.
Focus on the items that make the house stand out from others in that area.


Don't be surprised if you get a letter from the alphabet gang saying you have to stop or pull this video. And lastly, after the house is sold I do hope you remove the video from the web. The video showing just about the entire house of the interior would give a would be robber a very good layout of the house and know where to go first.
 
#1 rule of photography: keep your lens clean at all times ;)

That's a neat house, but it's honestly not one that will benefit a lot from the kind of perspectives a Phantom can provide. Unfortunately there's a lot of blockage from the trees, and the lots are so tightly packed that you might do the listing a dis-service by making it look like the neighbors are within spitting distance. What might help too is a shot from farther away and higher that contains both the house and the beach in the shot, to give a sense of exactly how close it is. You might have to take that shot from 100ft and 1/4 mile away (depending on how wide the shot will need to be), but that would help drive home that point.

I'd also suggest getting a gimbal if you a looking at doing more real estate, and try to save the Phantom for shots that only it can provide (i.e. not for the ground-level stuff).
 
Agreed.

A learning point for the GoPro: you can't necessarily pick up on how 'cloudy' things are on mobile devices.

I will say this though - it's good to see how close the beach is. I do think the aerial provides some geographical context as to where the home is, which is extremely useful for home sellers.
 
SRT is right, this is in serious need of some sort of stabilizing. Be it a tripod, a gimbal or in post processing. The aerials wobble constantly and the walk through shots are even worse. Very distracting to watch.

It looks like this video had all of 5 minutes put into the editing process. The white balance was off in each clip, as was the contrast, and the hue/saturation. Not trying to sound like a jerk, just giving you an honest critique.

If it were me, I would reshoot the entire property if able. Keep the clips shorter as that will make it easier to edit and colour correct. Don't pan around so much either. Once you start panning around in that sort of environment you make it almost impossible to properly balance and correct the colours and contrast. If you do need a good panning shot, take a bunch of photos and merge them into a panorama. That way you can correct the single final image and turn it into a fluid looking video pan. It's a lot more work, but will pay off in quality.

It's a good first effort. Doing production photo or video work is a very steep learning curve. Keep at it!
 
My ego isn't invested in it. LOL No harm done to me.

These are all useful. A gymbal is definitely something I'm going to look into purchasing at some point.

Like I said before, the shots came out much shakier than before. It was mounted on a tri-pod - so I was very surprised it turned out the way it did. I guess I'll have to be more careful next time.
 
Ok good. Not everyone can take a hard critique of their work.... even if they asked for it lol.

If you plan on doing more handheld shots I would invest in a small SteadyCam mount. They make a few for the GoPro and cost as little as $100. If they're anything like their bigger SteadyCam cousins they probably take a little getting used to. But once you know how to use one, the result can be stunning.
 
Ultimately, I'd also like to get the GoPro Black Edition. I think having more frames per second might also contribute to the smoothness as well.
 
To be honest, if you get a gimbal then your Phantom can serve as a half-decent handheld stedi-cam on its own. Many gimbals (other than DJI's zenmuse) can be run without powering up the whole Phantom, and some such as the Feiyu gimbal even have a handle-mount option or two that you can buy separately.

I've used the Phantom as just a gimbal handle like that before, and while it's nothing like a purpose-built mount it still beats the heck out of no camera stabilization at all.
 
After watching it a few times here are a few more ideas.

1. Less is more. In selling a house, show the big items but not all of them. Kitchen, Living Room, Master Bedroom and Bathroom. This should be an executive overview, not a documentary.

2. Don't show everything, entice and tease your audience. You are creating bait, and you want your audience to bite. A true test is make the customer want to see more.. but make so that if they want to see more they will have to see the house in person. Its one thing to see the number of views on YouTube, but the true number is how many people show up to see the house.

3. Extend the time in post. Making a shot in slow motion gives the viewer more time to absorb what they are seeing. With all the shake in the frame the human eye gravitates to what stands out in the frame and the fast pan shots do not give the viewer the time to see the features of the home.

4. Keep the text clean, nothing fancy. Use the lower 3rd's or left screen to provide details while still showing the house. Overlaying on still shots for transitions would be my .02¢

I'm not a Realtor, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
 
OI Photography said:
To be honest, if you get a gimbal then your Phantom can serve as a half-decent handheld stedi-cam on its own. Many gimbals (other than DJI's zenmuse) can be run without powering up the whole Phantom, and some such as the Feiyu gimbal even have a handle-mount option or two that you can buy separately.

I've used the Phantom as just a gimbal handle like that before, and while it's nothing like a purpose-built mount it still beats the heck out of no camera stabilization at all.

Ha ha must look funny :D
 
Klaus said:
OI Photography said:
To be honest, if you get a gimbal then your Phantom can serve as a half-decent handheld stedi-cam on its own. Many gimbals (other than DJI's zenmuse) can be run without powering up the whole Phantom, and some such as the Feiyu gimbal even have a handle-mount option or two that you can buy separately.

I've used the Phantom as just a gimbal handle like that before, and while it's nothing like a purpose-built mount it still beats the heck out of no camera stabilization at all.

Ha ha must look funny :D

Sure does, I have to keep myself from making pew-pew noises when I do it.
 
You guys provide some very good feedback. I agree less is more especially with shots like this. Anyhow i did one a while back. The house sold for over $12 mill and they tore it down after the sale was final

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mm21poL ... g0HJvpYNiQ

I did not shoot the inside as i think using a Phantom for interior shots is overkill and not ideal.
 
That's a good video. Pretty amazing property, too.

I agree that sometimes less is more, especially as a means of teasing clients. I do kind of think that highlighting interior features in a video can serve as a proxy for someone unable to purchase the home from far away. That's the idea of a virtual tour.
 
AMazeika08 said:
I used my DJI Phantom to help film and edit an elaborate virtual tour for this million dollar listing in San Clemente. It's a little bumpy on some parts, but it's pretty good for the most part. Some feedback would be great from a group like this!

http://youtu.be/9ZvdAYUbMMg

I don't know how to use it, but there is something called "Warp Stabilizer" in Adobe Premier Pro that could help with the shakiness, it's really cool. Here is a demo video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-premiere-pro-cs6/warp-stabilizer/
 
(I am a professional photographer, and a significant portion of my income comes from architectural shoots for homes in this same price range.)

The advice I would give you is probably different than the advice I would give the realtor.

I think this house deserves still photos, with a pro camera and lights, for the interior. The distortion you get from a GoPro is distracting in tight interior spaces. Most of the realtors I shoot for want shots of all decent looking interior rooms, whether or not they choose to use them all in the listing.

Video walk-throughs and tours are getting to be more popular, but are usually done as an add-on and not used to replace the still photos. And, I think, would need to be done via Steadycam and higher quality video camera (e.g., dSLR or even Sony NEX) to be useful.

I think that brief video footage is best used to give the sense of what it is like to live there, as opposed to try and document the whole property. I think UAV aerial footage can be especially useful to capture the home in its environment. Flying from across the street, showing the house in the context of the neighborhood. If this house is close to the water, then the Phantom/GoPro combo can be especially useful to show that proximity, which you did do briefly at the end.

From that point of view, this shot would require two trips. Assuming that was around sunset when you shot it, you would need that light to illuminate the exterior of the house, but you would need to come back at sunrise to capture the scene from the house to the beach without having the sun blowout the lighting on the screen and silhouette the neighborhood.
 
ghinson said:
(I am a professional photographer, and a significant portion of my income comes from architectural shoots for homes in this same price range.)

The advice I would give you is probably different than the advice I would give the realtor.

I think this house deserves still photos, with a pro camera and lights, for the interior. The distortion you get from a GoPro is distracting in tight interior spaces. Most of the realtors I shoot for want shots of all decent looking interior rooms, whether or not they choose to use them all in the listing.

Video walk-throughs and tours are getting to be more popular, but are usually done as an add-on and not used to replace the still photos. And, I think, would need to be done via Steadycam and higher quality video camera (e.g., dSLR or even Sony NEX) to be useful.

I think that brief video footage is best used to give the sense of what it is like to live there, as opposed to try and document the whole property. I think UAV aerial footage can be especially useful to capture the home in its environment. Flying from across the street, showing the house in the context of the neighborhood. If this house is close to the water, then the Phantom/GoPro combo can be especially useful to show that proximity, which you did do briefly at the end.

From that point of view, this shot would require two trips. Assuming that was around sunset when you shot it, you would need that light to illuminate the exterior of the house, but you would need to come back at sunrise to capture the scene from the house to the beach without having the sun blowout the lighting on the screen and silhouette the neighborhood.

Hi Im also a professional Photographer (not Real Estate).

I totally agree in your good advice.
 

Recent Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,086
Messages
1,467,528
Members
104,965
Latest member
Fimaj