RSSThe Lowdown on High Quality Videos
By Ryan Ward | August 23, 2011
If you aren’t making videos work for you yet, you should be! It’s out of its infancy and into mainstream and if you’re like most of the agents who come across my blog here researching video, you are probably at least somewhat of a DIYer. You are in the right place.
Here is one I love from some guys in Australia:
I’ve been tinkering with video for years and I’m pretty confident it’s here to stay. My videos started off really bad terrible and has evolved to semi-professional level. That means better than a lot of the professional options available. I’ve talked about how to capture your screen video here, what to talk about in a video here and some basics on how to get started here.
Now it’s time to get specific
The first thing you will need is a decent budget. $1,250 – $1,500 should get you everything you need provided you have a computer (Mac or PC) purchased no earlier than about summer of 2010. Video requires processing power!
If you’re willing to invest the money, the learning curve is not too bad. Here is what you need:
- A camera with minimum specs of 720p @ 30 frames per second (FPS) or 1080 @ 24FPS (technically it’s not 24 or 30 frames per second, but we don’t need to get overwhelmingly technical for this) – I use a Nikon DSLR for video, but some of the newest Panasonic, Sony, Nikon and Canon dedicated camcorders will work. I would stay away from point and shoot cameras for good video as the actual image sensor is very small and does not yield really high quality video. Expect to spend $700-$800 for something that is going to take really good video.
- Lights – You can get by with 3 of these lights from a home improvement store like these.
- A green screen – One can be found here.
- Editing software – If you use a Mac, get Final Cut Pro X. It costs $299 and worth every penny. If you are on a PC, Sony Vegas gets great reviews.
- A teleprompter – You will look very silly if you don’t have your thoughts prewritten for you. There just is no easy way to make this work. If you have an iPad, there are several apps to choose from. My first ‘teleprompter’ was sheets of paper with large font behind the camera that I read. Now I use my iPad as a real teleprompter.
- Independent audio recording – If you use a DSLR, you might be able to find a shotgun mic that goes on top of your camera or you can find something that is separate from the camera completely. It’s very easy to sync audio and video in a good editing program.
Putting it all Together
If you are going to use a green screen (I think you should), the diagram below is the basic setup you will need:
Now, got out and shoot a quick video. There are video tutorials to help you learn how to use the green screen and whichever video editing software you you have. Below are a few videos for real estate I have dome recently. Enjoy!
Category: Video | No Comments »
Video Blogging for Real Estate #3 – Screen Capture Videos
By Ryan Ward | November 12, 2010
These are great! I have a Mac and I use a program called ScreenFlow. What these do is record what you see on your screen. You can create tutorial videos for how to use certain parts of your website. Here is one I made last night. It took me 10 minutes to make and edit it and 15 minutes to upload it to Youtube:
About ScreenFlow
ScreenFlow is just an amazing and easy to use program. It cost about $100, but it does everything you need it to. It can create picture in picture from your computers camera so you can have a picture of you. It has some basic, but very adequate editing tools and transition effects and it just works.
Other Ideas For Screen Capture Videos
A local real estate agent and friend, Joshua Keen uses the same program. Here are some of the ideas he is putting to use on his YouTube Channel. I think it’s important to remember here that vide allows you to connect with people on the internet who would otherwise not see you as a person. It removes some of the anonymity and for business, this is critical.
Resources
Since most people still use Windows based computers, you will need to find a program that you can create screen capture videos. You might start with a Google search here for screen capture video software.
Category: Marketing, Video | No Comments »
Video Blogging for Real Estate #2 – Talk About the Market
By Ryan Ward | October 29, 2010
I just finished and posted a video about the 3rd quarter metro Atlanta market statistics on my main blog. It’s a rather long video and, like my first post in this series, I’m learning too – so I am ok experimenting with length of video here. I suspect it’s too long, but there is no real way to shorten it with that much information. Maybe I’ll try another with only 1 topic that will allow me to keep the video shorter, but let’s wait and see how this one does first. Here is the video:
Equipment
The equipment I used in the video was a Nikon D7000 DSLR that shoots HD video, a 35mm f1.8 nikon lens, a green screen, lamps in front of me angled roughly at 45 degrees one a little closer than the other and lights behind to eliminate the shadows on the green screen so that I could use a chroma key in Final Cut Express to cut out the background as well as one behind and aiming towards me, Screenflow for my Mac and Final Cut Express for video editing. Here is what you need to know about your set and chroma key. You need all of this if you want to remove your backgrond from the video and replace it with an image, another video, effects or any number of combinations.
How I Made the Video
The first thing I did was shoot the screen capture portion of the video using Screenflow and edited in the zoom and highlights I wanted and exported that as a .mov file. This was a powerpoint presentation that I opened in Keynote (the Mac equivalent to PowerPoint) and added a nice looking reflective transition. I used Grab (a screen capture tool for Mac) to record the background image you see when I’m talking and imported it into my Final Cut. Only once the presentation was recorded with my voiceover was I was able to record my introduction because I needed to know what I was saying within the video first. I then shot the summary at the end of the video at the same time and imported all of that in as a new project in Final Cut.
Resources
I’m using a Mac and it took me a while to put the resources I use together. I see we will need some resources for PC users so I will save all of that for one post in the series to keep it organized…if you have any questions, comments or help please leave it in the comments section below.
Category: Video | No Comments »
How to Use Video in Real Estate
By Ryan Ward | October 27, 2010
Ok, for some time I have tinkered with video none of which I felt was very good. There are several schools of thought on video. I fall into the school that says it should look professional. Others feel as though it’s fine no matter how it looks as long as you do it. I disagree and make a distinction. I think it’s ok to have a little fun and show your human side, but if the video looks cheap I don’t think that it will give you a credible and professional appearance.
I’m putting together a series on video blogging for real estate. There is not much good information about it and I think it is going to become more and more important. I’ve spent a good deal of time investigating the technologies and the tools to use and I will take the time to share with you what I have learned and as I learn more I’ll share that too. I’m excited about the possibilities and can’t wait to document it. By no means am I a professional videographer – nor do I ant to be, but I do want to use video on a regular basis if it can be done efficiently with high quality.
Below is the first in the series. I’ll try to keep them coming on a regular basis.
Video Blogging for Real Estate
Technique
I used a Nikon D7000 to shoot this video against a green screen with the camera on a tripod. I had several lights from 45 degree angles and one from behind to make the lighting work. This was about my 5th try at it as I kept getting ahead of myself as I was talking. I left this one the way it was because I wanted to see how I looked and sounded if I didn’t have it all thought out properly when I recorded the video. The background was shot at the beach at midnight under a full moon with a long exposure on a Nikon D60 at 11mm on a Tokina 11-16 lens.
Some of the deleted attempts also did not make me look enthusiastic about my topic. It was then that I remembered how video killed the radio star and how it could easily kill the real estate agent too if we aren’t careful!
I’ll Take Your Help
If you see anything incorrect in this series or feel like you have something helpful to add, please share. We can all learn together on this one…
Category: Video | No Comments »
How to Keep Conversations Going on Your Blog
By Ryan Ward | September 27, 2010
I love blogs and when I come across a topic that I enjoy, I often leave a comment. Sometimes it’s a question, but all too often, I leave a comment or question and forget that I have done so or I forget the URL of the blog so I can’t continue the conversation. Sure I could subscribe to an RSS feed, but I would have an overwhelming number of feeds very quickly if I did that so it isn’t a real god option in my opinion. We need an easier way as bloggers. Many of you may know about this plugin, but I left a comment on a blog for the last time on a blog that didn’t notify me of comments and I just decided I would do my part.
If you have a blog and you get enough traffic to it that you receive comments you might think that you are doing pretty well – and you just might be. But, I think that blogs can be so much more. I think there is a great opportunity to have great conversations or as they have been called, blogversations. The problem is that without adding a plugin, a commenter is very likely to forget about what he/she wrote and not return to continue a conversation unless he is notified that someone else has contributed something to the conversation.
Enter the trusted plugin of choice to resolve this problem, Subscribe to Comments. This plugin has been around for sometime and it has been on all of my blogs for a ling time as well. It’s very simple in the way that it works. Simply install and configure it.
How Does it Work?
Simple. Let’s say I arrive at your blog and find an article that I like and I ask you a question looking for more detail or some other comment related to the blog post. Then, I go about my day and forget I asked, but you answered my comment an hour after I posted it. If you have the plugin installed, I will get an email notification letting me know that there is a new comment and I will get link to go back to the blog. It’s these notifications that keep the blogversations alive.
So PLEASE, install it!
Category: Marketing | No Comments »
Using WordPress for Custom Single Property Websites
By Ryan Ward | August 9, 2010
In the past I’ve used these with some excellent success and I used to keep them here free for people to download. I removed them to update them and I am about to release my first single property website theme in a long time.
Originally the homepage had a flash slideshow, but I decided to remove that in light of the success of the iPad/iPhone which won’t show the slideshow and I chose a mouseover effect for the thumbnails.
You can view the live site, Estates in Milton, marketing our new 11.5 million listing and I should have the theme available live here soon. I have a few bugs in this theme you see here (called Blue Day) that will be ready to go for release shortly as well….
Category: Blog Themes, Property Websites | No Comments »
WordPress iPad app test
By Ryan Ward | June 14, 2010
This is a simple test of the free WordPress app for the iPad. I will be trying Blogpress shortly as well and more important.y, I’ll soon post about how you can drop your laptop and write and even sign contracts from your iPad. I see that my theme is not recognized by the app so a preview is not easy for me and I have attached a photo of a tree reflecting in water from Callaway Gardens about an hour south of Atlanta. I’d link to it if I knew how from this app.
Category: Marketing, Testing | No Comments »
The CDPE Designation and Niche Marketing
By Ryan Ward | February 11, 2010
Last week I sat down to earn my CDPE designation. If you haven’t looked into it, this might be the next set of skills you sharpen. In this market, understanding short sales, the foreclosure process and helping homeowners who may be able to stay in their homes with loan modifications may be the best way to not only help people with your real estate skills, but, add additional income to your bottom line.
I felt so strongly about it, I decided it was time to reach out and develop a niche market. I have a new website to market as an Atlanta short sale agent and I have incorporated and Atlanta short sales page on my website. With the training, I can now do more research, understand the process and incorporate systems that I otherwise would have been unable to set up.
This in turn allows me to represent new clients who may need a short sale or just homeowners who need some help figuring it out because I am taking the time to develop the skill set needed to be effective.
Utilize Niche Marketing in Your Business
Over the last few years, I have developed some very effective online marketing strategies. In years past, “internet leads” would have been considered a niche market, but there are few people left who believe that to be the case. It is no longer “niche” and the competition for internet leads demonstrates just how crowded this space is.
However, short sale business is one niche that most agents shy away from and for this reason, much of the competition is eliminated. Whether you select short sales as your niche or geotarget a smaller area within a city as your niche, you should know that becoming an expert in your niche will allow you to have higher conversions than casting a wide net. Think of it more as a rifle approach to lead generating as opposed to a shotgun approach.
I will probably get more total visitors looking for “Atlanta real estate” on my flagship website than I will on my short sale website, but my conversion percentages will be much higher.
Category: Marketing | 3 Comments »
LogoTournament Kicks Out Some Great Options
By Ryan Ward | January 22, 2010
How is your real estate logo? If you are like many of us, we try to do it on our own. However, when you get serious and you want to make your appearance look more professional, you need to hire a pro to help with your image and a new logo might be in order.
Such was the case for me when we transformed from ryanwardrealestate.com to premieratlantarealestate.com. The new branding was meant to direct us to a more upscale market. For us that is Buckhead real estate and Atlanta luxury real estate.
I turned to http://logotournament.com for our logo. Here is our page on the site. From there you can navigate to see the 295 logo options offered by numerous designers. What’s even better is that during the contest you can communicate with designers in pretty close to real time and they can make changes and add new logos while you re-rank entries as new ones become available from a number of designers. It was a great opportunity to get what you are really looking for. Here is my winning design:
Category: Marketing | 1 Comment »
New Keller Williams Blog Theme
By Ryan Ward | August 5, 2009
Update 9/8/09: The theme is live now and can be viewed here downloaded here.
The blog themes on the site have been gone for a while now, but, I’ am ready to release a new updated keller Williams Blog theme. Slowly, I’ll get all of them re-released wioth more of a 2.0 feel. The new KW theme is in the final phases of testing on a live site that I created for my market center. You can view the working model here and if you would like an early copy, just post a comment and I’ll make it happen. I’ll replace the logo at the top left of that theme with one that does not have the office affiliation on it like the one you see there and it will come with a readme file that will get you up and going in no time. You can leave that slideshow or replace it with a picture – whatever you want. Just let me know.
Category: Blog Themes | 3 Comments »
