We all make mistakes and hopefully learn, grow and get better from making them. I like most of you out there I’m sure have made my fair share of them!
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
Here’s 4 of mine that spring to mind from shooting real estate video over the last year and the lessons I learn’t that may help you avoid them.
1.Forgetting Gear!
This was a good one, as polished as this finished video looks I actually forgot to pack my tripod and slider into the car. I left home in a hurry as I was running late and the job was about a 45 minute drive where I was meeting the client on site. Upon opening the boot of my car with the client standing next to me, my heart sunk when I discovered I had forgot to pack my tripod and slider.
Luckily I had packed my Gimbal as well as my drone and ended up shooting the whole interior video just with the Gimbal.
Lesson: Double check you have all of your camera gear packed, lenses, drone, batteries charged before you head out the door to your next job.
2. Don’t like the video, hate the music!
The video above was the second version and cut of the same property that the client eventually approved. I like most video producers was proud of the first cut but my Realty Agent client came back with the feedback of “Don’t like the video, hate the music”
To her credit thou she then went into more detail about what she needed the video to show and convey. She is very definite about what she wants and use to work in the television and video business so I actually like working for her as she will let you know exactly what she wants.
The property and grounds were quite large and took me a lot longer than normal to shoot and I completely missed shooting the self-contained sleep-out. Oops. I had to go back to the property to re-shoot the areas I missed, and I hate having to do that!
Lesson: Even thou I met the agent at the property I did not take long enough to determine what we were selling with the video and exactly what the client wanted to show. Spend the time doing this before you pick up a camera.
3. Know thy Gear
I’ve mentioned the problem I had with this video previously in the facebook group. This property was a very modern and minimalist styled house and I wanted to give it a modern feel and look so decided to shoot the whole video predominately on the Gimbal.
When using my Moza Air gimbal I just about always only use my wide 8-18mm lens on my Panasonic GH5 and balance the gimbal for the combination. I didn’t use the drone with this property so switched to the smaller and lighter 12-35mm lens for the exterior gimbal shots.
When I was operating the gimbal getting exterior shots I noticed the gimbal motors were making a strange noise. When I looked at the camera’s lcd monitor the picture still looked good and smooth so carried on.
When I got back to editing I soon discovered that about half of those exterior shots had a slight jitter in them making the house look like it was breathing! The problem was my Gimbal wasn’t balanced correctly for that camera and lens combo giving me micro jitters and I should have stopped and corrected the problem.
Luckily when I was shooting the exterior shots I did just enough variations of the shots and parts of them were usable enough to make the video above.
Lesson: Know thy gear, if you suspect something is not quite right then it probably isn’t. It will more often than not take you a lot less time and less headaches to stop and try and fix it there and then.
4. Swallow your Pride!
The above video is the second version of the same job but very similar to the first cut with the addition of a few extra shots. I was quite happy with version one of this video and my Realtor agent client was also happy with the video.
However the actual home owner wanted a few extra shots of the LED lights in the wall, a projector screen coming down and more shots of the recessed doors opening. What irked me more was that the home owner was with me the whole time I was shooting and never mentioned such things as shots of the projector coming out of the ceiling and so on at the first visit.
I had to swallow my pride and go back and re-shoot the extra bits to add to the video even thou myself and my actual client was happy with my first version. And it was worth doing at the end of the day to keep the client happy.
Lesson: Even thou I had asked the Realtor client what he wanted to show and sell with the video I should have made more of an effort to talk with the actual home owner about what he wanted to see in the video. Especially as he was there the whole time.
So those are a few of the mistakes I have made and I’m sure there will be more to come. If you have made any good mistakes and learn’t some valuable lessons please do leave a comment below so we can all learn.
Happy Shooting.
OMG Grant, I’ve only done a handful of real estate videos but (apart from forgetting gear, which I haven’t done yet — yet,) I’ve been guilty of all of the above. Two videos I did cost me 20 hours of work and received no revenue, the home owners (who were there) said they wanted the fireplace to have a better close up and I’d already uploaded the bleeped video to YouTube. Then they said they wanted a few stills dropped into the video (of course that wouldn’t disrupt the flow now would it.) I refused and lost the job. Learning curve. I felt belittled by the estate agents and owners in both cases. I even refused the money as I didn’t want to be seen as a cowboy. I’m almost ready to turn it all in. Get your Boot Camp Class out, quick!
Thats a fine line between standing your ground as you know what looks good in the video and doing what they ask. I too would have said no to adding stills to my video! Cheers
You have no idea how much better I feel after reading this! I make so many bloody mistakes and some of them more than once. I have made all the same mistakes you mention. That stomach rising into your throat as you look in the back of your vehicle and don’t find what you could swear you put there even a memory card in the drone that you realize you left back stuck in the computer. The the question “where the hell did I last put the packet of spare cards damn it” which you have to say to yourself as you client is standing alongside of you and you don’t want to give them the impression you are an idiot.
I agree about a very particular client but one who knows and can verbalized exactly what they want. I expect a client to zero in on what’s wrong rather than what’s right since if they use you more than once, they are assuming you can actually get it right. The client that gets up my nose is the one that can tell you what they don’t like but can’t tell you what they want it to be instead.
I realize too that part of my job that I don’t want and certainly don’t need is to be a PR agent for my actua client. But clearly anything I can do to smooth the exchange between the owner and my client my client will appreciate. So I always shoot what the owner wants and then discuss with my actual client whether they want it included. Sometimes we just do it regardless of the actual marketing just for good owner PR.
I recently had a shoot, for the first time a video only shoot I think I have mentioned on the FaceBook page where I was called just a couple of days before the shoot, was informed it was a rush job and could I get at least a “less then 1 minute” video out two days after the shoot? I said yes as long as the property was ready to shoot.
Naturally when I arrived, despite having done a walk through and provided a recommendation list of what things would be best attended to for the cleanest video, the property was not ready to shoot with suppliers, workmen, the realtor, her assistant, the window washer, the floor plan creater all walking and driving in and out all day rendering more than half my takes worthless. The staging had been done but the finishing styling had not. The agent in charge (not the office manager who had commissioned me) did not even realize I was to shoot the interiors as well and kept walking into the shots, leaving her computer and paper work scattered around and . . . Well you get the idea.
My mistake was trying too hard to meet the first requirements of the deadline and trying to please the client by doing so despite the property not being ready to shoot. I should have realized sooner that what was happening was a recipe for disaster. Actually the the video was well received by the clients but that is beside the point. It could have been so much better. As it turned out, it was only the stills that the client needed so quickly; the video 1st cut ended up sitting around for 10 days as the client was busy with other things rather than letting me know what changes they wanted.
I could have waited until the property was ready and finished for photography, for the weather to get better and for the bus station of seething people to have finished up and gone. They may like the video but I am left with dissatisfaction in my photographic heart.
You have pointed out in your tutorials that you need to stand up for what you know will give the best video that will make the client the happiest whether they understand it or not. Let the client dictate the terms and it can knock the results off the rails. I am still learning that lesson when it comes to video. Wanting to please too much is a stumbling block.
I have at least learned to over shoot. If I do just one take that looks great even on an external monitor and then move on to another room, there will always be something wrong with that perfect take, or the one I thought was perfect. I think the lesson is “cover your ass”. If you shoot it, you don’t have to use it. If you don’t, then you can’t.
And thanks for swallowing your pride. It is the mark of strength.
Hi Peter – I also do my best to learn from my mistakes but do occasionally catch myself making the same mistake again! I guess I can enjoy the learning process all over again but as you so rightly point out, experience is one heck of a teacher.
Two kinds of mistakes. One the kind to do with running your business and the shoots, dealing with clients and the other the complexity of today’s equipment which calls for continuous monitoring, battery charging, firmware updates, balancing, cleaning, remembering the interfaces and where tools are under the pressure of a shoot. I find I can easily use get overloaded as I balance the visual and esthetic considerations of getting the images look and feel I want with the technical side of settings that change from one set up to another and remembering to set them back again for the next shot. I find I tend t make the most mistakes when I am juggling these two simultaneously.
When is your boot camp coming out?
Scheduled to launch 23rd May.