Real Estate Video Editing, All You Need To Know, by Taylor Brown

What’s up guys? Welcome back to another video. Today, we’re going to be going over five things that are going to help you speed up your editing process big time. First thing we’re going to do is importing your footage.

It starts there. So for every type of project that I normally do, I have these pre -made photo and video folders on my desktop. I’m just going to copy and paste into my client folder, a new one. And inside, I’ve got everything laid out, so it’s going to be easy to access later.

So I’m pulling up my USR bin. Got all my footage in there. So I just selected it. Now I’m going to put that in there. And then I’ve also got my Mavic. And I’m going to put that in there as well. I know this seems a little bit like a bunch of random stuff to do to get started.

But once we get into Premiere, you’re going to see it really, really, really just simplifies everything and makes it really quick to edit. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through all the footage and make my bins for Premiere Pro right now before I’m even in Premiere Pro.

First bin is going to be front exterior. And I’m just going to scroll through all this stuff. Highlight those. Highlight that. Okay, I’ve got the drone ones too. And I do new folder with these 10 items.

And then I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to name that exterior front. All right, you get the point. So I’m just gonna finish these up and then I’ll see you guys in Premiere. It’s always the prep work that’s gonna save you time in the actual project.

So we’re gonna go to import. And we’re gonna pull up our project video footage bins. So we’re just gonna highlight all those, import. Okay, so as you see, our project’s already super organized right before we even jump into it.

I shoot at different frame rates for interior, exterior, exterior. What I normally do is I do 60 frames per second outside so I can slow it down Just gives it a cool dreamy look and then inside if I can I’ll shoot 30 frames per second and slow it down a little bit So just like it helps save time in editing because you don’t have to warp stabilize things as much And it just smooths it out gives it kind of a cool You know slow -mo is always cool.

So it’s a little bit like surreal. Okay, so next I open up all my folders Now we can just go to each little folder and you can see the different shots What I do is I go in I select everything and now I’m gonna interpret the footage to 24 frames per second So you type in 23 .98 and you click okay This way whenever you drag it onto the timeline, it’s gonna be playing right You don’t have to constantly be like changing the speed and all that So we’re just going down the list While you’re here if you want to you can go in and Color code each place So I’ll go ahead and do that just so you guys can see if you’re a visual person and probably you are if you’re doing video editing So we’re just gonna go in here and click label and It doesn’t matter what color it is.

So I’m just gonna start with violet for the first spin exterior back It’s gonna be iris whatever that is Mango like some mangoes Okay, so that’s it. So now we have the folders color coordinated modified to the right frame rate and Organized into bins.

So now we’re ready to work on the music I like to do the music editing first just depending on some clients want to have like a minute video if it’s for Instagram or something and some clients like this one I can usually use a whole song so I don’t have to do too much but I like to get that set up to where I can just edit to the beat and then by the time I’m done putting all the footage into the timeline it’s pretty much ready to go.

So I’ve got a big folder of my music already that I use for these projects and usually when I edit photos I find new music so I just like put it on play and then save things whenever they come up that I like.

So I’m going to pull up an interior shot just so I can see kind of the vibe of the house and I’ll go through and listen to some songs and see what kind of works with the vibe. Okay so as far as music selection.

You gotta remember, this video is not about you. It’s not about what music you think is really cool, what music your friends would like, whatever. You gotta think about who might be buying the product.

You gotta think about marketing. Especially for houses, especially high -end stuff, you gotta think like, it’s probably gonna be like older people watching these videos and you don’t wanna do all these crazy transitions and like crazy music, cause they’re just gonna be like, what?

The point is to sell the house, not to like make yourself look cool with all this stuff. So, I like this song, it’s upbeat, happy sounding, kind of goes with the house. So I’m gonna put this in my music bin.

Now I need to add my music bin into Premiere. Gotta do it in that order, otherwise things get lost later. Next, I’m gonna make my sequence. So file, new, sequence. And usually I just name this what I want the project to be exported as.

So it’s just gonna be called Project X. Okay. So we’re gonna make sure, got 1920 by 1080, 24 frames per second. Usually I put the address and then the client name so that when they get it, it’s easy to handle.

So, we’ve got our sequence. Okay, so now I’m gonna put the music on. Okay. So we’re just gonna trim this up a little bit. What I like to do is have it to where there’s maybe like five or 10 seconds to where it builds up to something.

You gotta think people that are watching the video are gonna want it to be interesting right away. Otherwise they’re just gonna scroll past it. Okay, so that’s the fit. Sick. My bellows just do that.

So that’s pretty quick. It’s catchy, it’s interesting. Sometimes these intros are like, 30 seconds or something and people are just gonna get bored and not watch the video. Let’s pull up the ending Okay, so I’m gonna stop it right there and find that spot on this part Okay, got it.

Okay now add this effect constant power and all my little transitions Just a quick one so that if it is off a little bit or if things change in the music it just smooths it just smooths it out Makes it flow better So this guy already uses some like atmospheric sounds, but I normally add like crickets or birds chirping or something at the start of the video too It just works Okay.

I’m going to go ahead and lock that so it just makes chopping up the other stuff a little bit easier. Okay. So what I like to do in these videos is show a little bit of the setting, a little bit of the highlights of the house, and not reveal too much at the very start of the video because you gotta think people are going to see this on Facebook or Instagram or whatever and they’re just going to keep scrolling if it’s like just the front of the house.

They’re like, oh, it’s a typical video or whatever. So my strategy is you just like put kind of like a little teaser at the very start of the video and then you go into your normal order and then you end it strong with like a sunset or something.

You just gotta think what does somebody that’s watching the video want to see immediately and put that in the start. Okay. That’s going to help your clients make more money. That’s going to help your clients sell stuff faster and that’s going to help your videos stand out better.

you Alright, had to bust out my editing glasses. I’ve got some keyboard shortcuts set up and that saves me a lot of time too. So that’s part of why I locked the audio off to where it can’t be edited.

Basically, I’m going to go here and I’ve got it set to cut when I do the period key, boom, and then my back slash key, it does a ripple delete so it lines it up with the rest of the footage. So I’ll go ahead and do that.

I can just cut it, stop it on the next part, boom, done. Then you can click this part and then it just scoots it over. So that helps me a lot. Another keyboard shortcut is When I drag just the footage to the timeline, if you’re shooting in 4K and you’re putting it onto a 1080 timeline, I’ve got it set up to where, see it’s like zoomed in.

I’ve got a keyboard shortcut S to where it scales it to fit the frame. You can leave it zoomed in and get more of like a compressed shot, which I do sometimes too, to change it up. Okay, so I’ve got my footage lined up on my timeline and now I’m going to cut it to the music.

Usually this is where people put like their address for the house and branding for their company, their brokerage or whatever. And so you got to think what clips look good with that. Most of all just put drone shots or like shallowed up the field shots that I do with my 50 millimeter lens.

So it’s interesting that it also looks good with the text over it. I also got to keep in mind that this is probably going to be what the ends up as their thumbnail for the image because it’s just like the first frame.

Okay, so I stop it on a beat and cut it. And then next. Okay, so now I’ve got my teaser set up. So I’ve got a couple interior details, the setting detail and a couple exterior details. Just set the scene for the home tour.

Okay, so now the normal order of the house that I do is the front exterior. And I usually put that right when the beat hits. So right here. So that’s going to be just like a good shot of the front. So I’ll do like two or three shots of the front.

Then I’ll do the entryway going in. So entry and living room. room and then I’ll do kitchen, master, other bedrooms and then the outside and then I’ll usually end on like a sunset shot or just like a shot that’s like slowly going away from the house like a drone shot.

Okay so as you see the timeline is starting to come together. Basically for each section of the house you’re just gonna go through and do a sequence so you’re gonna show wide shots, medium shots and detail shots so you can really give a good picture of the house.

When I’m making these sequences a lot of what I do is I pretend like I am the viewer watching the video and I will put let’s say I’ll put a wide shot first I’ll watch it and be like hmmm What am I wondering about in the picture that’s interesting?

And then, boom, I’ll switch to the detail shot of that. And I think that doing that and thinking about it on a non -technical standpoint, helps just make a good natural flow and kind of tells the story of the space.

Andres texted me. What does he want? Oh, he’s getting the GoPro Max for the weekend. And I might see that in a future video. That’s cool. OK, so now I’ve got my timeline all lined up, and it fits perfectly to the end of the song.

So next, before I do any color grading, I like to go in and see what footage needs stabilizing. And I’ll go ahead and nest those and then stabilize them before there’s any effects on them. It just seems to process it faster that way.

And then I will do my color grading, and we’ll be pretty much done. Not too bad. A few moments later. OK, so I went through and checked to see if anything needed to be stabilized. And it was all pretty much fine because of the frame rates I shot at and slowing it down in post.

The main thing I did is I went in and I sped up some of the shots that were 60 frames per second, because they were just a little bit boring. So then I also went through and added some key framing This shot, it was just like going side to side of the front of the house.

And I made it start zoomed in at 102, and then it zooms out to 100. It just makes the clip a little bit more dynamic whenever you’re watching it. So look it goes like this. That’s it. It’s little things.

They all add up. And I also went in and I changed some of the clips to where they were reversed to where it flows better with the shot that’s before it. So like if you got a shot that’s going left to right then you may be one another shot that goes left to right.

So the movement is just smooth. You don’t want to go left to right and then right to left. Because it can just be hard to watch sometimes. In this phase what I do is I like to kind of block out everything like mass production style.

You color grade one thing and then you kind of copy it over and just tweak it a little bit to the other shots that are similar. Since most of these I didn’t shoot in log they don’t really need a ton of color crafting.

I shot this on Canon’s neutral color profile. So basically here you just want to nail down the contrast and the color temperature and tint for this type of stuff. Obviously if it’s some cinematic video you might want to stylize it a little bit more.

But for this type of project it’s really just about showing what’s there, maybe making it look a little bit more like exciting or magical than it really is. But you don’t want to get too unrealistic with this type of project.

So basically I just go black and I make that go down. Then I’ll add some contrast. I want to keep most of the shadow detail. So I’m going to do my whites also up to about a hundred. You can see up here you just want it to be like the full range pretty much.

You know what you want it to look natural so if I go this far the sky kind of gets orange looking so that’s not how I want it. I shot it pretty close to how I wanted it. You want it to look natural. You don’t want it to be too orange or blue and you want it to be pretty bright.

People don’t want a dark house. It’s always exciting when you get close to the end. Okay we’re going to select our out point for the timeline. End point. I usually go through and just watch it and make sure everything looks good.

I didn’t miss anything. Now we’ve got it on the timeline. We’ve got it color graded. We’ve got our music all set. Now we’re going to export it. So for exporting I’m going to go custom. We’re going to call it project X.

Make sure it’s video audio. I have this gamma -lut thing that I put on it. It makes it export with a little bit richer color which is nice. Okay so we’re going to go go 4k at export. It’s on the EOS R if you do that it looks nicer.

You make sure your frame rate is still 23 .976 or 23 .8 whatever you want to call it. And maximum depth click that. And for this type of stuff you could do a lot higher but I put it at 40 and 50. We’re gonna select our destination so we’re gonna go into our folder.

We’re gonna go export and click boom. And then we’re done! The only thing after this is we’re going to go back and make sure you rewatch your video and if you warp stabilize anything there’s not like a little code popping up that it didn’t stabilize.

I don’t know why that’s a thing but I You know, you don’t want to send off a finished project to a client like that. So that’s pretty much it. A lot of it comes down to just doing prep work, being organized, being systematic with how you process things, and it’s going to save you a lot of time.

So I hope this video was helpful and if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments and I hope to see you guys on the next one.