How to Use Videolicious to Make Simple Listing Videos

In this How2, we’ll show you how you can use the iPhone app Videolicious to make great listing videos simply and easily.  We’ll take through the process of recording video clips, and then explain how to stitch them together with a narrative that you’ll provide to generate a complete movie.  The end result will be a very simple, short movie that you can attach to the online listing on randrealty.com, share through social media, or even email out.

Here is an example of a video that I made in about 90 seconds using the app after the company meeting in mid-March.  

 

Introduction

Everyone agrees that video is a great listing tool. Not only are videos a terrific way to display properties online and to market homes to buyers, but your ability to make videos for your listings is a tremendous differentiator for sellers during a listing presentation. The challenge has always been that making videos can take a lot of time, and requires a good deal of training on traditional movie-editing software like iMovie or Moviemaker.  Alternatively, professional videos are extremely expensive, and generally not worth the cost for all but the most high-end of properties.

 

The Videolicious app, though, provides a very simple way to make basic video tours. They’re not going to be fancy – you can’t add graphics, or captions, and you’re not going to get the highest quality of video if you take your clips on your iPhone – but listing videos really do not need to be all that polished. Indeed, most people have become used to the “casual” nature of most videos, so you don’t need top-of-the-line production values in making a short video that shows off your new listing.  You want it to look good, but you don’t need it to look like a professional movie.

 

To make your movie, you’re going to take individual video clips of well-staged and brightly-lit areas of your listing, and then use the Videolicious app to stitch them together into a short movie.  You’ll load the clips into the app, then record a narrative talking about the home’s features while you click on the video clips to run them in order.  The movie that you end up with will start with you looking and speaking to the camera (it will look like a webcam-type clip), transitioning to you doing a voiceover to the video clips that you made of the listing.  When you’re done making the movie, you’ll be able to save it and share it.

 

Step By Step

Here are the steps for using the Videolicious app to make a video:

 

Step One: Prepare for Recording

You need to get the home ready for video, which means staging each area that you’re going to record.  Hopefully, the home is already staged and looks great, but if not you need to declutter the rooms as you go through the house – you can literally just move the clutter out of the room, and put it back in.  But you want the rooms to look good when you record them.  You also should make sure that the rooms are well-lit.  The best lighting for video will be in the middle of the day, so you do not need to turn on a lot of interior lights.  Keep blinds and shades open to let as much natural light in as possible. The video will not come out well if the rooms are dark.

 

Also, as part of your preparation, open up a Videolicious account.  Download the app to your iPhone, and register as a user.  [When that is done, make sure that you have loaded up your opening and closing graphics to your account, which will automatically be appended to all your Videolicious movies].

 

Step Two:  Make Your Video Clips

If you have good video clips that you have taken with a camera, you need to import them into your iPhone.  You can do this by syncing your iPhone with iTunes and loading the video clips onto the phone.  Otherwise, if you don’t already have the clips, you can just take them with the iPhone, which has a reasonably good video camera.

 

You’re going to build the movie using a series of short 8-10 second clips of every area of the home that you want to display.  This should include at least one exterior shot, and maybe shots of both the front and back yards if they show well.  The clips should be short, about 8-10 seconds each, with the total length of the clips being no more than 45-60 seconds (i.e., at 10 seconds a clip, you should have no more than 4 or 5 clips at most).

 

So when the room is ready, just click on the iPhone camera app, make sure it is set to video rather than still photos, and make that short video clip.  Just hold the phone up to about hip level, click the record button, and pan slowly from side to side. Don’t move too fast, or the video will seem jerky.  When you’ve completed the pan from one side to the other, click the record button again.  Repeat the process for all the clips you want to make.

 

Some tips for making good video clips:

 

• Let the room’s best feature dictate your position. Frame each video clip according to what you want to highlight in the room.
• Take the video from hip level, not eye level, because the perspective from your hip makes the room look bigger.
• Pan slowly from side to side. No herky-jerky movements.  Take your time.
• Don’t worry about ambient noise like a dog barking or someone speaking to you.  The Videolicious app is going to strip out the audio part of your video clips, and replace it with your narrative.

 

Step Three: Create Your Movie with the Videolicious App

Once you have your video clips, you can start to make your movie on Videolicious.  Open the app with your iPhone, and if necessary register your account or sign in to the app.  If it asks you about accessing your location, agree to the request.

 

Once you are logged in, Videolicious will guide you through the step-by-step process.  The first step is the “Select Videos” step. Click on the “Choose Shots” button to select the videos in your iPhone Camera roll.  You should click on the videos in the order in which you want them to be displayed – when you click on them, you’ll see a number pop up to indicate their place in the order.  You can also select a mix of videos and pictures, or even just pictures.  When you’re done, click on the “Save” button.

 

Once that’s done, you’re ready for step two: “Tell Your Story.” Click on the “Tell Your Story” button, and you’ll automatically start your front-camera (facing you), and you’ll see a display of you looking at your camera, with some buttons on the top right.  You’ll also see a box on the bottom right that is the first clip for your movie. Finally, on the bottom left is the record button.  When you’re ready, hit record, and you’ll get a 3-2-1 countdown to the live recording.

 

Once the recording starts, just start speaking naturally to the camera, introducing yourself and the listing. At that point, the movie is you speaking into the camera.  As soon as you’re ready to bring in the video clips, tap on the first clip, which will now play in your movie while you continue to narrate.  You’ll see a countdown in the clip showing you how much time until it ends, at which point the movie will move onto the next clip. If you want to move more quickly, just click on the next clip rather than allowing the current clip to play to the end.  Keep doing that until you are out of clips.  When the clips are finished, click back on your face in the camera to put yourself back in the shot, thank the viewer, and close the video.

 

You’ll have a chance to preview the preliminary (pre-music) version of your movie to see if everything went okay. If not, you can delete and start over.  You can’t “edit” the movie you made, but given that it’s less than 60 seconds you can just start over and try again until you get a take you like. Once it’s okay, you should click on the “Save” button.

 

This will take you to the third Videolicious step: “Choose Your Music.”  Click on the “Choose Your Music” button and select from the “Theme Music” audio. You can use music from your iTunes library, but we wouldn’t recommend that for a professional video because of copyright issues.  The “Theme Music” selections provided by Videolicious are fully licensed for your use in videos. You can sample the selections, and then choose one that fits the mood of your movie.  When you’re done, you’ll have another chance to preview the video and save it again.

 

When that’s done, you have the final step, which is to set the video size.  The SD version has lower quality, but can be uploaded more quickly. In most cases, you’ll want to slide the level all the way over the HD for the highest quality video.  Do that, and hit “Save.”  Now you can title the video and configure settings for sharing.

 

Step Four: Saving and Sharing

Once the video is complete, you have a range of options for sharing it.  The first thing you should do is email the online link to the video to yourself, so you always have access to it and can forward the email to anyone who might be interested.  We don’t recommend sharing it on Facebook or Twitter, because listing videos really aren’t interesting to most of your friends, but you should definitely upload it to your Youtube account.  That video will be saved to your account, and you can access it anytime you want from the Videolicious app.

 

Tips and Tricks

Some general tips and tricks for making your movie.

 

• Speak naturally. Don’t feel that you need to be like a news anchor with a script.  Just describe the basic features of the house, with a focus on the rooms that are in the video clips, like you would if you were taking someone through it live. You should practice the narration a few times.  It takes a little bit of time to become comfortable speaking into the camera while you’re also clicking on the video clips.

 

• Have notes ready.  Don’t have a script, but put down bullet points for each video clip that you can look to.  When the clips are running, the camera is off your face, so you can look down. Note that you’re not going to be able to actually see the video clips as they run.  You’re just going to see the countdown of how much time is left in the clip.  So you’re going to have to work off memory for the features in that room, rather than rely on visual cues from the video clip itself.

 

• Don’t just mimic the shot.  Don’t just describe what people are already seeing on the video, by saying things like “here is the great room, now here is the kitchen.”  People can see that.  Instead, build on what they are seeing: “The great room features a wood burning fireplace, and is completely open to the kitchen, which has top of the line appliances and a lovely breakfast nook.”  The clips speak for themselves, so add to them.

 

• Be upbeat!  You want to be energetic and enthusiastic.  What seems like a “natural” energy level comes across on video like boredome.  It’s a funny thing about video – you have to be at 120% to come across at 100%.

 

• Smile!  Use a bookend approach to smile at the beginning, and smile at the ending.  It might feel weird, but it comes across very well on a video.  People like smiling faces.

 

• Keep it simple.  Ultimately, if you’re not happy with your narration in the movie, do this simple workaround.  Open the movie speaking to the camera for about 10-15 seconds.  Just introduce yourself, describe the basic listing highlights (price, location, bedrooms, and baths), and then say “Enjoy the movie!”.  Then stop speaking and let the music cover the rest of the movie.  That should take the pressure off you to narrate the whole thing, while still giving you the opportunity to introduce yourself.

 

• Keep at it. If you’re part of the way through the creation process and you stumble on your words, just start again. The whole movie will only be 90 seconds or so, so even a few false starts is not going to cost you a lot of time.  But once you finish the movie, you can’t go back and edit it, at least not in the Videolicious app, so you need to get through it with a reasonable take.

 

 

Conclusion

That’s how to make a great listing video with your iPhone Videolicious App.  It’s actually very easy to use, and after you do a couple you’ll find that you can make a pretty good video just with your iPhone in about fifteen minutes.  If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.