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Real estate project in post production

Dutchboy

Dutchboy

Today I shot my first real estate project and it went well. I got some good footage and actually learned quite a bit in the process. I shot 16:9/30p and just about everything 2-3 times and one time in automatic mode and one time in manual. I can never decide whether I should shoot in automatic or manual. Any advice? In post, I noticed that some of the outdoor shots look better than others, however I cannot tell which ones are A and which are M...

Luckily, today was just a trial run and not for real, all of my outdoor shots had something stuck on the top left corner of the lense. What a bummer, but like I said just a test run. However, is there way I could remove this in post?

http://www.alexsmoot.com/videos/Smudge Example-H 2.264 LAN.mov
 
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You could try to paint it out. Would be fairly easy when it's just in the sky portion of the shot, but once it hits the moving leaves it becomes much more of a challenge.

If you're shooting test footage with a variety of settings to determine what you like best, you may do well to make up some kind of a card with all the info on settings for a given test shot, and start the clip with that. As for smudges, well.. keep some lens cleaning cloth with you and give the lens a good once over before you shoot.
 
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Thanks for the feedback, Will. I shoot again on Monday so I'm going to do some practice runs on my own house today, adjusting settings and voicing them into the mic so I can tell what I was doing in post (should have done that the first time). I'm going to carry a cloth with me next time as well.

Sample footage from the other day. Tell me what you think. I don't have to submit anything but I just wanted to edit for practice.
 
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My advice as far as the manual/automatic question goes, would be to shoot in manual. I always shoot in manual because I like to control all aspects of the image.

Also, automatic tries to adjust to what's in the middle of the frame, so if you are shooting a darker object anything such as a light source or sunlight will be completely overexposed. Sometimes without additional lighting, it's impossible to overcome the difference between light and dark when shooting on video. However, always remember when trying to juggle between the lesser of two evils; it's better to underexpose a bit than to overexpose. If you overexpose, it's nearly impossible to get detail back into that area of the image.

Of course that's not to say that sometimes you don't go for that overexposed effect on purpose. I've seen it done, and although I don't like it usually, it sometimes works for the story.
 
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I fooled around with the settings yesterday. Automatic mode (not fully automatic but automatic), when white balanced produced a pretty good picture. I definitely like shooting in fully manual for indifilms, though because I like to have complete image control like you said. Especially when dealing with shadows.
 
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Your footage looks good. Even with the smudge on the lens it that one shot, it doesn't detract that much from the overall thing. It did look like a number of shots weren't quite level though, and that's a minor issue, but might be something to keep in mind.

As an aside, that's some beautiful property you were shooting.. wish my house looked that nice. :)
 
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Wish my house did too... The levels were a little off. I'm sure it was caused by switching between M and A several times. I feel comfortable for my next job now that I've practiced at home with manual mode. I also noticed that if the camera is not white balanced it's a complete waste of a shot...
 
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Dutchboy said:
I also noticed that if the camera is not white balanced it's a complete waste of a shot...
Click to expand...
Not necessarily.. You can pretty easily color correct improperly white balanced footage with even the most basic built in color correction tools on Vegas, Premiere, and Final Cut... (probably others as well)

Import some of your non-white-balanced footage and play around with the color correction tools, it's good practice if nothing else. ;)
 
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