Film House Real Estate makes mini-movies to market luxury listings — complete with storylines, actors, musical scores and even aerial cinematography — that are set in the properties to create an emotional connection with potential buyers.
We follow the same marketing model for all our mini-movies. We start by working with our Realtor clients — and sometimes with the homeowners as well — to identify the target buyer.
We then determine the key selling features of the particular property. Once we’ve agreed on these parameters, we come up with a storyline designed to appeal to the emotions of the target buyer.
In this case, we were marketing a listing that was full of romance including the home itself, the acres of wild Maine blueberries on the estate’s 40 acres and the idyllic lifestyle of the Maine coast.
So the storyline we created reflects that romanticism, from the first scene of the younger sister reading “Pride and Prejudice” to the final scenes that routinely bring a tear to the eye of the target audience.
At $20,000, this is one of the more expensive mini-movies we’ve done because we filmed the home and the surrounding area, too.
With two crews shooting simultaneously, we managed to shoot the entire mini-movie in one extremely long day. I believe the listing agent and the seller split the cost of production, but that’s for them to say.
We shoot all our mini-movies with the same high-def cameras we use when shooting our feature films, typically a Canon C300. We also use the same film crew pros we use on our feature films, just not as many of them.
We consider the ways we disseminate our mini-movies to be propriety. We create many versions of each mini-movie for strategic reasons. They receive many thousands of views from around the world, but the real key isn’t the sheer number of views but getting the right views.
Many of our listings have sold before the mini-movies had even reached 500 total views, like 2205 Woodmont Blvd. in Nashville, Tennessee, which sold sight unseen to a buyer from London within days of the mini-movie going online.
You can read the complete case study at www.FilmHouseRealEstate.com about how the buyer bought the home based on seeing our mini-movie.
Curt Hahn has produced and directed four feature films. He’s also the CEO of Film House Real Estate. Connect with him on LinkedIn.