The Real-Estate Shoot

We recently got a job doing videos of neighborhoods for a local real-estate agent. Tuesday we had 3 neighborhoods to do.

Chad, Dominic, Geno and I left around 9:45-10:00. The drive down was fine with no trouble and we didn't even get lost!

Seaside Farms was the first neighborhood we were going to film. Well, at first it was going great! We were getting everything we needed and weren't having any trouble finding our way around. We got the first section of the neighborhood and then we went to get the condo section. Chad and Dominic got out to shoot the condos. Then someone in one of the condos saw them and came out to interrogate them. This is Chad's account of the situation:

At the first location, I was shooting outside a condo building, and a lady comes out from the third floor. Conversation:

Lady: What are you doing?
Me: I'm shooting a video —
Lady: Why are you taking pictures?
Me: For a real-estate video...
Lady: Are you doing Google street view?
Me: No, we were hired to do this by—
Lady: Why do you have microphones?
Me: To capture ambient noise—
Lady: What?
Me: To record environment noise...
Lady: Why are you here?
Me: We're making a real-estate video.
Lady: You're with the state?
Me: Yes.
Lady: Okay, thanks.

It didn't register in my mind that she asked if I was with the state until after I said "yes," because I had just said "real-eSTATE," and was still thinking that.

Chad was a little bit shaken by this experience, but once we got going again, he was okay.

It took us a few minutes, but we were able to find the next section of the neighborhood... we dropped Chad and Dominic off at one spot and Geno and I went to a different spot. Geno and I were asked what we were doing, but the guy who asked was really nice and actually thought what we were doing was cool! Geno and I picked up Chad and Dominic (after getting lost and driving all over the neighborhood for a little while trying to find where we had dropped them off) and got going again.

We were trying to find the next section we needed to shoot, but just couldn't... we did find a swimming pool (at the time, it was closed due to contamination) that we needed to get. We stopped again and Dominic got out to grab a shot of it. There was a man by the swimming pool and Dominic asked him about where the Marais subsection (the location we needed to shoot) was. The man told him that he "thought" if we walked a certain direction on the walking trail, we would get to it.

We found a place to park and got out onto the walking trail. We were walking the way the man told us, but realized we were just going back to a place we had already shot. We asked someone else where the Marais subsection was and found out that it was actually the other way on the path. So we walked all the way along the path, which was a really long way! We finally found the subsection and got the footage we needed. But now we had to walk all the way back. We made it back to our car and got going again. We decided to go back to Marais to see if it led to one of the other locations we needed to shoot. So, we pulled out, and it turned out that we had parked about 500 feet away from Marais! We could have avoided walking a mile or two!

After driving around in circles for a little bit (not intentionally, of course), we found the final part of the first neighborhood and got the footage we needed. Now it was time for lunch!

We went to Sonic for lunch and we all got 44 oz. drinks. They were awesome!

After lunch we headed to our next location: Snee Farm.

We found Snee Farm fairly easily and at first everything was going great! We dropped Chad and Dominic off and Geno and I went to find the golf course that was supposed to be there. Then things started to go downhill. Geno and I saw the golf course, but couldn't find an entrance. We now needed to go pick up Chad and Dominic to see what we were going to do next. On our way to pick them up, we saw a car pull in the driveway of the house Dominic and Chad were filming. Geno and I were kind of laughing about it until we pulled up there and saw that the guy wasn't very happy about us filming out by his house. Of course, Chad was the one who talked to him, and this is Chad's account of the conversation:

I put down sticks, set my eye in the eyepiece, and hear footsteps. I look up. A guy's standing there.

Guy: What are you doing?
Me: I'm shooting a video.
Guy: You're taking pictures of my house?
Me: Of the whole neighborhood.
Guy: Why?
Me: It's a real estate video. We were hired to do this—
Guy: Who's having you do this?
Me: A real estate agent.
Guy: Who's he with?
Me: Charleston Property.
Guy: So you're going around video-ing people's houses.
Me: The whole neighborhood...
Guy: Why?
Me: He's wanting to make videos of all the neighborhoods in Charleston.
Guy: Why? Doesn't he know my house isn't for sale?
Me: He's wanting to promote whole neighborhoods.

Guy: I'm just asking, because anytime I see people taking video of my house, I wonder what they're doing.
Me: Well, I haven't taken any footage of your house yet.
Guy: Are you planning on doing that?
Me: I don't have to — it's fine if I don't.
Guy: (something about his house and video...)
Me: It's fine — I don't have to take video of your house.
Guy: Okay, that's fine?
Me: Yeah, I don't have to do it...
Guy: Okay, well... Okay... Alright, have a good day.
Me: Thanks, bye.
Dominic: Have a nice day.
Guy: Yeah, you guys take it easy.

Chad got back in the car and he was completely traumatized. He just sat in the back seat saying barely anything. We finally realized that this neighborhood revolved around a country club. We had to get shots from in the car of the golf course. Then we went to the actual club. We got footage of the driving range. Chad refused to leave the car so Geno and I got the footage here. Then Geno and I went to get footage of some tennis courts. While getting footage a girl was walking down the same path we were on and calls out 'Crazy people with cameras!'. I was kinda shocked by this. When we crossed her on the path, though, and she asked what we were doing and we told her, she thought it cool. I was still in shock from her yelling 'Crazy people with cameras!' so when we got back to the car we left. Very fast.

Our next neighborhood was Old Village. At Old Village we needed to get a place called Alhambra Hall. We drove past it while looking around the neighborhood and then we parked where we thought we were close to it; we were wrong. We had to walk almost a mile to get there. We finally got down to Alhambra Hall and were hoping to film the inside of it. The doors were open, so before we just went in and filmed, Geno and I went in to see if there was someone to ask... and to use the bathroom. Well, the lady that was in there was kind of, um, unhappy that we were in there so we thought we should probably just not even ask about filming... we did get the outside of the Hall, though. The people in Old Village were really nice and one person who pulled over to talk to us was very excited about what we were doing.

Everything took much longer than we thought it would and we didn't get home until 6:30 or 7:00, but we got home safe.

Well, that's the end of the crazy day.

Thanks for reading!

-anth-