Tampa Bay · Video
Listing video in Tampa Bay
Shot on the same visit as the photos, edited two ways: the horizontal walkthrough for the listing, and a vertical cut built for Reels — not cropped from the wide one. Delivered next day. Included in the Pro and Elite packages.
60 to 90 seconds, horizontal, the one that lives on the MLS and the property page. Drone opener, a clear route through the house, no music-video cutting.
The same shoot re-edited to 9:16 for Instagram and TikTok. Different pacing, hook in the first second. This is the one agents actually get seen with.
You in the frame, introducing the property. The version that builds a personal brand rather than a listing archive.
Bayshore, the pier, the beach, the downtown you are really selling. Cut into the listing video or used on its own.
Two videos, because they are watched by two different people
The horizontal walkthrough on the listing and the vertical cut on Instagram are not the same film in two shapes. They are shown to different audiences at different moments and they have to be built differently, which is why the vertical is shot vertical rather than cropped out of the wide one afterwards.
The horizontal version is watched by someone who has already decided they are interested. They found the listing, they looked at the photographs, and the video is what they use to understand the layout — how the kitchen connects to the living space, whether the primary suite is on the ground floor, what the flow of the house actually is. That audience wants continuity and orientation, which means steady moves through doorways, sensible order, and a run time closer to ninety seconds than thirty.
The vertical version is shown to someone who was not looking for a house at all. It has perhaps two seconds to stop a thumb, which means it opens on the single strongest thing the property has — the water, the pool at twilight, the kitchen island, the view — rather than a slow drone push over the roof and a title card. A crop of the horizontal cannot do that job, because the best frames of a wide video are composed for a wide frame and lose their subject when the sides are cut off.
Why most listing videos are not watched
It is worth saying plainly, on a page selling video, that a great many listing videos do very little. The pattern is familiar: a drone rise over the roof, a title card with the address, a slow gimbal glide through every room in the order the photographer happened to walk, and music chosen to feel expensive. Nothing in it is wrong exactly, and nothing in it is a reason to keep watching.
The videos that work do one specific thing: they show what a photograph cannot. Movement through space, so a buyer understands how rooms connect. Scale, because walking a hallway communicates length in a way a wide-angle still actively distorts. And the things that are not static — light moving across a floor, a pool at dusk, the view from a balcony changing as the camera turns. If a frame in the video could have been a photograph instead, it probably should have been.
That is also the honest test of whether a listing needs video at all. A 1,200 sq ft condo with four rooms in a straight line has no layout to explain and nothing dynamic to show, and the money is better spent elsewhere. A house where the layout is the selling point, or where the outdoor space is, is exactly where it earns its cost.
Whether you should be in it
Agents ask this often and the answer depends on what the video is for, not on confidence in front of a camera. A property video sells the house and should contain the house; putting an agent on camera in it splits the attention of a buyer who came to see rooms. An agent video sells the agent, and there the house is the setting rather than the subject — those are the ones worth appearing in, and they are worth making deliberately rather than by accident.
For most Tampa Bay listings the property video does the selling and the agent-branded content is a separate project with a different purpose. We shoot both, and we would rather make that distinction before the shoot than deliver a film trying to do both jobs and doing neither.
Shooting video in Florida light
Video is less forgiving than stills here, because a photograph can be bracketed and a moving shot generally cannot. Walking from a shaded hallway into a room with a west-facing window at four in the afternoon is a two-stop change mid-move, and the camera will either blow the window or lose the room. The answer is planning the route around the sun rather than fixing it afterwards, which is the main reason video adds time to a shoot rather than being captured alongside the photographs.
Everything is shot in a flat log profile and graded afterwards, which holds detail in both a bright Florida window and a dark interior in the same frame. It is also why the files that come back are colour-consistent between the horizontal and the vertical cut, and between the video and the stills delivered with it.
Questions Tampa agents ask
How much is a listing video in Tampa?
Video is included in the Pro package at $300, which also covers the photos and drone. Elite at $500 adds the full edit, twilight and a 3D tour. Video on its own is quoted per property.
How long does the shoot take?
About an hour for a typical single-family home, on the same visit as the photos. Nothing is scheduled twice.
When do I get it?
Next day, the same as the photos, as a download link plus a version sized for social.
Do you shoot vertical for Instagram?
Yes, and it is shot vertical rather than cropped from horizontal. A cropped wide shot loses the ceiling and the floor, which is most of what makes a room read as large.
Which parts of Tampa Bay do you cover?
Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco with no travel fee — Tampa, South Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Brandon, Riverview, Wesley Chapel, Westchase, Carrollwood, Land O' Lakes and the rest of the Bay.