On a recent afternoon, actors stood around a kitchen pouring glasses of fake sparkling wine. A cameraman operating a dolly stood ready.
"It needs to look like, 'I want to be in that house, be in that group'," said Curt Hahn, a director of thousands of television commercials and producer of the 2008 movie "Two Weeks," starring Sally Field. Now, he was at work on his latest project.
The camera focused on a man in a vest pouring drinks, then panned to show the movie's real star, the 470-square-foot kitchen with walnut floors, granite countertops, under-cabinet lighting and a large central island under a skylight. This film has one purpose: to sell a 4,000-square-foot condominium with two wood-burning fireplaces and wide, gallery-style hallways in the West End neighborhood of Nashville, Tenn., listed for $1.795 million.
Mini-movies and Hollywood-style trailers complete with scripts, musical scores and even action sequences are cropping up as a new way to pitch pricey homes and condominium buildings. According to the National Association of Realtors, 14% of sellers used video to help sell their homes in 2012, up from 9% five years ago. Mr. Hahn, the director and CEO of Film House, said he shot his first real-estate mini-movie in September of last year. He has since shot nearly 10, doing about one a week since June.
Real-estate agents and developers who commission the films say that perfectly lighted rooms and aspirational story lines help grab buyers, and are the next extension of a home-buying experience that has increasingly gone online. Budgets for such films are often a percentage of the home's listing price, and can range from a couple thousand dollars to $1 million or more for large-scale productions marketing condo buildings. The cost is paid either by the listing agents or sellers, and sometimes split between them.
"Particularly when buying high-end houses, people really don't want to spend time looking," said Tom Patterson, the 4,000-square-foot condo's listing agent. "The video shows it in a much stronger light [than photos] and with a little story for it, it adds a little emotion."
After the kitchen shoot, Mr. Hahn and Mr. Patterson met with Sherry Howell, a retired business executive, and Everette Howell, a retired neurosurgeon. The couple are asking $2.8 million for their 6,000-square-foot hilltop contemporary home. Mr. Hahn pitched a three-act story line centered on a charity auction where guests would bid to spend a week at the home. The final scene would take place in the living room, to maximize the home's dramatic views.
"Then fade to black?" asked Mr. Howell.
"Well, fade to Tom's logo," said Mr. Hahn.
The Howells gave the film the green light. "This is cutting edge and we're like the beta test for it," said Ms. Howell.
Movie making is particularly popular in slower-selling markets. Though sales are picking up, homes in Nashville priced over $1 million still typically take a year or more to sell, said Anne Nilsson, a Nashville-based agent. She and partner Keith Merrill commissioned Mr. Hahn to create his first real-estate mini-movie last year, a three-minute film depicting an actor following a series of clues on Post-it Notes through a 6,000-square-foot Southern Colonial-style home, leading to an actress playing his daughter, grinning as she shows him a Harvard acceptance letter.
"I called my husband into my office in London and said, 'take a look at this'," said Judy Neal, a retired directors' representative, who said she liked how the video emphasized the home's estate-like feel and walkable, in-town location. She and her husband flew over to see the home and wound up paying $1.435 million for it.
David Samuels, who owns an entertainment-advertising agency in Los Angeles, said his real-estate broker, Eric Lavey, offered to create a film about a midcentury modern bachelor pad he was selling in the Hollywood Hills that had been on the market for about a month at $950,000. The film centered on a young man coming home from work and getting ready for a night out on the town, including shots of nearby Sunset Boulevard.
"Most videos, it's like elevator music and camera tilts and pans across the room, and then you see another room," said Mr. Samuels. The home sold for $920,000 less than a month after its video made its debut online.
Another film, shot in a $6.495 million listing Mr. Lavey has near Palm Springs, features an actor portraying the home's owner getting picked up from his private jet. The house is still privately listed for sale.
High-end condo developers are using short films to help drum up interest in properties still months or years from completion. Developers for the Mansions at Acqualina, a building expected to be completed next year in Sunny Isles, Fla., spent $200,000 on a short film to market the building's 15,000-square-foot, $55 million penthouse. With no dialogue, the production features live actors portraying a family going about their day in a hyper-realistic CGI rendering of the sprawling apartment.
These films are distributed in a number of ways. A film produced to promote Jade Signature, an oceanfront condo building under construction in Sunny Isles, Fla., will be sent first to early buyers this fall by DVD or iPad and will then debut in the building's sales office when it opens in early 2014. (Prices of the building's units will range from $1.8 million to over $26 million.)
