Daily Archives: March 27, 2013

Vimeo’s Nifty Tricks on Overcoming A Small Film Crew | Armonk NY Realtor

We normal folk without access to a whole bunch of money and resources and people who have time have to deal with what we have.  But is there anything we can do to at least give the semblance of something professional, or at least cool, or something worth talking about?  Do we have to just deal with static camera shots and frames filled with only a minimum amount of people because we can’t find any extras?  The good people at the Vimeo Video School, along with Neko Neko Films, have some nifty solutions for a small crew that are easy to implement and with some imagination, can make it seem like you had a lot more people working on your video than is readily apparent.

3 Tricks For Your Impossibly Small Film Crew

Here’s the video.  We’ll talk about it after:

Swipe Cut

In the video, they show someone throwing a blade at another guy, with the blade barely missing his head.  This isn’t done in one take, as the danger factor is too much to do this for real.  So they take advantage of the fact that people can’t normally see a quick cut in the middle of a fast camera motion by first, shooting the dangerous part where no one is in harm’s way, and quickly “swiping” (panning) the camera left-to-right or vice-versa as the blade falls harmlessly into something they don’t mind the blade hitting.

Then, on the second take, they already have the blade lodged into the wall next to the guy’s head, but swipe the camera in the same motion, so that when they go to their editor, they can cut in the middle of the quick motion on the first take, which will be undetectable on a quick glance, and go right into the second take fairly seamlessly.  With a sound effect “selling” it, it looks like someone has thrown a blade at another person in one take.

They also show a cool trick where two actors take turns playing the camera operator, where it looks like there’s one person going back and forth between the actors, when it’s the actors themselves operating the camera.  So each actor performs his bit on camera and the second actor swipes the camera back his way and gets in position.  Then the original actor moves the camera back, and does the swipe again, with the second actor ready to perform his bit.  With the same editing as the above trick, it looks like a dedicated camera operator is in the middle of the shot, panning back and forth.

There are plenty of other uses for that of course.  It’s all up to the imagination.

Split Screen

By keeping your camera in the same spot, you can shoot multiple things in parts of the frame and then use your editor’s split screen capabilities to make it look like all of the things you shot were in one take, populating your frame with actors, even if you might only have two total.  In this trick, they show one actor standing in the middle of the frame, with nothing on both sides.  Then they shoot two actors in the background on the left side of the frame, and they do what they have to do.  Then, two actors on the right side of the frame do their thing.  By entering these three clips into a video editor and splitting the screen with a “crop” tool, it makes it look like all the action is happening in one take.

Smart Phone Audio

If you want someone to be in the far background of a shot, it may not appear that you’ll be able to get their audio properly.  But you can use a smart phone’s recording capabilities (hopefully with a recording app, with the smart phone in a coat pocket) to record the actor in the background and then overlap the camera audio and the smart phone audio for a proper synching.  Although, in this example, I’m not sure you want to have the guy in the far background sounding like he’s right next to the guy in the foreground.  Selling “distance” also means making the audio sound more distant than usual.  So maybe that smart phone is farther away than a coat pocket, but you may not have a choice.

There’s also the matter of people being unable to actually see the background actor’s lips move, so synching sound to that person shouldn’t be a terribly big deal.  But whatever it takes to sell the effect, if you have a smart phone at your disposal, you can record a person who is farther away than normal.

We’d like to thank Vimeo and Neko Neko for the time they put into this!

HUD threatens to pull $7.4 million in grants for Westchester County | North Salem Real Estate

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is threatening to take back $7.4 million in grants from Westchester County, N.Y. 

The county has been teetering on the edge with HUD and will lose the money if it fails to submit a report analyzing whether zoning in Westchester County perpetuates segregation, news source lohud.com reports.

“In light of the fact that the county has been on notice about these deficiencies now for years, HUD cannot at this point simply accept general promises of future performance but rather expects that the county will substantively comply with the requirements HUD has set forth,” said Vincent Hom, director of Community Planning and Development.

Prefabricated housing expected to grow through 2017 | Waccabuc Real Estate

The demand for prefabricated housing is expected to grow annually through 2017, according to a Bharat Book report.

The prefabricated housing industry includes manufactured, modular, precut, and penalized housing.

But even with the surge in demand, the manufactured housing market is projected to continue to decline since conventional mortgages have become easier to obtain, the report claims.

The Shadow Inventory is Slowly Disappearing | Katonah NY Homes

Florida, California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey were home to four out of ten distressed properties in the nation in January, an indication of how far east America’s foreclosure nightmare has moved.

CoreLogic reported that the overall shadow inventory is down 28 percent from its peak in January 2010, when it reached 3 million homes. Current residential shadow inventory as of January 2013 was at 2.2 million units, representing a supply of nine months. This figure represents an 18-percent drop from January 2012, when shadow inventory stood at 2.6 million units.

“The shadow inventory continued to drop at double the rate in January from prior-year levels. At this point in the recovery, we are seeing healthy reductions across much of the nation,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “As we move forward in 2013, we need to see more progress in Florida, New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey which now account for almost half of the country’s remaining shadow inventory.”

“The shadow inventory is declining steadily as properties are moving through the distressed pipeline,” said Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “States like Arizona, California and Colorado are experiencing significant declines year over year in the stock of serious delinquencies, a positive sign for further improvement in the shadow inventory.”

As of January 2013, shadow inventory was at 2.2 million units, or nine months’ supply, and represented 85 percent of the 2.6 million properties currently seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or REO.

Of the 2.2 million properties currently in the shadow inventory (Figures 1 and 2), 1 million units are seriously delinquent (4.1 months’ supply), 798,000 are in some stage of foreclosure (3.2 months’ supply) and 342,000 are already in REO (1.4 months’ supply).

The value of shadow inventory was $350 billion as of January 2013, down from $402 billion a year ago and down from $381 billion six months ago.

Over the twelve months ending January 2013, serious delinquencies, which are the main driver of the shadow inventory, declined the most in Arizona (40 percent), California (33 percent), Colorado (27 percent), Michigan (25 percent) and Wyoming (23 percent).

CoreLogic estimates the current stock of properties in the shadow inventory, also known as pending supply, by calculating the number of properties that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure and held as real estate owned (REO) by mortgage servicers, but not currently listed on multiple listing services (MLSs). Transition rates of “delinquency to foreclosure” and “foreclosure to REO” are used to identify the currently distressed unlisted properties most likely to become REO properties. Properties that are not yet delinquent, but may become delinquent in the future, are not included in the estimate of the current shadow inventory. Shadow inventory is typically not included in the official reporting measurements of unsold inventory.

Case-Shiller: 2012 Price Hikes Matched the Boom Years | Bedford Hills NY Homes

Home prices increased more in 2012 than they have since have since the summer of 2006 in both of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

S&P reported today that average home prices increased 7.3 percent for the 10-City Composite and 8.1 percent for the 20-City Composite in the 12 months ending in January 2013. All 20 cities posted year-over-year gains with Phoenix leading the way with a gain of 23.2 percent. Nineteen of the twenty cities showed acceleration in their year-over-year returns. Despite posting a positive double-digit annual return, Detroit was the only city to show a deceleration. After 28 months of negative annual returns, New York came into positive territory in January.

In January 2013, the 10- and 20-City Composites posted respective annual increases of 7.3 percent and 8.1 percent, and monthly increases of 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent.

“The two headline composites posted their highest year-over-year increases since summer 2006,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “This marks the highest increase since the housing bubble burst.

“After more than two years of consecutive year-over-year declines, New York reversed trend and posted a positive return in January. The Southwest (Phoenix and Las Vegas) plus San Francisco posted the highest annual increases; they were also among the hardest hit by the housing bust. Atlanta and Dallas recorded their highest year-over-year gains.

Economic data continues to support the housing recovery. Single-family home building permits and housing starts posted double-digit year-over-year increases in February 2013. Despite a slight uptick in foreclosure filings, numbers are still down 25% year-over-year. Steady employment and low borrowing rates pushed inventories down to their lowest post-recession levels.”

As of January 2013, average home prices across the United States are back to their autumn 2003 levels for both the 10-City and 20-City Composites. Measured from their June/July 2006 peaks, the decline for both Composites is approximately 29-30% through January 2013. The January 2013 levels for both Composites are approximately 8-9% from their dip in early 2012.

In January 2013, nine cities — Atlanta, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco and Tampa — and both Composites posted positive monthly returns. Dallas was the only MSA where the level remained flat.

In terms of annual rates of change, all 20 cities as well as both Composites posted positive change. Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Francisco were the eight MSAs to report double-digit annual returns.