Video Taping a Horse For Sale

In this article, we will cover the basics for what we have found to be helpful when videotaping a horse for sale. This is not the only way, but can serve as a starting guide for those horse owners that want to video tape their own horse for sale.

At any photo shoot we recommend the following:

Freshly groomed horse that has been fly sprayed.

A confined area that the horse can be filmed at liberty in. This area should be larger than the typical 60x60 round pen. Filming in too close can result in the horse looking proportionately distorted, for example; the legs like pony sized on a huge body. Try to keep the area no larger than around 100ft, which would be about the maximum 10x optical zoom distance on a consumer HD camera and still be able to have the horse take up a minimum of 25% of the screen.

Several people to help keep the horse moving and prevent him from taking a nice roll in the dirt.

Objects that can be used to inspire your horses interest to look at or keep him moving. Tarps, umbrellas, balloons, lunge whip, plastic bags, a dog have been used by others to help motivate the horse to not just stand around and graze.

Video camera. We recommend Canon's consumer line of HD cameras for most horse owners. The auto focus on these cameras is fast enough to keep the horse in focus as you zoom to keep the horse centered in the middle of the screen. We have found that the consumer line's auto focus is better than their professional line. The Canon rep explained that the consumer line technology changes faster than their professional line of cameras. So this is one area where the consumer cameras definitely shine. Canon has several in this line that are very good. Several of them have the ability to take photo stills while recording which can come in handy if the horse pauses and poses and you want to capture that moment in a digital photo. Take a look at the Canon Vixia HFS100, it is an HD video camera that can also take 8 megapixel photos. It can take still photos while you record as well as allowing you to grab freeze frame to a photo file from the video while you are reviewing the video. Do not use your digital or phone camera that can take video. The video from these cameras are very poor quality. Remember your video camera is an investment in helping your horses sell.

Be sure and have extra batteries, flash cards/tape for your video camera.

Try to pick a sunny day to videotape dark horses. A cloudy or overcast day looks depressing and the coat colors usually look dull. Grey horses or horses with a lot of white tend to look just fine and sometime better when filmed on an overcast day as it lends a softening effect to their coat, which tends to end up without much contrast on a bright day.

Set your video camera up for the following settings. Use auto focus, there is no way you are going to be able to manually focus on a horse that is zipping around the pasture darting in and out. Most cameras allow you to set the type of video you will be filming, choose a SPORTS mode that sets a higher shutter speed so that your horse's movement will be sharper if you choose to post edit and slow motion the horse or want to grab stills from the video.

Try to position yourself so that the sun is behind you and the horse is positioned running in front of you. This will allow the sun to shine on the horse's coat.

When filming the horse it is very important to try and maximize the amount of horse on the screen. You should try to make sure that the horse is no smaller than 25% of the screen without getting so large that the horse's entire body does not fit in the screen. The biggest mistake we see is too small of a horse in the screen, so that most of the screen is background. This is not an artsy movie, you get no points for beautiful scenery. Your potential buyer wants to see the horse.

Try not to walk around while filming the horse. Keep the camera steady. It is usually better to put yourself in a central position and be able to slowly twist right and left and use the zoom to follow the horse's movements. Optical stabilization is is meant to compensate for minor hand tremble, but in HD if you are not steady, your film can give the viewer nausea from the up and down movements when viewing a roller coast ride of a video. Some people will use a tripod to stabilize their camera. This is ok, if you are not in the same pasture with a loose running horse, bad idea if you are. Nothing worse than having a charging horse coming at you and trying to grab a camera and tripod in order to get out of the way in time. Never think that a horse will not run you down. Accidents do happen.

Have a horse handler stand the horse posed in standard conformation poses. These should include full front, back, both sides of the horse. Get a close-up of the horse's feet. Some buyers are going to want to make sure the horse does not have club feet. If the horse has blemishes or anything else that you know about that would show up on a vet exam, be sure and videotape them. You may be asked for this type of footage by serious buyers so it is good to get that footage now. This footage is usually not used in an advertising video that is created to catch potential buyer's eyes.

Film the horse at liberty. Try to get all of the gaits your horse is known to do as well as just some "personality moments". It is often something in a liberty video when a horse is just being himself that a buyer sees something in the horse that strikes their emotions that "this is the one".

Film the horse being ridden in a manner and style that potential buyer's of the horse would want to see. The bare minimum is usually walk, trot, canter, halt. The transitions from and to each gait can be important to capture. If your horse has special training, this is the time to show what your horse can do, just as if the potential client were standing there watching.

Try to keep the length of the liberty footage under 5 minutes. Try to keep the total sale video under 20 minutes. With this length of footage, post editing can be done to cut out boring or repetitive spots and be able to create a video of under 10 minutes which is the maximum length allowed online on Youtube. We highly recommend posting your video on Youtube. People actually search Youtube videos for horses for sale and several horse for sale websites will link your sale ad to your Youtube video.

After you have captured all of your raw footage you should edit or pay someone to edit the final video. Consider this the most important investment you can make in selling your horse. Please see our services page and examples page to see videos we have edited for people. Bad video is worse than no video, just like a bad photo is worse than no photo. After you have edited your video, upload to Youtube and be sure and fill out the information on the video to include the date you took the video as well as all sale information for the horse and your contact information.

So you have sold your horse, congratulations. Now you need to video tape that horse just before he leaves your property if he is not being picked up by his new owner in person. This is another important time you need to video tape your horse. This is to help protect you incase there is a dispute concerning the horse, it will show that the horse was not visibly lame, unhealthy, blemished, etc. As a coutesy, it always nice to email a short video or series of photos of the horse to the new owner showing the horse leaving in good shape. The more you document and communicate, the more likely you will have a happy buyer.

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Video Taping A Horse For Sale