The Harbourside Estate brief landed in our inbox on a Tuesday. By the following Monday we were on site at 5:45am for our first drone flight. What followed was one of the most technically demanding — and creatively rewarding — productions we've undertaken. Here's the full breakdown.
The brief
The vendor's agent came to us with a clear vision: the property needed to feel like a resort, not a residence. Four bedrooms, a pool that appeared to merge with the harbour, a north-facing aspect that delivered light all day, and a price guide above $9M. The content needed to justify the number.
We proposed a two-day shoot: one full day for interior and exterior coverage, one golden-hour session for the pool and harbour views, and three drone flights to capture the property's relationship with its setting from the air.
Shoot day one: interiors and architecture
We arrived at 7am to shoot the morning light entering the main living space — a feature we'd identified from the listing plans as the property's most distinctive asset. Getting that shot required setup from 6:30am and three lighting adjustments before we captured the version that made the final cut.
- Equipment: Sony FX6 primary, Sony A7SIII secondary, 12–24mm f/2.8 G Master primary lens
- Stabilisation: DJI RS3 Pro gimbal for all moving shots
- Lighting: ARRI SkyPanel S30 plus two Aputure 300X units for fill
- Total shots captured: 187 interior, 43 exterior ground-level
The drone sessions
We flew three separate sessions: a 7am slot before harbour traffic increased, a midday flyover for the pool and landscaping, and the twilight flight that produced the shot that ended up opening the film.
"The twilight flight was 11 minutes from take-off to landing. We got four usable shots. One of them has been viewed 800,000 times on Instagram."
Post-production
The two-day shoot generated 4.8TB of footage. The edit took four days — two for assembly and rough cut, two for colour grading, sound design and music synchronisation.
Music was licensed specifically for the piece: a custom arrangement that built from minimal piano into a full orchestral swell timed precisely to the moment the pool shot revealed the harbour beyond.
The Harbourside Estate film generated 1.2M views across Instagram Reels and YouTube in the first 30 days. The property sold at auction for $9.75M — 8% above the vendor's reserve. The agent credited the content campaign as a primary driver of the competitive bidder field.