Behind the Scenes of House Hunters

Our Experience Filming House Hunters

{here will be a link to the show once it’s posted online, but that may take a few months}

So now that our episode of House Hunters aired, I thought I’d spill some info on what it was like to film the show!

Realtor

Our real life realtor was Bill May but for the show, the producers wanted a female realtor (most of House Hunters’ episodes feature male realtors and they are trying to change that).  So they asked Bill May if he could recommend someone in his office to pose as our realtor for the show, and that’s how we ended up with Linda Stanton!  Linda was lovely and so much fun to work with, and we would have never had the opportunity to meet her otherwise so it worked out well for us!

Wardrobe

We wore our own clothes for each shoot and we had pretty strict guidelines to follow.  For example, we had to wear solid colors (no stripes or patterns), no logos (meaning all of David’s Ralph Lauren collared shirts were out), nothing see-through (meaning 90% of my wardrobe was out!  just kidding), and no white or black.  They recommended bright colors– but not too bright like a highlighter– or jewel tones.  And as I mentioned in my previous blog post, girls had to do their own hair and make-up.

Filming Logistics

Each house we filmed probably took 5 hours to do.  We would arrive at the house and first get our microphones on while the director and film crew walked around the house and set up lights/ decided angles.  Getting the microphones on was always an ordeal because they have little battery packs that are supposed to be hidden.  Sometimes I wore straps around my thigh that held the battery pack and sometimes I clipped it to the inside of my pants.  I would have to tape the microphone to my skin or to my shirt depending on what I was wearing.  After we were mic’ed up, we would start filming!  We would film walking up to each house at least 3 times, sometimes as many as 5 or 6 so the cameras could capture us from different angles.  Each time we said slightly different things (which gave the House Hunters editors lots to work with, I’m sure!) and it actually was hard coming up with something new to say each time.  We did this with every room we saw.  When each home only gets about 5 minutes of air time and it takes about 5 hours to film, you can imagine how some rooms/ places were cut and the show barely skimmed the surface of our observations about each home.

Choosing Our House

The story line was somewhat exaggerated in the edited version they ended up airing.  While it’s true David didn’t necessarily want a house with so many projects, in real life– he actually convinced me to get this farmhouse!  I saw it first online and looked at the pictures before deciding it wasn’t worth mentioning to David because it had too much work to do.  He saw it online later (I think the same day?) and got super excited.  When he showed it to me, I kind of brushed it off and was like “can you even imagine how much work a place like that needs?” but he convinced me to at least drive by it.  We did, and called our realtor on our way home to schedule an official appointment to see it.  At this point, we had already filmed the first house for House Hunters (the new construction) and all the B-roll (us at the vineyard, walking around downtown, etc.).  The film crew was coming back in about 3 weeks to film the other two houses (they flew in from California) and by the time they came back, we knew this was our house!

If we had to do it over again, we’d choose the same house.  We love living here and making our own mark on this historic property.  After we moved in, we got the nicest compliment from the selling realtor, which was that this house must be breathing a sigh of relief now that we’re here and pouring our hearts into it.  🙂