Motion sells space. On that much, everyone agrees: a page with movement holds attention in a way static images do not, and real estate is fundamentally an experience of moving through a place. The real question for a leasing budget is not whether to use motion. It is which kind, where, and at what cost.
Two options dominate the conversation in property marketing. The first is the produced video tour: a crew, a camera, a shoot day, and an edit. The second is StillStream, Floorplate's approach that turns the property photos you already have into cinematic motion video with no shoot at all. They are not rivals so much as different tools, and knowing which one to reach for saves real money and real time.
What a produced video tour does best
A filmed tour earns its production cost when the experience of moving through the space is itself the selling point. A continuous walkthrough communicates flow: how the lobby opens to the elevators, how a full floor unfolds, how the amenity level connects. It can carry a human presence, a leasing director walking and talking, a tenant telling their story. For a signature vacancy or a flagship amenity floor, that is persuasive in a way nothing else quite matches.
The trade-offs are just as concrete. A shoot needs scheduling, staging, and cooperative weather. An edit takes rounds of feedback. And the result is frozen at a moment in time: when the lobby is renovated or the anchor space is demised, the video ages, and re-shooting is a project with a budget line of its own.
What StillStream does best
StillStream starts from a different premise: most buildings already own strong photography, and what that photography lacks is not quality but life. StillStream turns existing stills into cinematic motion, slow pushes, drifts, and reveals that give a page atmosphere and polish. There is no shoot to schedule, no crew on site, no waiting on weather, and no staging an occupied suite.
That makes it the right tool in exactly the situations a film crew serves poorly. Buildings in lease-up that need presence this month, not next quarter. Occupied spaces you cannot realistically clear and stage. Portfolios that want a consistent motion treatment across many properties without multiplying budgets. And any site where the goal is feel, the sense that a building is alive and cared for, rather than a narrated walkthrough.
Choose a filmed tour when the layout and flow of a specific space is the pitch
Choose StillStream when you have strong stills and need motion on the site now
Choose StillStream for occupied or hard-to-stage space and multi-property consistency
Use both: StillStream for everyday polish, a produced tour for the signature vacancy
The budget math
The honest comparison is cost per month of usefulness. A produced tour is a capital expense that depreciates as the building changes. StillStream is part of the Floorplate service, where sites run fully managed at $150 per month billed annually, and because the motion comes from photographs, refreshing it after a renovation means new stills, not a new production.
Most buildings do not need to pick a side. They need motion on the site today, at a cost that does not require a committee, with the option to invest in a produced tour when a marquee space demands it. Start with the motion you can have this month. Film when the space earns it.