Short films are becoming popular amongst ambitious realtors looking for a competitive edge to stand out in the city’s housing market.

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7 years ago

7 minute read

Forget the gimmicks, fridge magnets, or free home evaluations, short films are becoming popular amongst ambitious realtors looking for a competitive edge to stand out in the city’s housing market.

A successful woman driving a Telsa pulls up and parks in the two car garage, she struts confidently through her back yard. She’s obsessed with a song by a trendy Soundcloud famous DJ, Mallrat https://www.facebook.com/lilmallrat/, from which she switches from her Model 3 electric car, to iPhone, then to her house Sonos system, seamlessly, to which she starts to dance. We’re given a cinematic tour of the smart home, from room to room has the dancer, performed by professional dancer, and successful Edmonton business woman, Larissa Kovelanko, as she rhythmically moves her body throughout the entire home. The home located at 8617 108A Street, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

While the beautifully shot film could be advertising any number of things – electric cars, dance classes, new religion for adults seeking meaning – it’s actually an ad for a home. The home, a brand new custom infill home built by Vrabel Homes in the core of Edmonton, near 109st, and Saskchawean drive, blocks south of Whyte Avenue. Edmonton’s bustling market place is prime location for people to shop, or hang out with friends at the local coffee shops within a short radius.

The film is the brainchild of realtor Nikita Gylander with Core Real Estate Group (corerealestategroup.ca), who sold Edmonton cinematographer Raoul Bhatt (https://www.facebook.com/raoulbhatt) his home which was built by the same builder. Nikita, the social and well connected Edmonton realtor who’s kept tight relationships with all her clients, approached Bhatt for a video, whom she was aware was in the movie business. The movie’s uniqueness shines throughout this 4min and 20second video, which we discover the three-storey house, visually and emotionally.

“The price point was much higher than what was common in the neighbourhood, because it’s a brand new home, an infill, and it has a unique layout, high end finishing’s and ability to generate an income with it’s basement suite, ideal for someone who wants a new home, but is investment savvy, ie the two bedroom legal basement suite could rent for $1800 a month, which would cover $350,000 of the mortgage. With university students at UofA just blocks away, and anyone that may enjoy flavourful foods and sips of chai at hip local indian fusion ‘coffee shop’ Remedy. So I knew the exposure [of the listing] needed to be greater than usual,” she explains.

With that in mind, Raoul suggested a short video that would appeal to her perceived prospective buyer… Nikita, an outside the box thinker, thought it would appeal to a young family looking for a quiet property in an attractive neighbourhood, or a professional that wants to be in the mix of it all. And it worked. The video has been viewed thousands of times, and the house with increasing inquiries for viewing, which was listed just last week, for the asking price at $1.1 million.

In Edmonton, real estate videos – from fanciful creations like straightforward virtual tours – are becoming more popular among realtors looking for a competitive edge in a saturated market.

According to the Edmonton Real Estate Board, there are some 3000 real estate agents working in the Edmonton and surrounding area. Forget fridge magnets. Some realtors are now doing anything to attract new clients, from throwing “wine and cheese night” open houses to branding ice cream bicycles that pedal around local fairs, this just shows how far agents are willing to go for their clients, in this case the builder of this infill.

Raoul Bhatt, After 22 years of running a software company, who initially got into film to create cinematic stories of his softwares, which have been used by NHL, Superbowl, WWE Wrestlemania, Fall Out Boy. Which also produced a short web series for Booster Juice in 2017. Has been increasingly been approached to produce docs and tv shows by national Canadian brands. Bhatt, still a CEO of his software company, has ventured into the movie business, being featured by Jetset Parking which got 1/2 million views (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AtsFUKho98), and Swimco.com (https://www.swimco.com/2018/06/meet-our-swimsuitmodel-raoul-bhatt/). Early into his new career, Raoul has realized, it’s doing things differently that makes his business stand out, and storytelling through cinema compliments his other ventures.

“The typical Realestate video, they’re definitely cheesy, but the films do to job, but when you make a movie, those are never forgotten, doesn’t matter what you’re offering” says Raoul Bhatt, who advocates anything he does be like a movie.

His film isn’t just showing off the space’s amenities, they’re also meant to be aspirational. For Nikita Gylander and Vrabel Homes, he tailored this video to who he imagines is the prospective buyer, whether it’s a professor, or a young successful career woman.

“These films show what life could be like if you lived in this home,” says Bhatt. “Instead of just some beauty shots where you can turn off the video halfway through, [lifestyle films] work because people want to see the beginning, middle and the end.”

Related Topics:Edmonton feature Film marketing Real Estate short film

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Saskatchewan becomes first Canadian province to fully eliminate carbon tax

Published on April 1, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Saskatchewan has become the first Canadian province to free itself entirely of the carbon tax.

On March 27, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced the removal of the provincial industrial carbon tax beginning April 1, boosting the province’s industry and making Saskatchewan the first carbon tax free province.

“The immediate effect is the removal of the carbon tax on your Sask Power bills, saving Saskatchewan families and small businesses hundreds of dollars a year. And in the longer term, it will reduce the cost of other consumer products that have the industrial carbon tax built right into their price,” said Moe.

Under Moe’s direction, Saskatchewan has dropped the industrial carbon tax which he says will allow Saskatchewan to thrive under a “tariff environment.”

“I would hope that all of the parties running in the federal election would agree with those objectives and allow the provinces to regulate in this area without imposing the federal backstop,” he continued.

The removal of the tax is estimated to save Saskatchewan residents up to 18 cents a liter in gas prices.

The removal of the tax will take place on April 1, the same day the consumer carbon tax will reduce to 0 percent under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s direction. Notably, Carney did not scrap the carbon tax legislation: he just reduced its current rate to zero. This means it could come back at any time.

Furthermore, while Carney has dropped the consumer carbon tax, he has previously revealed that he wishes to implement a corporation carbon tax, the effects of which many argued would trickle down to all Canadians.

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) celebrated Moe’s move, noting that the carbon tax was especially difficult on farmers.

“It puts our farming community and our business people in rural municipalities at a competitive disadvantage, having to pay this and compete on the world stage,” he continued.

“We’ve got a carbon tax on power — and that’s going to be gone now — and propane and natural gas and we use them more and more every year, with grain drying and different things in our farming operations,” he explained.

“I know most producers that have grain drying systems have three-phase power. If they haven’t got natural gas, they have propane to fire those dryers. And that cost goes on and on at a high level, and it’s made us more noncompetitive on a world stage,” Huber decalred.

The carbon tax is wildly unpopular and blamed for the rising cost of living throughout Canada. Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $80 per tonne.

Automotive

Electric cars just another poor climate policy

Published on April 1, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

The electric car is widely seen as a symbol of a simple, clean solution to climate change. In reality, it’s inefficient, reliant on massive subsidies, and leaves behind a trail of pollution and death that is seldom acknowledged.

We are constantly reminded by climate activists and politicians that electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. Canada and many other countries have promised to prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade. But if electric cars are really so good, why would we need to ban the alternatives?

And why has Canada needed to subsidize each electric car with a minimum $5,000 from the federal government and more from provincial governments to get them bought? Many people are not sold on the idea of an electric car because they worry about having to plan out where and when to recharge. They don’t want to wait for an uncomfortable amount of time while recharging; they don’t want to pay significantly more for the electric car and then see its used-car value decline much faster. For people not privileged to own their own house, recharging is a real challenge. Surveys show that only 15 per cent of Canadians and 11 per cent of Americans want to buy an electric car.

The main environmental selling point of an electric car is that it doesn’t pollute. It is true that its engine doesn’t produce any CO₂ while driving, but it still emits carbon in other ways. Manufacturing the car generates emissions—especially producing the battery which requires a large amount of energy, mostly achieved with coal in China. So even when an electric car is being recharged with clean power in BC, over its lifetime it will emit about one-third of an equivalent gasoline car. When recharged in Alberta, it will emit almost three-quarters.

In some parts of the world, like India, so much of the power comes from coal that electric cars end up emitting more CO₂ than gasoline cars. Across the world, on average, the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car using the global average mix of power sources over its lifetime will emit nearly half as much CO₂ as a gasoline-driven car, saving about 22 tonnes of CO₂.

But using an electric car to cut emissions is incredibly ineffective. On America’s longest-established carbon trading system, you could buy 22 tonnes of carbon emission cuts for about $660 (US$460). Yet, Ottawa is subsidizing every electric car to the tune of $5,000 or nearly ten times as much, which increases even more if provincial subsidies are included. And since about half of those electrical vehicles would have been bought anyway, it is likely that Canada has spent nearly twenty-times too much cutting CO₂ with electric cars than it could have. To put it differently, Canada could have cut twenty-times more CO₂ for the same amount of money.

Moreover, all these estimates assume that electric cars are driven as far as gasoline cars. They are not. In the US, nine-in-ten households with an electric car actually have one, two or more non-electric cars, with most including an SUV, truck or minivan. Moreover, the electric car is usually driven less than half as much as the other vehicles, which means the CO₂ emission reduction is much smaller. Subsidized electric cars are typically a ‘second’ car for rich people to show off their environmental credentials.

Electric cars are also 320–440 kilograms heavier than equivalent gasoline cars because of their enormous batteries. This means they will wear down roads faster, and cost societies more. They will also cause more air pollution by shredding more particulates from tire and road wear along with their brakes. Now, gasoline cars also pollute through combustion, but electric cars in total pollute more, both from tire and road wear and from forcing more power stations online, often the most polluting ones. The latest meta-study shows that overall electric cars are worse on particulate air pollution. Another study found that in two-thirds of US states, electric cars cause more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars.

These heavy electric cars are also more dangerous when involved in accidents, because heavy cars more often kill the other party. A study in Nature shows that in total, heavier electric cars will cause so many more deaths that the toll could outweigh the total climate benefits from reduced CO₂ emissions.

Many pundits suggest electric car sales will dominate gasoline cars within a few decades, but the reality is starkly different. A 2023-estimate from the Biden Administration shows that even in 2050, more than two-thirds of all cars globally will still be powered by gas or diesel.

CanvasJS.com

Source: US Energy Information Administration, reference scenario, October 2023
Fossil fuel cars, vast majority is gasoline, also some diesel, all light duty vehicles, the remaining % is mostly LPG.

Electric vehicles will only take over when innovation has made them better and cheaper for real. For now, electric cars run not mostly on electricity but on bad policy and subsidies, costing hundreds of billions of dollars, blocking consumers from choosing the cars they want, and achieving virtually nothing for climate change.