Show Them the Roof They Can't See

The play

1. Walk the whole roof first with the camera off. Look, poke, get to the far slope, decide what is wrong and what you would do about it — the same walk, in the same order, on every house (Play 2, "Run the Same Visit Every Time"). A video shot while you are still making up your mind sounds exactly like a man making up his mind.
2. Then film it in one take, no editing. Start at the ladder and walk it in the order you walked it. One unbroken take is the whole point — a cut video is a produced video, and a produced video is a sales pitch. Nobody re-shoots because the light was bad.
3. Narrate what it is and what it means, not just what it looks like. "That's the flashing where your roof meets the chimney, it's split, and that's the water coming into your back bedroom." Say it the way you would say it to your brother-in-law. The roof is not the thing you are explaining — the consequence is.
4. Show them the parts that are fine, out loud. The decking is solid. This slope has years left. A man who names what does not need replacing is believed about what does, and that is a great deal of what you are buying with the footage.
5. Send it before the price, in the same place the estimate is going to land. They watch it, they understand what the number is for, and then the number arrives (Play 4, "One Price, Sent Today"). Reversed, the video becomes a defense of a price they have already flinched at.
6. Use whatever camera you can climb with. A phone in your hand works. First-person glasses cost a few hundred dollars and free both hands, which is worth something on a steep roof — one shop that uses them credits them with a real lift in what they close, and that is one shop's read on their own numbers, not a promise about yours. What matters is that the footage exists and that it is yours.