My service dog organization has its annual gala coming up and we are going to use the occasion to announce the purchase of a new building. I want to create a short (15-20 seconds maybe) teaser video that starts off showing the earth in space then zooming in smoothly until we get all the way to the building.

How hard is it to do something like that? Any tips?

Easy enough to do with Google Earth. Here's an example I just made going to 1 World Trade Center.



Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpDoTMKQSZA

If you want, email the address to me and I'll create a clip for you.

I used Google to do that. I didn't make it as smooth as it sounds like you want. It was stills. I don't think they had the capability back then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB7i1h3whn4

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I found a new product called Google Earth Studio that sounds like it is designed for doing this kind of animation. Anyone using it?

I'd like to maybe start the globe over europe and have it rotate around to Florida as it zooms in to the state then to my town and gets to an aerial view of the building than pans and tilts around to a street view of the main entrance.

After playing around with Google Earth Studio to get the hang of it, I was able to create this video pretty easily:

After a couple hours learning my way around Google Earth Studio, this is the final video I produced ( music warning if you're at the office). Zooms in to to our current location, then zooms out and back in to the new building.

GES is a really cool tool and fairly powerful too. A blast to play around with. I had a really good time making this video.