How to Shoot Professional Food Commercials: A Step-By-Step Tutorial
While we are filmmakers and content creators first, the team at Syrp Lab are also huge foodies. It’s not just about trying new restaurants, recipes and the latest trends (although there is plenty of that!). We’re also interested in seeing how the next generation of creators are filming and using technology to showcase food and drink in new and exciting ways.
We’ve all seen the crazy-delicious food photography and filmmaking splashed across social media, with food looking so good you can almost taste it through the screen. This is the art of commercial food photography and filmmaking, and we wanted to know how it was done, and try it for ourselves.
We may not be professional food stylists or food photographers, but we know a thing or two about filmmaking and can share some secrets about how to recreate some of the best looking food commercials without an expensive setup or Michelin Star cooking skills.
In this video, we take you through the whole process from start to finish. You’ll see what kind of equipment they are using, the studio setup, some food photography tricks and tips, and how to get a final product that looks as good as anything you see on TV.
Preparation is key for a fast and smooth food ad shoot
As a rule of thumb, it’s always better to put time into planning and preparation before you start shooting. This is especially true of food shoots. The food is the main focus for this production and when you are shooting up close, details matter.
For our food ad, we wanted to replicate the style of ad where the food moves with an invisible hand, combined with maple syrup or sauce dripping from above. We all love pancakes and syrup, so choosing the subject was easy. But rather than regular pancakes, which tend to be floppy and break easily, we went with Japanese Souffle pancakes which are smaller, thicker and easier to handle. They are also delicious, so if you’ve never tasted them, we suggest you rectify that immediately!
If you want to make the Japanese soufflé pancakes yourself, here are a few tips:
- increase the amount of baking powder a little
- gently fold a teaspoon of white vinegar into the batter to ensure there is enough acidity for the leavening agent to work fully
- use an egg ring to keep the pancakes a consistent shape and size, which will help them rise and have a nice thickness.
Choose the right studio setup and equipment
So how do you get smooth controlled movement in your home recording studio without expensive cinema-grade pro tools? Patience, testing and some DIY creativity! To get the smooth motion and level of control we see on professional commercials, we used a couple of to get the up and down movement of the pancakes. We then used a to rotate them so that all the elements come together at the same time.
Food styling is very important, but light composition is also critical in making Japanese soufflé pancakes look as delicious as possible. For our video, we used 3 Litepanels Sola 6+ and 1 Manfrotto Lykos LED panel and turned them as bright as possible to get a good depth of field.
The light setup will change depending on your equipment, home recording studio setup and the type of food you are shooting. Plan out your lighting from the start and test it on the actual food to make sure you are getting the desired effect.
Pulling ad design together with post-production
After shooting wrapped, our special effects magician Matthijs Blok took the footage into Nuke for post-production. There were three main steps to this process: remove the wires, clean up the background and apply colour grading. Colour grading is one of the most crucial steps in food photography as the human eye is trained to recognise food that looks slightly off.
Overall, we are very happy with the results and would wolf down those pancakes any day of the week! To hear more about post-production, some extra food photography tips and what we would do differently the second time around, be sure to watch the full video.