Food Videography: How to Make Cooking Videos at Home on a budget

1. Intro: Hello, everyone. My name is Daniela. I'm a food blogger on the food Photographer, and I will show you in this class how you can create your own recipe videos at your home without expensive equipment and without being profession in this class, I will show you my process of crazy reviews, short videos without horse over and without talking here, the kind of videos that look like a tasty style but not necessarily are shot from about. The way I create my videos is with I'm would be, and with my camera or phone, I will show you both ways in this class. I want to show you the process of creating a video. It's not important that much what kind of software you're going to use. It's more important how you're going to approach the video creation process, and I want to give you all my tips and advice is about creating a recipe video a little bit about me. I have a food block called Danny School Kings and I create photography and also videos. For some of the recipes in this class, we're going to make the video of my strawberry ice cream cake. This is a video that I have on my YouTube channel and I will also give you the link to it so you can watch it. So I will give you a few tips about shooting. And then we're going to focus on the editing process and all the details of the veto. I started creating videos completely on my own without any advice, without any learnings. And with the time I have developed my own methods and styles. How to create the videos also show you where to find a royal different music, how to choose it and how to attach it to your video. I really hope you will enjoy this class. Let's get started. 2. Description and Prerequisites: Hi, everyone, thank you very much for joining my class. Let's start with the definition of body, the short food video. What are the prerequisites that we need in order to do it and what exactly we want to accomplish with our video? What are we going to need in order to make food videos at home camera or mobile phone tripod or something where you can place your camera fixed mark and time movie? This is the software I use, and this is the one I will be showing you during the class. If you prefer another one, the process will surely not be very different. You just need to understand how exactly it works. But most video editing programs are quite intuitive. There are a number of free video editing software options available also for PC, like The Vinci Resolve, open shot video, pets shortcut and more. We got informed videos. If you shoot with your phone, you might be able to edit your videos directly on a video editing phone up. There are a multiple free EPS for video editing. I find fascinating a bit harder for food videos due to the fact that I need to split multiple times each initial video, so I usually end up with a quite complex project. But you didn't tried and decide which option is easier for you. For video ups, I use sometimes video leap and also issued What do we want to accomplish in our food? We do. We want to make each step from the food preparation clear for the viewer. We also want to make the video as short as possible in order to keep the viewer engaged. We're not going to use voice a word, so old information would be presented in our actions. How do we accomplish these two important goals by filming the whole process of the food preparation and then cutting all the moments that are repetitive or don't need to be explained to the viewer? For example, if we pick the cream takes five minutes, we would only show a few seconds of this process and could arrest that way we're going to present the viewer what is happening without going into unnecessary details. We need to keep only essential information. You know where you do any detail which doesnt informational value for the recipe. Preparation is to be removed in order to make the video shorter. It is a good idea to make it faster. I usually make most sense in my videos four times faster than their nature of speed. That helps to keep the essential information and to give enough detest the viewer. Also, this would help you to hide some unnecessary movements, which you unconsciously do during the shooting. If you want to highlight a special moment, you can leave it at a normal speed or make it slower than its normal speed. That way it will stand out. 3. Camera Setup and Filming: camera set up, it is cost. I'm going to teach you how to make videos on your own without second person being able to support you by holding the camera. In my view, it is even better if you start feeling your full videos completely on your own, because you will learn easier the whole process. Also, the simple food videos require a static camera, so you need to have your filming device stabilized. A person holding it would inevitably move the device well. It is different if you can hire someone with enough knowledge to make your video is great. But the goal of this class is to show you how to make videos on a budget without special knowledge and expensive equipment. So what camera do you need? Yes, there is any camera I normally use my canon six D because it can export high quality videos . If you want to take your videos with a camera, you also need a tribal. There are some small tripods, which are easy to use on the kitchen counter. But as I usually take videos on my kitchen table, which is not super stable, they don't work for me. Filming a video is even easier with a mobile phone again, you might need a tripod or something to put your phone it. I have seen people making special cardboard tents and placing them on the ceiling. I have never tried it, and I'm not sure how it would work. But this is all options. I managed to make a video by fixing my phone on the books, As you can see in the photo. Other options are to make a flatly video by placing your phone on stack books above the scene. But that is not very easy. If you're planning to make videos with your phone, I advise you to invest in an inexpensive tripod for it killing. Before starting the camera, you need to make sure that your main object using focused in order to do it, place a bowl or cooking dish in the same where he will be cooking and focus on it with your camera phone. I prefer to use the manual mode of my camera. I said it in the following way. I focus on the ball and then move the focus of the lances for Moto manual. That way I have the focus always on one place without risking to move it accidentally. Be aware that in this case, if you move the ball, you might lose the focus, and that is inevitable in most cooking videos. That's why it is always good to have something underneath, like a tea towel on knocking that give you information. Where to place your bowl. I make mostly baking videos, so I dont show cooking connection. If you want to show cooking on a stove, you may want to purchase a portable electric stuff. You may also need a friend in order to disperse this team that will come out from the cooking pan. One more thing I forgot to mention in the beginning is that you need to be close to a light source. My shooting your video. If the lighting in your house is not that good, you may want to choose exactly the right time of the day when the sun is coming well through the window. Of course, you don't want direct light. If you have a direct like, you may use a diffuser or in curtain or something that can diffuse the light. The important thing is that you really need light for the videos. Otherwise, the quality of your video isn't going to be that good. Video becomes grainy when the light is not enough, so consider having enough light for your video. The best would be if you're close to a window without direct light coming through it. 4. Editing in iMovie: Let's start a new project in my movie. In order to do that, we click on the Create New Where is the plus with Elect movie and with click on OK, in order to create our movie here, import media. After clicking it, you can select the videos and any kind of media that you want to up to your video. We'll start with the videos that we have created for our ice cream cake. So they're in my folder of travel Strawberry Ice Cream cake with like the mall and we import insides. I'm the well, we have four videos, but it turns out that I have one one of these videos, which is not really adding daily two hour movie. It isn't going to be included in our food video because this was the video I took just to do an experiment, Justo. So to check how the camera waas located. So I'm going toe remove this one. In order to do that, I'm going toe right click on this video and I will select delete media from events. Then I move is going to ask me if I want really to delayed it, I will say yes And that's what's going to happen just to give you a little bit of background about movie on top. Top left. You see the media that you have added and you are the media, either by clicking on the arrow here or there is another arrow on the top left. If you click it, you cannot more media toe your video. So there is the media. Don't obviously my media old you titles by grounds traditions where you can find different things for a movie. I will explain you about titles and transitions a little bit later. This is what we're going to use as well in our video on the top, right, You see the screen where you can see basically what your video looks like and down. You can manipulate the video after dropping their your media. So first thing we need to do after dragging down the videos is to detach the out. We don't want the Saudi you that comes with the videos. We detach and then we delete separately all the old you pieces so right click the touch and then delete. We see now our clip is quite long and what we need to start is to start splitting it and deleting basically the parts that we don't need, because we want it to be short and we want to see only the parts that are important for our video. But before 13 to split, we want toe just to make some color adjustments. Brighton. It's going trust and situation and warmth. We can just deny movie. It's kind of limited, but it's fine because we can. These are basic adjustment that we can do after adjusting the first video we want Toe do copy, right Click copy and we Want Toe based on Lee, the from the top based adjustments color correction. That way, we're synchronizing all the videos were making them just it along the same way. Now finally, comes the time for us to start beating the video. It's not easy for me to explain how exactly I cut my videos and shorten them. Normally. Try to consider how many actions are happening during the videos and to leave just few seconds of each action so that the viewers are able to understand what is happening. As I already mentioned beating the eggs or whipping the cream, we don't want to show the whole five minutes of the process. We just want to show a little bit in the beginning and a little bit of the end in orderto demonstrate how, exactly the creamy starting toe get whipped. The whole cream whipping should take around five seconds ability, and each and every single action should be displayed so that we're not missing anything important. Every brilliant that is added to the ball has to be displayed. And if we do someone neccessary actions like, for example, scrapping the ball. The bureau's don't need to see how we do this. They only need to see that the egg whites are going to the other ball toe the egg yolk. So this is the only thing that is important. My advice is to start cutting down the videos also to make sure you're not cutting out moments which are necessary to be displayed. And then, little by little, refine your selection. Your video should be between 30 seconds and two minutes. Honestly, on this one, I'm not that good. I often leave my videos quite too long, but I think on improving 5. Editing Speed and Adding Transitions: one of the things we can do in order to make our video even shorter is toe make the speed faster. So here you see how I made the speed faster. Select the individual videos and on top from the menu I select peed in from Normal. I put fast. If you want to make all the videos fast said, like copy from the 1st 1 that you already made it four times faster. Select the rest with the control and click and paste from the top based adjustments, speed and all the clips will become Things be that is the 1st 1 from which we caught it and now having them faster. It's even easier to spot, which are the elements which we don't need. Let's say we don't want tohave one minute mixing because the mixing is obvious. We want just a few seconds in order the viewers to understand that there is a mixing involved. We see now much more clearly the moments which are not needed in our food video, and we can remove them by against putting individual clips and deleting the access. Also, by making the videos faster, we can kind of hide some movements that we don't want toe show. It's easier to make the video smooth thumb, because when we cook, obviously we're doing some movements which not always are that precise. And by making it quicker, it actually focuses on what we're doing and not on the the way we're doing it. So, speeding up my videos, I find always been official here. I want to show you an example of how I'm splitting the video and also removing some part that is not needed in combining two different actions with the transition. So first we have here the mixture action that is being finished. Then I'm adding the baking powder toe the flower and by adding the baking powder, I did also some movements which were not really necessary to be displayed in the video, like collecting some some part of the baking powder which fell on the table. So here I'm going toe cut a little bit from this from this video and in orderto be seamless transition from the mixing in the bowl toe, the adding the baking powder inside the flower. I'm going to other transition the transitions. You can find them on top, left side if you switch from my media toe transitions top. There are different kinds of they're called transitions there, basically the way one clip moved into another one. We've all seen these in different presentations, so I'm going to choose one. But then I decided this one is not the one I needed. So eventually I decided to use the, uh, cross blur. Basically, one seeing is getting blurred and moving into the other one. And here I managed to split the clip in several parts in order just to show the process of taking the baking powder and putting it inside the ball and mixing it gently. Nobody wants to see the rest of the actions. 6. Add Photos, Titles and Slides: So now we have our video around two minutes, which it's more or less fine and what we want. What are some photos in orderto show? The final product. I usually add photos in the beginning and the end of the video. So here I have in my library several photos I'm going to choose the ones I believe are most appropriate for being displayed in a video, and we import the photo the same way as we import the videos. So I'm going to drag on photo to the to the beginning of the video and now we start adding titles. Titles are basically annotations which show text in our video. If you click on the top titles, there are some titles which our default position, but you can change some elements like the fund or the color. It's not very versatile, but it works for just a simple video. So I added these title, which actually is called poor folk use, basically blurring out the background and shows that I don't want to use it for the start of the video, and by blurring the background, it is going to call attention on the text. I will change the fund toe. My preferred phoned and I will increase part of it. And the decrease your part. You can adjust the duration of your title. I put mine the day from the middle of the photo to the ends. I also just the duration of the photo. The default is about four seconds, and here we go. So basically, we see the photo first, and then it gets blurred out and you see the title. I'm going to act also transition between the photo and the action so that it transitions smooth three toe. The start of the action across Blur is one of my preferred transitions. As you can see here, you can also just the duration of the transition by clicking in the middle, and there will be a window which will appear with the duration. I'm going to start adding also titles for the different clips in order to show to the viewers what exactly is happening. Because it might not be clear I'm dragging and dropping this title I'm selecting. This one is a Texas bottom right where it's less disturbing. I want to write what exactly is happening. Actually stop egg yolk egg whites here are a lot of information that we are mixing the yolks. I keep my titles very simple. First of all, it's not meant to be written a lot. They're not allowing you to much without the text becoming almost invisible. And also nobody has time really to read a lot while they're watching. So little by little, I'm going toe a titles toe all the moments which I believe are not very clear. And that way it also shows the ingredients which are being used. So now I'm going to add a few slides also toe the video. The reason why I would like to add slides is because they will contain my local. What is the purpose of the slides? This lighter frames with text when we don't display specific action, like, for example, baking freezing the cake. I'm not showing how the cake is in the freezer or how the cake is in the in. Diovan and I use lights in orderto rd sections toe the video here. I'm reading my text in keynote, which is similar to Power Point, and I'm bringing in pdf just the slide I need and then I will added toe video Samos. I had the photos. It will appear the same way. Just it will be not J pick, but pdf file. Okay, so I saved my pdf and now I'm going to look for it and I will add it to my video. So when I select the file automatically, it appears in one of the tree cropping options, which is called Ken Burns. It's automatically created as a movement. There is a start point and an end point and basically the images moving between the start Indian Point, and this creates the illusion of movement. So I'm checking how it appears because I want my logo and my text to be visible at all times during the this movement, and I would like to just it a little bit, and that is exactly what I want to accomplish. There is delusion off text, moving from the bottom to the front. I would love one more slight. The 1st 1 is about baking. 2nd 1 is about freezing, going to write my text, and I will export it again. Pdf and did is another slight, just radiant before the final photos, and I will just again the movement and Dr the slight. I will add also to more photos in order to show the final product to the audience. Photos as well similar to slights appear automatically in came burns. I move in the text pretty well, automatically the image. But then I'm going to just the start Indian point because I want toe tohave it the way I like it. Otherwise, the system is detecting it somehow. But it's not always the best way. And this is Theo. End of the video. I love the one title just again to say Enjoy. And that is the end of the video. We are missing only one thing here, and this is what some music 7. Adding music to the video: last thing we need to do for our video is to add music. I normally find music in the YouTube library. It's free resource for music that you cannot do your videos. Of course, you need to take away the requirement for each track that you find because some of them required that you need toe. Mention the altar in your in your videos in order to be compliant. Here, you can see attribution not required attribution require. So there are trucks which the moment when you open and you can see here that attribution is required. So just just to keep that in mind, Oh, the trucks here are free. I'll, uh, put the future to all licenses. So we want toe add music to our video. It's a video about ice cream cake, strawberry ice cream cakes or the way I'm imagining the music. Here is light bright hippie, something like this. So let's try toe, take some music. I'll filtered by moves today, chippy and, uh, the I'm not going to add any more filters at this point, so let's maybe try one or two Secretary to country. I don't like it very much. Let's try to see here. Maybe we want some dance. Ellen Elektronik. I know this sounds like too much. Children, No country folk, not really loves of my style. Uh, no, I wouldn't say so. Not really the best for this particular video. Actually, it's completely up to you. What kind of your going toe find? I'm usually looking for something that I like. I'm sure that a lot of the people that watch videos don't watch it with physical. It's not really the most important part. Still, I really like toe shoes. My music and I enjoy that process. So we have now our music for the video. I have chosen the music I like. It's two minutes, and our video is two minutes and 29 seconds, which means that we'll need to adjust it a little bit in orderto fit the video. Basically, the's duration is not enough to cover our whole video, but I will show you also how to do that. Sometimes it's easier to have our music longer than the video, but at least you can see now how I do the adjustment this way. One more thing, 12. The music should be the last thing you're writing to your video because otherwise, if you make any changes after the video, that's laughter. Music is added. You may have your video of synchronized, especially if the music video is shorter. Then clip and you need toe twice and to make a just adjustment in the middle. Okay, so we added here just like this and we start from the beginning. Here we have it. We don't have any other sounding Digeo, so I will leave it 100% sounds, cities. Otherwise, if you have anything else, you find a truck that is to sound is not strong enough. You may want to increase it or you might want to decrease it if you have somebody talking in the background. So we have hear our music coming right to here. So what we need to do is at it again from the beginning and to cover this small part, the tasting without music, I wanted to still here and let's see how it sounds in this love part. Okay, it stops here, and it will start like actually is going to be quite easy because it kind of the final parties Easy toe separate from the rest and we can just have it stop and start again. Some drugs are really difficult. Just start with the end. But here we're not going to get much issues. Let's try sweet. Yeah, I think it's fine. So we have our clip here, So here it is, and it continues here. So let's see again where it stops, Just eat. Okay. I think it's fine. Honestly, nobody would notice that it has been cut this part, But we need to do one more thing now because it didn't We have only music here for longer, and we don't want all these music to continue after the The video said, At least I don't like so we can cut maybe around here, actually issue with with a movie that we can't just cut the music. We need to cut the music with frame. So if you want toe, cut it a little bit longer than let's say you don't want to cut it to stop right away. After the after the frame stops, you can just increase the last photo little beat You could 60 seconds. Okay, we can cut it here split, and then this one, we can just make it smaller. So now we have some music still continuing after the war. So in order toe go See here. It just stopped and we don't want it. Oh, so we just take these parts. If you see this little if you put the course or here you see this really still bull and you just move it forwards. And it basically makes the music toe to fade out instead of stopping abruptly. I don't know. Let's see. So this is it. Basically, it's, uh how are you doing? 8. Project & Final thoughts: Thank you so much for watching these class. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you learned a lot of new things I would really like. Toe, See your homemade videos, please Post in the project section. Your video that you made after you want to discuss it will be your project for the course. And if you have any questions, I will be really happy toe and something. Thanks again for watching the club and good luck with your videos.