Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi guys, my name is Tung Le and I have 8 years
of expericence in shooting cinematic food videos For multiple brands locally and internationally.
Here are a few of my works So in this course, I will teach you the
12 techniques I have learned over the years Of course, I will show you the business side
of making food videos as well So in this course, you will learn how to make a food video
but more importantly, how to make them CINEMATIC This class is for those who are already
familiar with the basics of photography the basics of composition, rule of third
and also the basics of video editing as well So there is a link to the equipments that I use to
make my video more cinematic But I’ve acquired them over 8 years
NOT day one So you don’t have to go buy all of those equipments.
You can just have a basic smartphone or better a mirrorless camera with a macro lens,
then you can get started There are not a lot of information and experience out there
to help you make better looking food videos By better looking here, I mean more CINEMATIC,
not necessary the everything is bright kind of videos That’s kinda boring really I made my first food video
10 years ago at my friend’s house I wish at the time I could learn how to make videos more cinematic and interesting You can always look at my mistakes
and lessons to improve your work So the project is super simple: You can get great result
simply by having a mirrorless camera shooting your food with NATURAL light, it’s the best light, it’s full spectrum of colors, it’s very powerful So you would be making a 60 to 180 second video of the process of making any food you like maybe on your own or at a restaurant with NATURAL light. I suggest NATURAL light otherwise you are gonna need a lot of lights maybe through rental
or you can buy them on Amazon I don’t know what else to say,
this class is so straight forward I don’t know how to make up any
unique selling points I can only speak the truth:
Whatever is there is there Hope you make the best choice of it! See ya!!!
2. How I Shot 15 Restaurants in 8 Days: Last year I had a chance to work with Meat & Livestock Australia, they hired me to make 15 videos for 15 restaurant’s brands in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam I had 8 days to cover 14 locations and 2 weeks to deliver the final videos In this video, I’m going to share with you the planning and execution that went into making these videos possible in such a short time frame From the equipment: cameras, lenses, lights to the crew members, how to shoot on locations such as restaurants and finally the most difficult: the management of everything How did I land this project? Through word of mouth. I was already shooting so many videos for a famous brand called Andros at the time So the Marketing Executive of Andros moved to Meat & Livestock Australia so she gave me a call if I was interested in producing videos like these I said alright. I studied the references and came up with a general plan of what equipment, crew members location scouting and the possible risks I might encounter during production So my priorities were: MOBILITY, I had to shoot fast, because someday I had to shoot 3 restaurants in a row from morning to night The next is LOW-LIGHT PERFORMANCE, since I could not have a truck load of lights with me all the time I had to work with what I got: good cinematic result with less light The restaurants would not offer a ton of light because many of them were steakhouses so they would want the ambiance to be quite dark and moody instead of too bright I personally wanted to preserve this dark and moody feeling in the videos That was the TECHNICAL priorities, the SOCIAL priorities were as much even more important because these restaurants were high-priced so I had to respect what was going on there for example if a guest was dining, I had to pause my shoot for a few minutes to an hour OR to shoot somewhere else I also had to work with the chefs and the clients to manage their expectations otherwise there would be a lot of conflict and time wasted So let’s dive into the 4 FACTORS of production: Equipment, People (Crew Members), Locations, General Management Equipment: Camera: I figured to have a total of 3 cameras, all Sony A7SIII. Why I chose this camera is because it’s lightweight brilliant in 4K50, can also do 4K 100fps, brilliant low light performance and can be controlled remotely on an iPhone or Android through and app called Monitor+ I prefer this app much better than the Sony’s app: Imaging Edge. You should give it a try, the link is in the description below I also rented the Sony A74 because it can do 4K25 and shot high resolution photos Lenses: For the sake of mobility, I only packed 3 lenses with me: The Sony 24-70 F2.8 GM, the Sony 16-35 F2.8 GM and the Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS. Later I regretted not bringing my Carl Zeiss 100 F2 Macro lens I thought a few close-up filters would be enough but I was wrong, nothing beats a real, dedicated macro lens Gimbal: I had the DJI RS3 for the “free flow” moving shots. I had the Sony 24-70 lens on the gimbal while shooting the chefs making their recipes and the Sony 16-35 lens on while shooting the interior-exterior of the restaurants Slider: I rented a slider to have another moving shot since there were a lot of camera movement in the references so I wanted to be sure to satisfy my clients though I kinda hated that camera movement without any motivation behind it Tripod: I had a Secced V18 tripod for my telephoto (close-up) angle. I would have The Canon 70-200 on and I would personally operate this camera JUST because I loved it so much Extra iphones: to monitor the other 2 camera angles AND to help with focusing on the gimbal Audio: I had the Sennheiser MKH-416 as shotgun mic. I would attach it using a small clamp and run the XLR cable to the SoundDevices MixPre-6 But after this project was over, I realized it wasn’t a good idea because the chefs moved so much I should have had a dedicated sound operator to move the shotgun mic to wherever the chefs were Luckily my client didn’t require me to record sound live. I did it anyway because I really wanted my videos to have sound on it would be really nice to hear all the sizzles. I used the Sony Lavalier Mic to interview the chefs, also into the MixPre recorder then sync these files in post Light: I had 2 Arri M18 HMI lights. I loved these lights because of their power and further range of fall-off. Unlike the LEDs nowaday, they can be bright but canNOT shine too far away A big plus was I didn’t need a generator to power these lights, I can just plug in the wall and shine them on my subjects I do carry with me a few LEDs for tight spaces and situations when setting these lights up would cause too much trouble Light Modifier: I had a few diffusion panels and silk. I would make these lights a little orange as well to mimic the light at Golden Hour That’s basically it for the equipment needed, other things like SD cards or hard drives were essential but I’m not gonna mention them in this video You can check them out in my Kit link in the description below People (Crew Members): In order to move fast, I could NOT have too many people, so there were me as Director, Producer and Camera Operator AND Editor all at the same time 2 others camera operators, 3 gaffers to adjust lighting,
1 PA - Production Assistant and 1 photographer to shoot behind the scenes photos. Total of 8 people My job was NOT the most difficult but I had to do A LOT. I had to manage the equipment, the client’s expectation, the chefs, the other 2 camera operators, the lighting and data management Because I have done these kinds of work for almost a decade now, so for me it wasn’t too hard, I was on auto-pilot most of the time but for someone new, you might want to plan ahead of time and hire more people to support you I also had to scout the restaurants ahead of time and drew out where I would place my cameras and my lights BEFORE I started shooting The other camera operators didn’t have to be extremely skillful but they should be well trained to handle a gimbal or familiar with the camera system that I was using The attitude was more important than the skill, they should be professional not messing around while on set They should be on time and dress appropriately
(that is in black of course) The gaffers in this case were more important, because they were dealing with heavy lights they had to be the most careful and cautious of all. It’s better to hire someone with experience and a good attitude Because on locations such as restaurants, if the crew members were to break anything valuable the cost would go directly to my production company, so it’s not wise to hire careless gaffers here The last but not least was the PA - Production Assistant and the Behind The Scenes photographer He/she would do menial tasks such as calling the restaurants ahead letting them know we were coming, reporting to the Director any changes taking care of the crew members such as buying food and water, calling for a taxi, ect I think the Behind The Scene photographer is very important because you will need to BOTH prove your work and look back at your work for future improvements If you can’t afford one, just ask your crew members to sometimes use their phone to take pictures of you, that would be better than nothing at all So these are the core crew members of a shoot. I would like to have more people to assist me but that also meant more cost and more management needed to align all these people Locations: All these restaurants were a bit different to VERY VERY different in style and size but basically they all had a kitchen and tables, that’s it The difficult part was lighting. Some places were too bright, some were too dark, some were too small and some were too big While we were shooting, the chefs and their teams were working as well, so it was very crowded and hot and not particularly fun to be in Like I mentioned previously, I had to scout all the restaurants the day before. I mostly took photos of the kitchen and tables studied the sunlight movement using an app called Sun Seeker to know at what time I would have sunlight coming in in order to use or block it out The most important things were to plan out where I should place my lights and cameras So let’s go through each of these restaurant one by one for you see clearly what I meant
3. 9 Restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City: Day 1 was a steakhouse called Il Corda. It was a real challenge because we had to move 3 times from downstairs for grilling and upstairs for garnishing and on a big table for displaying So basically, 3 light and 3 camera setups, very different WITHIN 3-hour timeframe from 8 AM to 11 AM So we decided to shoot all the grilling first, then we would move upstairs for garnishing and display I had to place 1 Arri M18 HMI light out on the sidewalk to shine through the grill kitchen window, no diffusion, just orange gel The other light in the opposite direction diffused by a large silk I shot the close-up angle head on and the other camera operator on the chef’s right side, the other-other operator helped with focusing on an iPhone When we moved upstairs, the kitchen was too small for the Arri M18 so I had to use my LEDs in a similar fashion When we moved outside for display, the space was so limited, I had to rely much on the light from outside the window as my key light A backlight to the left because there was space there. A light to the ceiling as fill light and that was it A backlight to the left because there was space there. A light to the ceiling as fill light and that was it We moved to the next restaurant by 2 PM. It’s called P’ti Saigon, a much larger kitchen and table space We moved to the next restaurant by 2 PM. It’s called P’ti Saigon, a much larger kitchen and table space It’s the classic rectangular kitchen setup with the grill and gas stoves in the middle So I shined 2 Arri HMI lights: one from outside the kitchen, one from inside acting as fill light and backlight I also had a lot of natural light because of the big window I was on the close-up angle again with another operator on a gimbal for mobility and the other operator helped with focusing The table space was large and barely lit, so I used the 2 HMI lights to shine the sides left and right of the chef’s face instead of making the whole interior bright it could ruin the atmosphere of the restaurant I set up the slider for the wide shot of the chef displaying his recipes and my close-up on the plates The next day we went to a fusion restaurant called Esta. It was very easy to light the kitchen because everything was in the open the chef and his team were preparing their recipes in front of the guests So I had 2 lights in almost the same direction. These HMI lights could shine so far away I placed one at the entrance about 20 feet away and it still made a long shadow when shined on the cutting board The other light got 2 layers of diffusion so I could fill in the shadow. I shot with all 3 of the cameras, one close-up one gimbal standing right next to the chef, one on the slider in front of him This way, when he turned back to grill the meat, the gimbal operator could still catch the action and with the Sony A7SIII's amazing low-light capability On the third day, we had to shoot at 2 restaurants, one French and one Spanish, they were La Villa and Tomatito La Villa was particularly hard to shoot because of the entrance to the kitchen It’s still the classic rectangular kitchen with a big counter table in the middle but there was no way I could backlight without causing some difficulty for the cooking team So I had to forgo my formula and place a strong key light to the side and one light hit the ceiling as fill My close-up was in the front and the gimbal was on the chef’s right hand side We were ready to move to the next restaurant by 2 PM. Tomatito was a lot larger to place lights and cameras so I had the classic: 1 big key light in the front and 1 strong backlight behind the chef Again, moving my close-up camera inside to the grill area was not possible so I put faith in the gimbal operator The last day in Ho Chi Minh City was really hectic because we had to shoot at 3 restaurants for 4 brands from morning to night The first one was Quince. The chef was super talented, he did everything by himself The setup of Quince is very much similar to Esta but we could not set up a slider so I only had a close-up and a gimbal 2 lights, 1 at the entrance, the other diffused in the front. There were lights overhead of the chef so the result was a bit too bright for my liking but I could not fix it at the moment because I had to move fast By noon, we had already finished packing up and went to our second restaurant named Sol It’s very similar to Tomatito, we used the same lighting and camera setup The second brand was NOMU, they were having their restaurant renovated at the time so we could not shoot there instead their head chef decided to make his recipe in Sol’s kitchen so we shot it anyway By 4:30 PM, we moved to the last restaurant: Stoker. This place was big and dark There was no way we could make it look bright and I wasn’t even trying to I loved the dark and moody tone of this restaurant. Again, classic rectangular kitchen but the chef moved all over the place So I had a diffused key light to the right and backlight to the left. The gimbal operator would follow the chef and again
4. 6 Restaurants in Hanoi: So those were 9 brands and 8 restaurants we had shot in Ho Chi Minh City within just 4 days The next day we flew 1000 miles to Hanoi up in the north of Vietnam. Right after landing we went to scout the restaurants and rented 2 Arri M18 from a local rental house The very next day, we shot at 2 restaurants: Rico and Le Gout de Gia. At Rico, I ran into some firmware issue and it took me an hour to fix Setting lights in Rico’s kitchen was a nightmare as well. I decided to put up 2 lights as backlights and an LED to fill in. There was literally no space to stand I could still get my close-up so it was alright. I had to be very decisive with the chef on what I wanted to shoot because we didn’t have a lot of time The situation was very similar to Il Corda in which we had to move to 3 separate areas for grilling, garnishing and display After we got done in the kitchen, we moved to an area where the chef cut the meat and did the plating The gaffers had to move the lights again, 1 backlight, 1 sidelight. Then to the table area, I was pushed to the corner of the dining room I had 1 light come into the side of the subject and one in the back. By 1:30 PM we were ready to move again. Le Gout de Gia was a very small kitchen and dining room It had a sort of dome above the kitchen area. So the natural light was already there I just added 2 lights as backlights. We had to put them outside almost out on the street because there was no space left inside The 2nd day in Hanoi, we shot at a tiny kitchen of Jacksons Steakhouse. The real estate here was expensive so it’s understandable that they had to operate in such a small space Literally I could not spread a light stand inside this kitchen, we had to use all our LEDs and clamped them to the kitchen rack to get some light in there I shot my close-up from outside through a small window and a gimbal operator was inside The 3rd day was not fun because we had to shoot at Stellar Steakhouse, a very nice large kitchen and beautiful multiple dining rooms BUT because it was in a large commercial building, we could not bring in the big lights - the Arri M18 HMI lights. So I had to utilize natural light and my LEDs The results came out quite mediocre but that’s the best we got. I should have rented a few Aputure Light Storm 1200D then For the display shot I just used the giant windows of natural light as my key light and filled in a little on the side of my subject The last day we shot 2 restaurants, one Argentinian and one Italian: Los Fuegos and Culina Los Fuegos was exactly like Esta in kitchen setup so I used pretty much the same camera and lighting formula At Culina, it was the rectangular again and we had a ton of sunlight came in So I had one light to the right and one to the left side, both my close-up and gimbal shot to the left side of the chef When he moved around, I had the gimbal follow him. I could not do a close-up because of tight space At one point we needed a handheld LED to make the inside of the grill oven a little brighter So that’s it for how I set up my lights and cameras in all the restaurants The last thing I want to touch on is Management of Everything. As small as our crew, there was still miscommunication and misinformation The agency didn’t even bother showing up, we basically did very much everything from A to Z I think it’s very important to be PROACTIVE during such times, because it shows how good of a critical thinker you are and how valuable you are to the people who hire you to solve their problems It’s the social intelligence that you need to develop NOT the techniques in video making. I develop mine by reading such books as Mastery by Robert Greene, How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie and recently Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray Let me give you an example, when we shot at Esta, the chef got the information from our client saying he needed to make JUST ONE recipe but the client told us to ask the chef to make 3 or more recipes so the video would look better After we mentioned this to the chef, he got very angry because that was NOT what he agreed to. So I did not argue with either the client or the chef I immediately got to his restaurant and SHOWED him the video we just did for him the month before, saying that his recipe looked amazing and I was the best food videographer in town begged him to take this opportunity to make his recipes come to life. He happily agreed The same story went with the chef at La Villa, after I told him about my reputation and how much he would benefit from having his recipes on the large screen he decided to make 5 recipes for me to shoot So my only advice here to you is this, improve your techniques AND improve your relationship with people respect them, make them feel important and you will reap the benefit This is the end of my video, here is the result, 15 restaurant brands, 14 locations, 8 days of shooting and 2 weeks of editing. Please enjoy!
5. Avoid The Lazy Path: 2 years ago my producer asked me about Daniel Schiffer's famous EPIC B Roll food, product and restaurant videos I told him: "Yeah, it's cool...
But people will get tired of it." Fast forward 2 years later and we have seen these
EPIC food videos all over the internet A simple bowl of noodles could be made EPIC
by raising the tripod and tilt the camera down What's once EPIC isn't so "EPIC" anymore,
especially when it doesn't get you paid Sure you can get some money from AdSense and Sponsors like Schiffer did, but how many of you realistically? The lesson here is simple, if you are making videos for a living, you will need clients and agencies to survive I call them BRANDS. Brands just want their products to be CLEAN and CLEAR The so called EPIC-ness in your videos is rather
achieved by ways of lighting composition, sound, editing, camera angles, camera lenses,
timing, camera positions, colors, the props, costumes the location, the sound fx,
just so many elements to it and especially in food videos, creative ideas are much more valuable (like the 2 French guys of foodfilm.fr Michael Roulier & Philippe Lhomme) NOT by ways of transitions or camera movements alone even camera movements have their own meanings: what directions, the shapes in the frame and so many kinds of transition: matching audio, visual match cut, disrupted match cut and there are so many kinds of motion as well So I hope in this video, you can have a better understanding of what it is that you are actually doing
6. Why?: Why should you care to make your food video cinematic? You could make it flat, you could use the probe lens like everyone is trying so hard to get the miniature push in shot In my case, I found out why in March 2015
when I first saw: 12 things you can do with an egg by Food People Places It was visually and rhythmically stimulating unlike a TV commercial which is often too short
and has the same formula as one another It was the first time in my life I realized
it was possible for me to create such a work of art without having an enormous budget So in the past 8 years, I have made more than 200 cinematic food videos for many brands locally and internationally I'm going to share with you both the technical
and the business side of making cinematic food videos for a living I live in Vietnam, so the laws and taxes here
might be very different from your country but the principles of working with
agencies or clients will be the same It’s important to listen to
and respect them always Making food videos is not hard don't believe me? Just go on Youtube and Tiktok,
you can easily find countless numbers of food videos These videos are still valuable because of
their information and educational value but let’s be honest, they don't look very pleasing, they don't intrigue strong emotional responses from the viewers but let’s be honest, they don't look very pleasing, they don't intrigue strong emotional responses from the viewers I want to show you how you can make
your food videos more visually appealing attention catching
and emotionally intriguing Here are the techniques in short 1. Always backlight 2. Always go low 3. Always go macro 4. Always be warm 5. Always have the best ingredients 6. Always have the best cooking techniques (and equipments) 7. Always have the best light 8. Always shoot in slow motion 9. It’s nice have a character
and a back story 10. It’s nice to record clean sound 11. The editing is the hardest
and most time consuming 12. You will need at least
2 camera angles to cut to
7. Backlighting, Going Low and a Macro Lens: First is backlighting, I was taught very early on
by Rob Grimm to always backlight but I did not do it at first It took me a year of making boring looking videos until
I tried it the first time in 2016 and the result looked amazing The reason why backlighting works
is because when something is lit from behind it seems to have a religious feeling to it, a sort of halo of light surrounds the subject like in the old paintings of Titian So this lighting makes the food more
respectable and heroic. Second is shooting at a low angle There is no definite answer to at what angle exactly
because it depends on the shape of the food Sometimes I would go as low as 10 degree
but other times I have to go up to 60 degree in order to see what’s inside the pot Third is shooting macro in addition to backlighting and going low,
a macro lens is very important to create that awe that emotional pause when a viewer looks at
something they don't often see Because in the basic of
cinematic storytelling, Extreme Close Up (or macro) shots are used
to heighten the audience's emotional response these types of shot tell the audience:
This is important, pay attention to this! If you look on instagram or other social media,
people don't often take macro shots of their food because well, first they can’t, their phone
only have wide angle lens and a telephoto lens if they try zooming in,
the image would be pixelated It doesn’t look as nice as
an actual macro lens Second and more important,
they are greedy for more stuff in the frame This is helpful to convey information NOT to intrigue emotions from viewers about the food itself You can also see this in most corporate images,
they don't dare going macro (except M&S) in fear of something “not safe” something unfamiliar
to the customers’ eyes Therefore you often find these images to be flat and lifeless because they are trying to sell you something maybe a lifestyle or a product
NOT to make you feel mouth watering or empathize with the one who made these images
of beauful foods in the first place If you take your food videos seriously, use a macro lens for its full potential and take your viewers to a whole new world Here is the secret to Netflix series
Chef’s Table signature shot = macro lens + a turntable
8. Warmth and The Best Ingredients: The fourth technique is making your videos look warm by raising the temperature of your lights I often use orange gel over HMI lights and dial down my camera white balance
to 4800K or lower This warm tone can make your videos look more pleasing, welcoming and most importantly delicious. Why? Because it mimics the lighting at dusk
when you are relieved from work and ready to head home for supper and rest This is deeply ingrained in human psychology
for thousands of years it’s something very primal
at the subconscious level The fifth technique is to ask your chef or food stylist
to prepare the best looking ingredients, a lot of them The advantage of this technique is that
you DON'T have to reshoot a lot because the whole video could be ruined because of one single ingredient that looked ugly or badly damaged In traditional TV commercials, they use fake foods I’m not a fan of fake food, I have to fake it sometimes Because my production is very lean and efficient,
so I can shoot very fast without worrying about the food might sink or turn ugly
while waiting for approval or something But you do need to prepare extra ingredients
so you don't have to hold production to go to the supermarket
to grab extra onions That would be very unprofessional
but I have seen it happened a lot The same can happen to kitchen equipment,
better have them in advance and the best looking one Usually the food stylist will handle this
but you can be extra careful by preparing them yourself I would bring my travel gas stove
which I bought from Japan my cast iron skillets and a few other items
which I think can improve the outcome of my videos The downside of this is: it costs a lot. Not just money
but time and energy to bring and manage them on set Sometimes client or agency won't appreciate
your effort and it will be counter-productive So it’s better to communicate with your chef, food stylist
and client to avoid any misunderstanding
9. Support The Chef and Bring The Best Light: The 6th technique is to work with a competent chef and a team of support, they are crucial for the success on set The chef should be very well trained and supported otherwise you will waste valuable time on set
because he/she keeps making mistakes and you have to reshoot and wait
which is very problematic on set I suggest you work with the chef to prepare in advance
certain finished portions so that you won’t have to wait For example, there is baking in your recipe,
you could have it baked in advanced then you don’t have to wait for an hour and a half to
wait for the thing to get baked you’re gonna have the finished product so you
can keep shooting. Basically, it’s to save time on set When I was shooting cakes, there were a lot of
sponge cakes that need to be baked But the process of baking sponge cake took us so long,
we had to put a different camera to record the timelapse of that sponge cakes in the oven. But then we also had
the finished sponge cakes to continue shooting on set Obviously the oven is somewhere else,
so we could shoot 2 things that the same time That’s very efficient, so you need to keep
that in mind and prepare for such recipes which require hours of cooking. And also you would
have a backup for your recipes in case the first round, your chef did something unexpected
and failed. It happens sometimes. In my experience, I only have worked with 2 or 3 incompetent
chefs, the recipe didn’t come out right It took a lot of time just to make an omelette Don't work with someone who is not well prepared: ingredients, equipment and portions before the shooting day The 7th is always have the best
quality of light as possible The subject of lighting can be a course of its own,
it’s so complicated, I can talk about it for days lighting is so primal to human,
to any organism as the matter of fact The color of light, the diffusion of light, the amount of light, the angle of light, the direction of light, the fall off of light They all can affect the mood and emotion of viewers
when looking at just about anything This can only be learned by experience
because the sheer amount of combinations of the factors I just stated above are limitless,
so you wouldn’t know until you tried sometimes even after you tried, it’s still not working,
then you’d have to tweak a little I have learned lighting through painting.
I was deeply impressed by Caravaggio’s paintings hey are so harsh and cruel
and straight to the point Rembrandt’s paintings are very similar in that they are dark and moody, yet they look so real, so brutal and honest Maybe because of these qualities that I found myself deeply connected to this way of lighting in my videos However I can't always do that. Because I have to satisfy my client and agency’s needs as well They want their product to be visible
not necessary “real” So I always try to balance both worlds. Sometimes I went to far in my urge to create images like Caravaggio and Rembrandt So in Vietnam, where I’m currently working, people in the video and photo business have a saying goes: “Bright Faces Win Money” And I found it to be true most of the time. People just want to see their faces or their products clean and clear Bright, of course. So without telling you specifically
how to set up your lights, the goal should be to have your subjects as
clean and clear as possible The way I do it is with 3 HMI lights, I prefer HMI to LED because the fall off of these lights are further than LED so I can have long shadows and strong halos for my subjects, though they can be heavy and hot to work with I have liked them over the years, especially in 2017, the Arri M18 came out, it was great, much better than the 1200 I used I would have the classic 3 light setup: 1 diffused key light,
1 back light and 1 fill light hitting the ceiling I do carry a few LEDs for tight spaces
and Extreme Close Up shots
10. Slow Motion, Character and Sound: I shoot everything in 4K 50fps and some shots I ask the chef to do one or few more times to do slow motion I would choose something with a lot of actions
to shoot slow motion Slow motion is a lot more complicated than many think.
It requires strong lights lights that don't flicker because you will have to raise the shutter speed so you don't get too much motion blur I usually x2 or x4 my fps for my shutter speed.
For example when I shot 480fps on my Sony FS700 my shutter had to be at least 1/1000 to avoid
too much motion blur That’s just easy part, the hard part was focusing. To focus on something that was moving so quickly was extremely difficult If I was to close down my aperture to F5.6 or F8, I definitely needed stronger lights or moving my lights closer to the action otherwise
the output would be too dark So there is a checklist of steps I need to do
technically to shoot slow motion 1. Raise my Shutter Speed 2. Close down my Aperture
for easier focusing 3. Raise my ISO to compensate
the 2 settings above 4. Switch my lights from
50Hz to 1000Hz to avoid flickering 5. Switch off all other lights
in the room to avoid flickering My advice for slow motion is you really need to plan ahead on what you want to shoot in slow motion and maybe do a demo before you get on set, otherwise, it would cost too much time and data The 8 techniques above are what I consider essential for
a good looking food video My experience over the years has taught me
a few other lessons If I had a likable character with a back story,
the viewers would be more emotionally invested in my video than just looking at food alone The examples of Chef’s Table, Midnight Diner and Hokuoh Kurashi no Douguten would be perfect though it’s hard to keep these kinds of videos
shorter than 6 minutes Actually I first got interested in food videos
because I saw Jiro’s Dream of Sushi in 2011 It was a very life changing experience because at the time
I never thought I was gonna shoot videos for a living I was pursuing a major in Animation
because I really liked Ratatouille and movies by Pixar In recent years, I have tried to record clean audio on set
but I found it to be very difficult I used to look for stock sound for my food videos
and it’s such a lengthy and tiring process I bought the MixPre-6 as recorder and Sennheiser MKH-416
as shotgun mic to record while shooting I had to make sure everyone was silent
(even the chef) n post I had to sync all of my clips with that recording
and edited from there which was another hassle But in the end I found it to be very worthwhile My food videos had more life to them than just pretty images and music playing in the background
11. Editing 2 Angles: So that’s it for shooting food videos After all these difficult tasks the only and
the hardest task of all is THE EDITING But I find this task to be the most fulfilling of all because I’m now responsible for completing the creation of a work of art And it’s also the most frustrating because I have to take feedback and criticism from clients and agencies before moving on to finalize my video and get paid.
The process usually follow as these: 1. Structure my folders 2. Import clips to folders 3. Rename clips 4. Sync clips with audio records 5. Create project 6. Import Synced Sequence 7. Create my own sequence 8. Create Proxies 9. Start editing 10. Finish 1st draft 11. Look for stock music 12. Adjust my 1st draft to music 13. Render Version 1 with watermark 14. Upload to Frame.io 15. Get feedback and make changes 16. Render Version 2 with watermark 17. Get feedback and make changes 18. After client and agency confirm there will no longer be any change to the edit, I will add graphics and sound effects because if I added them before,
there would be too much work to change them later 19. Render Version 3 with watermark 20. Get feedback and make changes 21. Render Version 4 with watermark 22. After client say “ok”
I will render Version 5 without watermark I don’t use the word “Final” because in the past projects, I have used the word “Final” and client still wanted to change So what is after “Final”? “Final Final”? So I never use the word “Final” I just keep using the number: Version 1, 2, 3... When I started out, I did what most people do,
I looked for music first to edit on. This makes sense for beginner editors because to edit something on nothing is hard But after 5 years of doing this,
I found a fatal flaw in this way of editing: Because I was editing for someone else,
in this case: My client or my agency What if my client hated
the music I initially chose? Then the whole edit was screwed
and I got super disappointed because now the moving images were no longer in sync with the new music and I might have to start all over So you can see, this approach to editing
had caused me depression for years Nowadays, I just edit without music altogether. I would listen to whatever music I like and edit the clips from that This made it a lot easier to find stock music because I had looked through the clips and had a feel for what might be in the end Of course, after finding the stock music for my 1st draft, I would need to adjust my edit a little to fit it Now if my client hated the stock music, I would change without much emotional attachment to my edit Music before or after 1st draft
is totally your choice, if you don't have a client or agency to answer to, you can go with your initial choice of music It’s always better to have 2 camera angles to edit.
I didn't know this in the beginning so my cuts always appeared jittery because
it’s the same shot but different action I usually have 2 camera angles at least: LOW and OVERHEAD (or 90 degree) to cut in between I find it better to rig my camera to an overhead slider for overhead angle and a studio stand for my low angle In case a studio stand is too expensive or heavy to be carried around then a tripod would be enough though you might need someone to support you bringing it up and down for different angles I find dolly and crane to be
not necessary for food videos because the background is not super important in this case to be revealed by a dolly or crane You could use a crane for overhead shots but it can be really difficult to frame and operate your camera in such a case This is one example Foodfilm made for M&S
and the camera is really high
Tung L., Director + Editor
