Real World Experience in Commercial Food Video Production

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 clients. 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: 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 course, you can have a better understanding of what it is that you are actually doing.

In the past 8 years, I have made more than 200 cinematic food videos for many restaurants, F&B brands: Esta, Quince, Stoker, La Villa, Il Corda, Stellar Steakhouse, Park Hyatt, Lipton, Andros, King BBQ, Meat & Livestock Australia, ect. I'm going to share with you both the technical and the business side of making cinematic food videos for a living.

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 valuable for 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. I want to show you how you can make your food videos more visually appealing, attention catching and emotionally intriguing.