Overhead cookery shots? how to ?

[Youcef Lynch]

Hi Guys ,

Just enquiring what would be the easiest way to get the overhead cookery style shots grip wise and lighting wise for a small to medium setup? with a scarlet w.

Any tips would be appreciated thanks again.

 

[W. Bill Magac]

A couple of years ago when I was involved in a food show shoot, there were large mirrors mounted over the food preparation and cooking areas. For overhead shots, we shot off the mirrors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-8tn0Es_q4

Enjoy.

 

[Youcef Lynch]

Cheers man appreciate the help!

 

[Luka Jovanovic]

We do this on a weekly basis. There is several ways of course and you can choose whatever suits you. How wide is your shot? Do you have any movement etc

GRIP:

One is to use a jib or some arm on a dolly.

Second is to use Ladders with base for mounting a camera. Panavision makes them as well as some other brands. Your grip can source them easily.

Third is to have some kind of locked off tripod mode. If your tripod supports this. Just make it as tall as you can and spread legs onedges of yout table. Super-clamp them for security reasons and you are good to go. Use foolcontrol to control your camera, focus will be locked of course on manual mode. My suggestion is to go a bit wider on lensing to get some perspective from overhead shot, to see some of the sides of dishes and stuff.

Lighting wise you have two main options.

One with one huge light on the side mimicking daylight (we use 4k HMI with butterfly frame 12ft x 12ft with full diffusion but you can use smaller also, with Dop Choice grid if available, on the other side bounce card or smaller frame OR some black cloth for negative fill depending on your style) Of course you can highlight some of the food and dishes with dedolights or Ice Light or whatever you prefer.

Second option is to use two side harsher sidelights (maybe skypanels without diffusions or kinoflos with grids) and some bounce card from camera perspective with a hole for lens.

It really depends what you wanna achieive etc
I can post some examples if you like

I hope I helped...