How To Shoot Awesome Food Videos

If you just started out as a food vlogger or a Food business owner who documents content for your shop, hop on and get quick tips on how to produce quality food videos for your brand!

Everything posted on social media has a standard aesthetic whether you’re posting on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Here’s a few tips on how to keep your audience enticed without sacrificing your content!

But first, you need to know that there are three main steps in video production: Pre-production, Production, and Post-production.

What you’ll need for Pre-production:

• Invest in must-have video equipment

To produce visually appealing photos or videos it is important to have an equipment you personally vouch for. These are the three items you basically need: camera, tripod, and lighting. Others opt to use their phone camera since newly released phones are marketed with high quality back cameras. However, it is known especially by the pros in the industry that digital cameras are way more superior than phone cameras. 

Secondly, you need a tripod to help you shoot! Especially when you are a one-man team, this is like an additional arm making sure you got the angle and shot perfectly. Some beginners buy a phone stand that is good for frontal shots. Although, it is better to have a tripod that can take top shots especially when you’re cooking while shooting your content.

Lastly, lighting equipment, there’s a wide variation to choose from depending on your need and budget. But as beginners, you can opt for a simpler equipment, say, a ring light or others even prefer natural lighting since the subject being captured is food.

Here are samples of food shots with natural lighting:

Another factor you might want to consider is audio/ sound. Other videos do not have live audio or voice over but they insert music. In that case they are sites that can give you free music. But if you’re opting for a voice over audio, you can start by using your earphones as your microphone.

What to consider for Production?

Other than the materials and ingredients itself there’s something else you need to consider in producing quality food videos.

• Design your Set-up

Your set-up or also known as production design is where you shoot. Do you prefer filming in a modern kitchen? Outdoors? Or do you like to create a make-shift cooking area in your dining area? Talking about aesthetic, this is where it comes in. Your aesthetic must be founded in your brand. The easiest way to decide on it is with the help of color palettes. You can combine all the colors that appeal to you.

What to keep in mind during post-production?

Here comes the most technical part: editing your videos to cater to social media’s standard of quality content video. After filming your content, take note of these following practices that can assist you in post-production.

•  Keep your videos short

It is necessary to know where you’re releasing this content because TikTok and Instagram videos range from 15 to 60 seconds only while Facebook and YouTube can take more than an hour. But nonetheless, the goal is for your audience to view your whole content. Remember, people scrolling videos on social media tend to have a short attention span thus it is advisable to aim for a shorter video. With this, some editors skip the long introduction and replace it with a cover photo with the title of their video. In terms of the content itself, you can opt to cut lull moments of your video or even fast forward your clip. To achieve an overall aesthetic and mood, do not forget to color grade your videos!

• Compress your videos to save data

Another factor when releasing content is the time it takes for your video to load. However, this actually depends on the internet connection of the viewer. Although, by compressing your videos, you can assure that it loads faster. Do not fear, there are editing websites which guarantee your videos to keep its original quality. The main purpose of compressing videos is to lessen the space it occupies in your storage. By compressing, its file size becomes smaller therefore loading faster when posted on your social media platform. This can affect the number of viewers of your post. Also, most likely people with lower internet data can still view your video in an instant.

•  Add background music and text

Lastly, there are small details that can boost the overall look and content of your food videos. Background music completes the whole mood and it also livens up your entire content. On the other hand, it’s your prerogative to add text for other information in a portion of your video that can help with your viewers such as tips or ingredient list.

These are some reminders to guide you in producing quality food videos. It is better to have all these checked to make sure you’re armed on your next shoot.