Two people with egg drop soup cups
throwing it from the side. Egg drop soup cups?
I like the artistic method. It surpasses
your imagination. You see all those oily
spots? They're moving and that's
reflecting the fire.
Yo what's going on Indy Mogul? My name is Ted today were
talking about the anatomy of a
commercial shot. And we're going to be doing
this with my friend Kazu Okuda who's a
commercial cinematographer that has
worked with Nike, Adidas, Chanel, literally
all the major brands out there you name
it and today we'll be talking about not
only a couple of the most iconic product
shots out there things that we found
online but also some Kazu shots as
well
breaking into what actually went into
the camera, lenses, lighting, movement and
strategy for actually making these
products shots look so good.
So let's do this.
Breaking down this camera move and this
camera and this lens what does it look
like to you? It's slightly on the wide
side without going too wide
shorter than a 50 it's enough to look
heroic and add a little bit of
distortion without over exaggerating
we're definitely looking up into it it's
a fairly shallow depth of field so
there's actually a focus pull from the
logo from right here going towards the
neck and then towards the crown where
the hand comes in and that's not an easy
focus pull. What do you think goes into
lighting a bottle like this how does it
look so good? I don't remember exactly
when this came out but it kind of looks
like a July 4th kind of thing
potentially because you have the red and
blue going on once you start adding
these two colors it also changes the
color of the liquid inside you find a
perfect liquid color but once you add
the red and blue lights on the side that
liquid color is gonna change too. Gotcha so
it looks like there's probably two kind
of point source lights: HMI or Tungsten
lights with red gels on the left on the
right. Yeah I think it's kind of like a
you know like a V with two sources and I
think it's partially gelled because it
does look cleaner from the front let's
say it's a four by diffusion probably
part of it has a strip of blue and a
strip of red wrapping towards the back I
don't think it's actually even I think
the red gel is towards the back of it
because if you see it the red is on the
back edge on the right side but the blue
is actually on the front. That's super
interesting. Do you think there's
any other lights that were added to this kind of scene?
Yeah I think there's also a
front fill. Something fairly hard
because it's water drops if you put
something too soft in the front you
won't be able to get the water drops to
be that visible. There's two light
sources here additional to the side
lights one is a backlight right at the
liquid --Let me go get a flashlight--
This glow in the back is a fairly small
source pointing from the back like this.
Oh so it makes all the contents inside
of the bottle shine. I think there's a
background behind it behind it like this
and there's basically a light hidden
under the bottle pointing right at it to
create that glow in the background. It's
a beautiful shot
it's like a deceptively simple-looking
shot -- I dig it dude. Last question that I
have about this shot. Where do you think
the bubbles come from? Because you see
how perfectly they kind of sprinkle out
of that label is that post do you think
that's natural? No this is in camera and
this is probably why it took a whole day
to shoot it just a shot.
The drops I think are planted I think
they're droplets or droppers they
basically plant the plant drops and just
get out of the shot.
As far as the bubble inside sometimes
it could be a rigged bottle. There could
actually be a hole in the bottle with a
small PVC like or a tube in it and you
(no way!) feed oxygen through it or if
you asked like a special-effects person
there's chemicals and stuff you can put
inside to create that-- That bubbly thing
you drop a little bit before the take
starts that is mind blowing. Yeah it's
this shot is like genius. Moving on.
These days in advertising you
see like the splash
shots a lot and you see like liquids
hitting each other midair. What actually
goes into shooting a shot like this? They
say there is a precise way of doing this
and there is the artistic way of doing
this. It really puts out two variations
of the result. The expensive way to do
this is you have something to throw or
launch the shoe in the exact same place
every take. Probably like a catapult or
like something with a rubber band
holding it. The liquids can basically be
like pneumatic air pushing liquids out
of a tube or a cup or something
potentially they are time with a laser
trigger so basically this is a shot you
see right and there is a laser trigger
here and then the shoe is under so where
whenever this shoe passes the laser the
water's automatically fire. So that right
when it comes into the middle of a shot
the water is coming in at the perfect
time. Yes the liquids collide slightly
behind the shoe what is that the liquids
are colliding into each other but
they're close enough that some of that
liquid does
around the front of the shoe but it
still keeps the front of the shoe
visible because it is a product shot the
inexpensive way of doing this shot is
somebody throwing this shoe up right
yeah two people with egg drop soup cups
throwing it from the side egg drop soup
I like the artistic method much more if
you shoot both I can say 80% of the time
you are going to use the artistic
version you might have an angle of the
shoe that you never imagine what kind of
camera and lens you think they're
shooting at this is definitely a phantom
there's other slow-mo choices like
memory cam and stuff but nowadays I
think the Phantom is the choice there is
two back lights like in a cross angle
that's lighting the liquids liquids
should generally speaking be left in the
back so you can see them water in
particular and then there's definitely a
light from below without that light is
just gonna be pitch-black
there's also a top frontal light that's
to bring a luminance for just the front
of the shoe to make the product pop a
little bit more - yeah but this is not a
difficult shot I think the most
difficult part is getting the budget to
come on it'll look beautiful
any advice for shooting shoes what is
the most important feature of the shoe
it's a balance between what is beautiful
to you and what is actually the purpose
of the shoe I think that the metal
details and the fabric the texture of
the suede is the most beautiful part of
the shoe but the clients like know we're
selling that it's waterproof that's the
most important thing you have to find a
middle ground between that or else
you're a complete robot as a
cinematographer I think it's at the end
of the day you want someone to hire your
tastes and your sensibilities with like
athletic shoes like Nike and Adidas that
I've done before some of the features is
like the lightweight how do you show
lightweight or show the same feature in
a different way alright let's do this
next you ready come into LongHorn
Steakhouse for steak house cuts like our
one-of-a-kind for
you know Delmonico expertly crafted we
were hired as the motion control
supervisor for the shot there's a very
specific thickness the very specific
amount of fat oil charring color that
the food needs to be I actually did not
like or do the camera however I was on
set itself so I could speak a little bit
about it so there's a food stylist and a
special effects artist what's the
difference
food stylists their entire job is to
make the food look good the special
effects artist is the one that's making
the steam the fire the sizzling what
goes into creating a shot like this this
entire shoot was on a motion control
bolt each food has a different feature
you know are you selling the thickness
of it are you selling the tenderness of
it one of the lighting generally look
like how does it get designed a lot of
it is backlight large sources from what
quite a bit of distance it's more about
cutting and bouncing light from the
front this is a very very large set the
griddle in the front I think it's
probably six to eight feet wide four
foot deep the grill in the back the
grill in the back is about four foot
long and then there's about a solid
eight foot behind so the black the
darkness falls off I guess there's the
point of backlighting it to look a
little bit more dramatic and kind of
epic definitely the cinematographer on
this chose to keep this moody cowboy
feel to it I think it looks very good
and it's a lot more cinematic than a lot
of other potential food commercials yeah
food commercials tend to be like so kind
of poppy and bubblegum pop in your face
a lot of stuff with food is reflections
you see all those oily spots they're
moving and that's reflecting the fire
and also the gold balance is catching it
you have two lights coming from the back
coming forward and you have a lot of
small reflectors gold and silver show
cards or white show cards to ping and
light specific parts of each food and by
having a gold bounce to even though a
white background or a daylight
background will get transformed into a
more tungsten color to shine on so even
though you have two back lights from the
back shining at you
you have as much sources as you can cut
a bounce for it and in these cases these
are like 8 to 12 little gold silver
pieces like this
this is probably one of my favorite
commercials that I've seen that you shot
first of all how do these light effects
get accomplished in the first place
first with camera movement repeatability
was the biggest key for this spot we
used motion control Milo all besides the
final shot it's shot on one leg just to
get more lights I would cut my lens
package from four lens to two lenses
just so we have another light fixture
this is shot on a 100 millimeter macro
lens and it's a constant he 16 this spot
is shot with far as lighting 1 4-foot
quasar 1/8 look quasar and about 4
aperture 300 DS the entire spot okay
yeah my head around how is the light
being moved across the subject in the
way that it does so we had a chrome
metallic piece of metal that was all
bent and had this terrain and curves so
depending on where you pass the light
you will have these lines go in all
different places of this metal where was
the sheet of metal was it on topper no
that's the surface it's it's the surface
and we rotate it in different ways and
put it in different places so it looks
like a different surface it's one quasar
light being passed through and we just
we just did 20 30 takes of each one
instead of having a robot or a motor
move the light linearly we basically
decide to just hand hold it and swim the
light through yourself right going to
takes you just you know doing your
little Jedi thing and you overlay the
takes on top of each other you'll do for
each take a different light move yes and
then in post those shots get stacked on
top of each other far as lighting goes
it's very inexpensive you know it's a
$10 rental I mean the robot arm of
course yeah but you could do it with
just a turntable just to have some
movement or you could do with something
static - you know it's just different
light passes
the biggest challenges of shooting a car
is getting lights and camera inside but
the typical way to light a car is use a
large source we use twelve bys and
twenty bytes to even light a person you
know
so think about lighting a car you're
typically flying at least a fifty by
overhead there's very specific studios
that are designed for shooting vehicles
and they have these huge pre-installed
soft boxes in the buildings themselves
also a car is typically glossy and
reflective so anything on the floor you
will see so the typical way to shoot a
beauty shot for a car is to light it
from above and light it very large and
it also needs to be far enough that it
goes out of focus because even if you
have enough light you will see every
seam of the diffusion and light within
the car this is doing the opposite it's
using the reflections as an advantage to
accentuate the vehicle for us as
cameramen our job is not to sell to the
consumer our job is to sell to the
client and your job is to help the
client sell to the customer if the
client notices and they don't like it
it's not good and the client knows their
product really well well there's a very
specific way they want their product
expressed and if the diffusion is too
close and it's sharp the clients are
gonna see the grommets on the diffusions
they want their car to look as beautiful
as possible now before we talk about our
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episode the finished operating service
have been a little simple because I know
we went into the deep end of some crazy
product stuff I want to talk about
simplicity and how to actually nail
product shots when it comes to
especially tech or when it comes to any
kind of product so how do we make clean
shots look good in the first place
every go let's see the last one here
firstly how does it look the way that it
does because I feel like okay you can
student appliance right I can do that
but it doesn't look this crisp and like
the water doesn't look at this cool and
textured the crisp art using a clean
lens and a mechanically sound lens we
actually use the Sigma's because they're
very clean and sharp this was shot on
two different cameras I think though the
wide shots and the non high-speed shots
were shot on a red and the liquid shots
were shot on a phantom these moves are
less than half a second so from where
it's a from bed zooming when we're
really close to that water jet when we
get off that's what that's about half a
second a maybe less the cameras inside
the watch and it just pulls out and then
for this one to the actual cameras put
into the washer to we're shooting down
this is lit and then we're pulling out
and this is that slow-motion work again
yeah even if you weren't saluting
slow-motion the very difficult part but
also the blessing part about washer is
its chrome inside but it's also very
contained so it's actually very hard to
actually get a camera in there and
lighting in there so you actually have
to kind of bounce side light it what you
do is you use the metal inside as it
bounced I also don't like lighting stuff
to even but it still needs to be in
order so what we did is we lit one from
this side and another one from this side
so they are parallel but they're not
parallel to the screen oh it looks
balanced but it right staged where the
lights are to perfectly from left and
right right I went into Home Depot dude
before the shoot just be able to take a
look at the products so I could kind of
think about how we would like this also
you have water like coming at the camera
cock and you're on the phantom - and is
it actually on this is like real water
coming up yes it's real everyone yes
everybody's scared things get what you
know but some of the less expensive
shots I actually really like the next
shot clean so this is a large source but
this light I think it's one or two three
hundred each that's it there's an m40
across the set to fill in the shadows on
the left and right sides if you actually
look at the reflection and you see a
four by with a black edge we
intentionally kind of put a cross
instead of trying again it's the same
thing as not lighting too flat give a
little texture one side is a little bit
darker and it falls off more and it just
has reflection the wide-shots has been
multiplied hm eyes because we just need
to cover a lot of space it's 20 buys and
12 by 20s it's very large but all the
close-up and detail shots have actually
been very small aids did it looks great
always awesome thank you for walking
through all these product shop and for
kind of teaching how to use this stuff
appreciate you dude face it seems
mind-blowing stuff thanks for having me
alrighty guys there you have it there's
you have a set on the anatomy of a
product shot with cazzo good up if you
want to ask him any questions we'll
leave this information just down here
below you can ask many questions
anything else wanna know also a big
thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring
this video again don't forget that you
can start a free trial online at
squarespace.com and head over to the
link in the description for 10% off your
first web site or domain obviously you
notice that the style has changed a
little bit in the show we were doing
this because of quarantine and try to be
safe at social distancing so if you're
out there be safe just because you can't
actually go out and be on set doesn't
mean you can't make anything
lutely shoot product shots keep being
creative keep shooting things and of
course we'll get you guys next time if
you point a 20k tungsten directly at the
meat it's gonna cook the food it's gonna
make it dry it's gonna make its tail so
you cannot grill attachment for a
tungsten light like
barn doors slipping grill
