One of my pet peeves is seeing a cheeseburger on T.V. They always look so juicy and delicious, then when they actually make it to your plate they never look half that good. So what's the secret to making food look good on T.V.? Well today we can make people look like they are blue aliens so making a burger look delicious shouldn't be that hard right? Well instead of using digital manipulation lots of companies employ "food stylists" who use lots of old school methods to make food look mmmm good while actually making it completely inedible.
1.) See this delicious juicy burger, doesn't it look shiny and therefore covered with delicious artery clogging goodness. Yea it's actually covered with not delicious everything clogging vaseline. The studio lights reflects off the vaseline and give it that yummy greasy look. Vegetable oil can also be used in some instances for the same purpose.
2.) Have you ever noticed that milk actually looks kind of blue? Under any kind of bright lighting, which is always required to photograph or film something properly, the blue hue in milk really comes out. So to make milk look good on camera you just mix a little real milk with some good old Elmers glue to make sure it's still white as can be. They also use heavy cream which has a whiter color and keeps cereal from getting soggy.
3.) Unfortunately beer can't maintain it's bubbly head forever so food stylists add some dish soap to keep a beer looking foamy. The same trick is also used occasionally on hot chocolate and tea to add bubbles.
4.) Beer isn't the only alcoholic beverage that gets a little help from food stylists. A little aspirin powder added to champagne makes it look fizzier for the camera.
5.) The Thanksgiving or turkey dinner is an essential part of any family fun movie but if you really ate that turkey it would taste pretty gross, because it's covered in wood varnish. The varnish gives it a smoother and more perfect appearance while also making sure it doesn't lose it's coloring over hours of shooting.
6.) The coloring of food is super important so lots of different foods get help with it. Strawberries are colored with lipstick to help them look especially red on camera.
7.) Food always looks best when it's steaming hot, but unfortunately it takes much longer to shoot the food than it takes for the food to cool down. The solution to that is microwaving some cotton balls, soaking them in water and then hiding them strategically around the food . The resulting steam makes the food look piping hot. Some studios even go a step further and buy a steam machine. Here is a link to a much longer and more in depth article about
photographing steam.
8.) Ice cream in nearly impossible to photograph. As I mentioned earlier about milk there is lots of lighting involved in photography and filming, this lighting melts ice cream long before any good shots can be taken of it. Usually the ice cream seen in the media is a mixture of shortening, corn syrup, and powdered sugar. For white ice cream supposedly mashed potatoes are sometimes used.
9.) Food is straight up nailed to the table. I found this short but very informative video that shows all the hard work that goes into making that segment of a pizza commercial where a hand pulls a single steaming piece of pizza out of the pie. If you've ever actually eaten pizza you know that when you grab a piece of pizza you take half the cheese and toppings from the rest of the pizza with you. Well there is a lot of time and effort put into making sure that doesn't happen in the commercials as is evidenced in
this great video.
Food Styling sounds a little gross, but I think it's really interesting to consider how the way we picture food is so idealized that it takes a ton of time and effort to make the food actually look that way. I suppose it makes sense because we do the same thing to people. If you're still curious about food styling, here are some links to the portfolio's of a few food stylists.
Adam Pearson
Brian Preston-Campbell
Lisa Homa
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