Noah the Food Stylist…a day in the life of a tv commercial shoot.

Being a food stylist on a tv commercial is always really fun and really stressful. Longer hours, lots of pressure for great performance, and managing a team are just a few of the things to be prepared for. I recently worked on a shoot from 12:30pm until 3:45am! Let me tell you….when I fell into my bed that night, my body did not move again for 10 hours! I definitely love being able to mix these crazy days with my more normal routine of print photo shoots. It’s a different kind of feeling but equally satisfying.

Whenever I work on a tv commercial, I like to have a minimum of two assistants and they are so needed and so helpful. As the key food stylist, I have to be able to be on set to make sure whatever scene we are working on is working perfectly but I also need to be ready for the next scene. The only way to do that well, is to have a great team that’s got my back and managing and organizing the day is soooo important! In the commercial below for McDonald’s Canada’s new Peach Smoothie we shot for 12 hours and completely out of sequence. We had to work around the light and move around the park all day. Catching beautiful shots at the right times was key and nobody would be happy waiting on the food stylist. My team and I had to be prepared and ready to go for each scene when we were needed and I am happy to say we were 🙂 My assistants for this shoot were great! Michelle, Marilyn, and Christine all helped out and made sure we never had to wait on anything. It was a blast!

People sometimes would be surprised to find out all the work that goes into a 30 second commercial and sometimes I am still surprised! For instance, did you notice in the Peach Smoothie spot all the little fluffs flying in the air? Well with each take, and each call of “action” those fluffies were being blown into the air for that beautiful effect. “Action…and cue the fluffies” was heard all day. At one point there was a member of the crew on his knees, blowing fluffies with each take. Kind of hilarious but beautiful effect in the commercial! Another thing to note is the scene of the main girl eating her peach….as the peach drips down her arm, she wipes upward to uncover her beautiful cold and sweating peach smoothie. This was all done in one take so getting the perfect drip and the perfect transfer of peach to smoothie required many takes. We had our smoothie machines running right next to the set and kept on changing it as needed. So awesome to see how great the final product is. I am really proud of this one and glad that McDonald’s Canada keeps including me on awesome projects.

Hope you enjoy the spot and would love to hear your comments 🙂