By Angelique Complainville, VRG Volunteer and Amy Dell, VRG Intern
One of our projects with The Vegetarian Resource Group was to film a recipe video for The Vegetarian Resource Group website. We produced a video about how to create a classic French lunch, but vegan. A local school at a church was very kind as to lend us their kitchen for 6 hours (from 11am to 4pm) and we used it as our cooking and filming location. We think that we have picked up some tips and tricks during this day to make shooting a video easier, so here they are. You can also find a link to the video at the end of this article.
Before starting to shoot the video, you want to have a clear idea of what you are going to film: which recipes, an intro, and an outro. We would advise against trying out a new recipe while filming. You should make it at home first just to make sure it works (know measurements, cooking time, etc.) and tastes good.
Communication is also key in the beginning stages of the process. You have to work with your team to make sure that everyone’s input is included, so that the final product can be the best it can be. If you are working for an organization, it’s a good idea to run the outline of the project by your supervisor before committing to anything.
To make filming more efficient, we wrote a script of what we were going to say and the order in which we were going to film the recipes. For example, one of our recipes had a 2-hour cooking time so we decided that we would tackle it first and film the rest of the recipes while it was cooking. We also chose to film the intro and the outro before doing any cooking. That way we didn’t have to worry about it in case we were running out of time after cooking everything, plus the kitchen looked nice and clean. For the intro and the outro, we would really recommend learning/reading your script beforehand; that way you don’t have to film as many takes. But they do make fun bloopers.
After finishing the script, we made a shopping list of all the items we were going to need to purchase as well as all the utensils we needed to bring. This is especially important if you are not cooking in your own kitchen and it might not have what you need. Here is what I learned from forgetting a key ingredient: make a last minute checklist of everything you need to bring and make sure you have everything before leaving. My mistake was forgetting to check the freezer. Also, this might seem like a no-brainer but make sure your camera is fully charged and bring your charger just in case. A tripod could make filming easier especially with the intro and outro. Ours was broken so we just used what we had on hand to create a makeshift tripod.
If you don’t have a camera, you can use your phone or ask family and friends if they have one you can borrow. It’s a good idea to do this well ahead of time so that you have time to find what you need. If you’re contacting a business/organization to use their kitchen to film, you also want to do that well ahead of time to make sure they still have a date available, and make sure to allow more time than you think you’ll need, just in case something goes wrong.
We would recommend having at least two people when making a recipe video. While one is cooking the other one can be filming. We took turns so both of us would be in the video. That being said if you are by yourself we really think that having a tripod would be really helpful to get nice shots.
To make editing easier, don’t film everything. For instance, if you have to chop a lot of veggies, just film yourself chopping one and explain in the voice-over how many you actually need to chop. The video would be very long and quite boring if it showed all the process. That said, make sure you don’t skip any key parts in the recipe.
When editing, you can also speed up the chopping and preparation of the ingredients. This makes the video quicker and holds attention better. Try adding music to the background so that the video is more interesting.
Last but not least have fun while filming, and experiment with new filming techniques and different angles. You can also choose to talk while filming or record a voice-over as you are editing the video. I would definitely recommend filming more shots that you think necessary so that when you are editing you can pick your favorite ones and delete the blurry ones.
This is a fun project to do as part of an internship, or just because you want to share your vegan recipes with others. You don’t need fancy equipment or a professional kitchen to make a recipe video. Anyone can do it. As long as you enjoy yourself, this is a worthwhile project!
You can watch our video here: https://youtu.be/vmRhqpU9f8I