Linney has high speed food shoots licked with Ember

In the world of food commercials you only have a limited time before the item you are photographing begins to lose its appetising freshness.

“If a lettuce wilts or a product gets too warm then we have to start again and you’ve wasted an hour styling a burger because of how hot the studio lights were,” explains Matt Dean, Director of Photography at creative marketing agency Linney.

For its most recent project with established client McDonald’s, Linney took the technical specifications of the shoot in a different direction.

“I needed a high-speed solution that used less light but still gave us great quality footage. When I researched into the alternatives I saw that Freefly had released the Ember. Shortly afterwards I received an email from VMI saying they had one in stock. So, when a new McDonald’s project came along it was the perfect opportunity to try it out.”

Food has a ticking clock

The main video element produced by Linney for McDonald’s are for ‘takeover screens’ – an array of five screens mounted above the retail counter at its restaurants. These consist of still images and video, typically lasting 10-13 seconds, and show menu items and special offers in lip smacking glory.

Dean explains that the high-speed video is used to present items like Chicken Selects being dropped into packaging, or drizzle being poured over ice cream. In this instance, the task was to film Halloween-themed candy chunks being sprinkled onto a McFlurry for a new seasonal campaign.

“When I get the brief my job is to come up with a kit list which invariably includes a high speed camera,” he explains.

Until recently this was de facto the Phantom VEO camera hired from VMI. Capable of recording 1000 fps in 4K the Phantom is “very impressive” remarks Dean and has been used by Linney on dozens of jobs over the years.

“We need the high speed for the creative process of making the food more artistic and to film things you can’t see with the human eye.”

However, there was a significant drawback to the camera in that it required extensive illumination

“When photographing food you need to be careful with time constraints and being under hot lights is the quickest way for food to lose its appeal.”

That goes double when your subject is ice cream which will eventually melt under lights no matter how good the stylist.

Greater light sensitivity at high speed

“With the Phantom we used to need at least four or five Nanlux Evoke LEDs and to operate them at maximum power in order get the exposure into the lens. When the Freefly arrived we realised pretty quickly that we could reduce our lights to a couple of 500s and two or three Evokes. That immediately means the budget for lighting comes down which helps us and our client and hopefully leads to more project work for everyone.”

The Ember may be less powerful in shooting 800 fps (or 5K 600 fps) but the Super 35 sensor’s sensitivity is a clear improvement, says Dean.

“In my experience 800 frames is more than enough to capture what we need,” Dean continues, “Even though we’ve reduced the lights we’ve still 11+ stops of latitude to play with. I can open or close the lens as much as I need to, rather than being at the behest of what the VEO could handle which typically meant shooting open wide and shallow focus. Now I can work more creatively in the style that I need and not be dictated by the limits of the equipment.”

The Ember encodes in Apple ProRes 422 and records direct to internal hard drive which requires the user to treat the camera itself like a hard drive and transfer data straight from the unit for backup or into post.

“You physically have to take the camera off set to transfer the footage, which can be a drawback if you don’t plan for it,” Dean says. “The good thing is the internal memory is 4TB (NVMe SSD) which we found more than ample for a day of filming. At no point did we run out of space. You just have to be mindful of allowing time to transfer data in a break or at the end of the day.”

Transfer itself is straightforward by way of a USB straight into your computer just like you would any external hard drive. “It’s plug in, then drag and drop. There’s no driver or any software to download or install.”

Takeover screens

This two-day shoot took place at Linney’s own studios in Mansfield. Dean used a set of Zeiss Supreme Prime Radiance lenses and hired an additional ARRI 100 mm macro from VMI to shoot the food item from variously a tripod and slider, a gib arm and a MRMC Bolt robot and track.

Since the ‘takeover screen’ has an unusual aspect ratio of 5400 x 1920 (and some stores have the array in ultra-wide landscape 9600 x 1080) Dean and the postproduction team at Linney have to frame with that narrow central section of the image in mind.

Typically, they use RED 8K cameras to achieve the highest resolution stills and video and shoot the high speed at 4K, upscaling this footage in post.

A product like the McFlurry should look as “white and pure as snow” but in Dean’s experience using other high-speed cameras the raw record sent to post contained too much green.

“With the Freefly footage by contrast you can tell the 10-bit HLG Beta colour space of the Ember (it also supports Rec. 709) has really been thought through. We also use RED, ARRI and Canon cameras and the Ember stands up to those so it is great from a postproduction point of view. It gives us the confidence about the shots we can go for and that what we are capturing is what we’ll receive in post.”

He commends the camera for its small size and light weight (852 grams with lens mount) and its ease of use too. “I am comfortable with the Phantom and know its strengths and limitations but the Ember is more user friendly. It doesn’t require loads of add-ons just to turn it on plus can run it all day on just a single 150Wh V-Lok (Hawk-Woods VLM150). And if you’ve got the right mounts and adapters then you can put cine lenses on it and the footage is really excellent.”

Rapid reaction force

Dean explains that Linney needs to react quickly to client demands for quick project turnarounds. They will turn to VMI to get the kit list prepped and signed off but on occasion the client will change its mind at the last minute, perhaps due to delays or changes to product packaging.

“Our relationship with VMI is superb even though I guess we can be quite a frustrating client at times because of the nature of the work we do. This doesn’t get in the way of what Stuart and his team offer. They are always happy to jump in and help out.

Having hired the Ember for this project I think this is definitely the high speed camera of choice for us going forward along with VMI as our hire partner.”