For almost 2 years now, Earl Studios has been the official photographer for Chunkys Cinema Pub for all its locations, like Ron Burgendy said “Its kind of a big deal”. A great deal of work was involved because their previous food photography was, well, dreadful. It was one of those situations where a friend of a friend who wanted to be a photographer came in to shoot the food photos, and the thing about food photography is that you need to understand food really well to be able to shoot it. I see alot of wedding photographers and portrait photographers who have taken a nice photo of a cake or cupcake who suddenly think “hey, I’m a food photographer now”, but in order to do it consistently and be able to obtain great results under any setting, you really need a professional food photographer.
So the task was up to Earl Studios to not only design the look, feel, and lighting of the photos, but also set the style of their photos to be repeated on a consistent and repeatably basis. And the thing about shooting food for a movie theater is, there are no windows, so “natural light” photos are not an option, the food photography images needed to be lit by strobes and that takes some skill.
So last summer during one shoot I had a couple extra minutes with a dish, and I decided to switch on the video function of the Nikon D300s and just give it a test to see how the video looked. The first test shots were amazing, and once Chunkys saw them, we immediately talked about not only doing the food photographs, but also producing food videos for them as well.
So last month Earl Studios and Chunkys set off to produce a series of on screen ads for the menu items and specials to begin airing Feb 1st. All the spots were shot in 1080p and shown in high definition. Earl Studios took full creative responsibility in shooting, editing, and music selection, and Chunkys was overwhelmed with excitement at the finished project.
So below is the finished welcome video that shows on screen at Chunkys Cinema Pub, next time your in, check it out.
