During the past year, Coolbox have had the pleasure of partnering with Vapiano to produce a series of short punchy social videos for the restaurant chain’s Specials Menus; each one with a different theme to reflect the season. For each quarter, Vapiano put together a range of bespoke dishes that customers can enjoy for a limited time; meanwhile Coolbox would produce a short video for each dish, showing the process from kitchen to table.
During production days, the team began by filming in the kitchen, capturing the brilliant chefs at work, creating spectacular food from start to finish. Ultimately, the results were stunning, and most importantly, super tasty!
Next, the crew moved to our bespoke table set-up where the dish would be presented. We incorporated the ‘final touches’ to each dish, such as garnishing and seasoning; showing the food off in all its glory, along with our models tucking right in with a fork, or a spectacular cheese pull!
The Summer menu has definitely been our favourite so far. We came up with the idea of using a gobo lighting technique to simulate warm dappled light entering the scene; creating the illusion of being outdoors, under a canopy of Mediterranean trees. To achieve this, we shone a bright open faced light (that acted as the sun), and placed a couple of leaf branches in front of it, gently swaying them as if it was being moved by the wind. This set-up cast a shadow across the table where the dishes were being presented, giving an authentic outdoor café/restaurant vibe. It’s amazing what you can create with a light and a couple of leaves.
With no sound being captured, the set up was super simple; two cameras (one overhead, one to the side) and two light sources. The Sony FX3 was mounted to an overhead rig to capture the ‘lay flat’ shot, whilst the Sony FX9 was operated handheld and focused on tracking any motion coming in and out of the frame, along with any finer detail shots.
Once the setup was complete, it was a case of following the pre-designed shot list to keep consistency across all dishes, then we had the chance to explore and experiment with framing and actions to help differentiate each video/dish.
It has been, and continues to be so much fun to work with Vapiano on producing their awesome video content. With each video being so short, colourful and punchy, they’re the perfect format for Instagram Reels and TikTok. They’re guaranteed to have your mouth watering in seconds, and before you know it you’ll be on your way to the closest Vapiano to taste them for yourself.