Food’s been framed

We eat first with our eyes, goes the saying - and in an era where ‘foodstagramming’ (aka postponing the first bite of your meal to take photos for social media) has replaced saying grace, what food looks like is perhaps even more important than how it tastes.

Someone who knows a thing or two about that is Michelle Pak, a tabletop director specialising in food and drink, who’s created visual feasts for the likes of TacoBell, KFC, Chipotle, Burger King and Bud Light.

Not to be watched on an empty stomach for fear of tummy rumblings exceeding safe decibel levels, Pak’s reel is filled with glistening chicken wings twirling like deep-fried ballerinas; unctuous blankets of molten cheese and thick, creamy yogurts pleasingly furrowed by forks.

Film snobs might dismiss tabletop direction as a burrito twirling on a Lazy Susan.

Film snobs might dismiss tabletop direction as a burrito twirling on a Lazy Susan, yet the cinematographic decisions behind lighting, lenses, rigs, camera movements, and background that go into making a humble burger look mouthwatering – or a cardboard box of beer feel ‘heroic’ – demand Michelin-starred levels of craft, precision and creativity.

“Tabletop is all about focusing on a single product, or a line of products, and thinking about the space it lives in and the way the camera moves around it,” explains Pak. Every detail – from lighting to lenses, production design to framing – needs to be meticulously planned in order to create an environment where the product is able to shine without distractions. And food brings its own unique challenges, says Pak, whether that’s cheese on a pizza that won’t ‘pull’ or lettuce that starts wilting almost immediately under the heat of the studio lights. 

When food is your star, there’s obviously a lot of prep that goes into it, but on the day it might not move or behave in the way you’d envisioned

“With human talent, you can guide them – ‘move your hand this way, try speaking like this’. When food is your star, there’s a lot of prep that goes into it, but on the day it might not move or behave in the way you’d envisioned.” The capricious nature of the ‘talent’ isn’t the only challenge associated with tabletop direction. “You’re focusing on a very small product, but you also need to think about the space around it,” says Pak. 

Shooting on a custom-designed stage offers much-needed freedom and flexibility: “On a location shoot, you might have limited space between the kitchen counter and the sink, for example – but on stage, you can move things round so you’re able to capture different perspectives and camera moves.”   

Many tabletop directors lean heavily on CG and VFX to achieve their toothsome visuals, and while some of Pak’s more whimsical work – such as the ‘butterfly’ sauce packets fluttering around burritos in a recent Taco Bell spot – embraces the potential of post, she has built a reputation for crafting imaginative shots using only practical effects and camera trickery. “Thanks to advances in technology, there’s much you can do in post, but there is a beauty to capturing things in-camera which gives me a lot of satisfaction,” she says.

There’s much you can do in post, but there is a beauty to capturing things in-camera which gives me a lot of satisfaction.

And Pak has more than a few tricks up her sleeve to achieve her goals. Whether for a luxuriously slow pan over a table laden with food, or a 180-degree camera rotation to demonstrate a yoghurt’s gravity-defying thickness, she often turns to motion control technology to achieve precision and control, bringing to life dynamic camera moves that would normally be executed in animation.

Another of her favourite specialist tools is the probe lens, which can focus at close range while retaining a wide-angle perspective and whose narrow barrels can fit into tiny spaces denied to a normal lens. Beloved by food photographers and videographers for its ability to capture textures and details of food at an almost granular level, it “allows you to get up really close and personal with the food, into all the nooks and crannies – and that gives you a unique perspective that’s really immersive,” she explains.

[A probe lens] gives you a unique perspective that’s really immersive.

Custom built rigs created by a prop-master are also an important part of pulling off in-camera tricks, seen to great effect in the naughtily titled ‘Forkable yoghurt’ for Oikos; the exploding cherry sequence looks like pure CGI, but was in fact achieved by ‘air rigs’ and clever cuts.

Pak’s unique approach is in part thanks to her unconventional background – she eschewed traditional film school for a degree in design, which taught her to think about “the form and space of things”, before moving into the world of motion graphics – but also her ability to find inspiration from anywhere and anything.

When you watch [the spot], you can see the wings are moving in ways that food doesn’t traditionally move.

“I’m constantly looking at things and absorbing – it could be runway images, animated movies, not necessarily anything to do with food – just visuals that excite and inspire me.”

A case in point is her spot for KFC, in which chicken wings rotate and whirl, all the better to show off their glistening, nubbly exteriors, in a way that’s reminiscent of ads for a very different sort of product: a mobile phone. It involved Pak “going down a rabbit hole of phone commercials, and studying the movement of the products, how they behave, how shots cut from one to the next. When you watch [the spot], you can see the wings are moving in ways that food doesn’t traditionally move.”

A few years ago, everything was very soft and muted and natural, but right now, it’s more of a heightened reality.

Like fashion, food is equally trend led, and the look that’s currently in vogue is what Pak describes as a ‘high contrast, flash photography aesthetic’. “A few years ago, everything was very soft and muted and natural, but right now, it’s more of a heightened reality. That makes for really striking [visuals], where the textures and colours of the food really pop.”

How much of that look and feel is driven by social media and ‘foodie’ influencer culture, which generally features heavily edited, stylised imagery, with contrast and colour saturation dialled up to the max? While Pak admits she isn’t a foodstagrammer herself - “I don’t really take pictures of my food out in the wild – I’m more focused on eating” – she finds the wealth of #foodporn posted to Instagram and TikTok is useful for inspiration and pulling references during the treatment phase.

The industry used to be heavily male, but now, with more directors coming in, there’s more of an openness to working with people like me.

As well as its aesthetic influence, Pak reckons that social media is also driving an uptick in F&B tabletop directors ­ although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “The industry used to be heavily male, with just a few go-tos, but now, with more directors coming in, there’s more of an openness to working with people like me,” says Pak, who is Asian-American. With competition increasing, what’s the key to succeeding as a tabletop director? Ultimately, your job is “to place the product on a pedestal and allow it to shine,” says Pak, while at the same time, bringing brand elements into the surrounding space in a way that feels natural.