Finn Beales: Behind the Scenes with a Chocolate Cannon

Profoto recently published an interesting behind the scenes video of photographer Finn Beales shooting  stunning visuals of firing chocolate from a DIY “Cannon”.

The bizarre but cool project was ordered by Nom Nom Chocolate – a Welsh brand specializing in hand crafted chocolate.

In an interview Beales gave the Profoto website he was asked how did he build the Chocolate Cannon?

His answer – “Lucky enough I have a friend who works at a special effects company in the film industry. I called him up and said I needed a Chocolate Cannon. He didn’t hesitate a second. He loves that kind of stuff!”

Profoto-Finn-Beales-Chocolate-Cannon-Image-Gallery-NomNom-Orange-2000x1333Lighting was a very important part of the project and Beales needed to freeze the Chocolate hitting all the different objects. Beales explained his lighting setup like this: “Well, I knew from the start that I’d need at least two lights – a main light and a rim light. I also knew I’d need something with short enough flash duration to freeze splashes. Also, I knew that I’d need a wide and even light source to be able to light the entire splashes. The solution was to use a Profoto B1 Location Kit with two different softboxes. Set to Freeze Mode, the B1 can go as fast as 1/19.000 of a second, which was more than enough for what I wanted to do. So I had one B1 with a Softbox RFi 1×1.3’ positioned camera left. This was my main light. The other B1 was equipped with a Softbox RFi 1×4’ angled horizontally and positioned behind and to the right of the place of impact. This was my rim light, separating the chocolate and the ingredients from the background.”

Profoto-Finn-Beales-Chocolate-Cannon-Image-Gallery-NomNom-Waffles-2000x1333-1200x1200On the Profoto website you can also see a diagram of how the lighting set-up was used as well as a few other interesting points on how this cool and delicious project was done.

Profoto-Finn-Beales-Chocolate-Cannon-Image-Gallery-NomNom-Salt-2000x1333-1200x1200As always, you can find many more behind the scenes videos on the BTS section here on LensVid.“

Profoto-Finn-Beales-Chocolate-Cannon-Image-Gallery-NomNom-Rhubarb-2000x1333-1200x1200 Profoto-Finn-Beales-Chocolate-Cannon-Image-Gallery-NomNom-Limes-2000x1333-1200x1200

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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