Behind The Scenes: Shooting A Pizza B-Roll

On this video photographer, Daniel Schiffer takes us behind the scenes of a recent shoot he made for “Pi Co. pizza” from Toronto. The result is both beautiful but also educational.

For the past couple of years our main job besides LensVid, of course, was shooting food videos for our vegan food channel Veggiez as well as commercial clients. This is why we love seeing how other professional food photographers and videographers work and Schiffer is certainly one of the leading new food videographers on the web right now.

A few weeks ago we published a video by photographer James Matthews looking at one of Schiffer’s fast-moving action style food making videos and analyzing some of the moves he made and some of the approaches to editing. This time around we bring you Schiffer himself talking about his work -this time around on a Pizza shoot.

Schiffer starts this video by talking about some of the gear he used for the production. The most unique is the Venus Optics Laowa 24mm f/14 2X Macro Probe Lens (we have a number of videos looking at what you can do with this super special lens) moving on a motorized slider from Edelkrone.

The video has some interesting “tricks” like wrapping the camera in saran wrap when shooting flour thrown in the air, dropping the Pizza directly on the camera as part of the camera move or purring tomato sauce on glass and shooting this process from below. Another cool shot that can look amazing with the Laowa 24mm is pointing the camera with the lens down and dropping food such as serials onto a bowl or in this case mozzarella cheese on a Pizza.

Making a shot list is a good idea – it is less scripted than a storyboard so it is more general and you can quickly add more ideas for shots as you go along as you shoot.

Schiffer also shows how he uses “sound design” to elevate his video – this is a super important part of these types of videos and it can make the difference between a good video and one which will help you get your next big client.

If you are into food photography and videography we have a special sub-section here on LensVid dedicated specifically to food photography.

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.