Shooting a Beer Commercial: 9 Easy Steps Bear commercial on a budget

In this second video in a series, Ted from Indy Mogul (and Aputure) works with cinematographer Justin Jones who shoots product commercials on different tips for shooting a beer commercial.

Just a few days ago we published the first video in this series where Ted and Jones shot a headphone commercial on a budget. In this video, they take a different approach and go our to shoot a mock beverage commercial.

The first step is choosing the background. Ted and Jones choose a brick wall (we also like this, its plain but looks professional and isn’t distracting when you want the attention on the beer/product). Next, you need to choose the angle – straight up is good and relatively low ISO is also the way to go.

As for lighting, you can start with lighting on the background from below (Ted and Jones put the product on a table about 10-15 feet or 3-5m away from the background to give enough background separation at f/4.

Besides the background light, Ted and Jones used one light just behind the product aimed at the back to create nice rim light, a second light from the other side at 45 degrees from the front lighting the label.

Now we move to the more interesting tips:

  • Try and make the background more interesting – use part lights to create tiny light balls in the background.
  • To make your beer bottle pop, even more, cut a white piece of paper in the shape of the bottle (just a few cm smaller) and light it from the back (side).
  • Make it wet – who doesn’t want that cold icy wet bottle of beer? simple water makes a mess – instead, use glycerin which looks like water but it remains on surfaces much longer (our tip – do the same with Evian Facial Spray it works amazingly well).
  • Try and get closer, shoot some footage that will get the viewer into the product, this will help sell the feeling that this is a product that he/she wants.
  • Play with lenses – try wide angle close up and longer lenses from further away on a slider and see what happens.

Bonus video: Valentina Vee from Aputure on shooting 3 different products and how to best light them

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You can find many more product photography (and videography) related videos on our dedicated product photography subsection found in our general technique section.

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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