THE PROJECT

We were hired by Rockefeller’s to produce a 30-second video to promote their grand opening. This video served as the main announcement to preview all the restaurant has to offer to its future customers.

Since this restaurant was previously owned, it was important to showcase the establishment's new differences, food being one of them. The restaurant was still under development while we were filming, so we were challenged to create a vision of what Rockefeller’s would look like after opening. Our approach to highlighting the main dishes rather than the space helped give the future customers a taste of what type of quality to expect, and build anticipation for opening day.

THE SETUP

When you combine a probe lens with a food shoot, the result is movie magic! We have been waiting for the right project to use the Laowa probe lens and this tool helped bring the food dishes to life.

We closed off a section in the kitchen and created a studio on-site. Since the kitchen was not fully finished, we had to make use of the space as best as we could. Our setups for the probe shots consisted of using black sound blankets, reflectors, and a lot of soft light.

We chose to shoot the video using the Sony A7sii camera with a variety of Canon L series lenses consisting of mainly a 24-70mm, 100mm and the Laowa Probe lens. Our main point of stabilization was achieved using a Manfrotto tripod with an Edelkrone slider, as well as a handheld camera setup for more natural camera movements.

The only downside to the probe lens is the f/14 minimum f-stop. In other words, you need a lot of light for that lens to have enough information in the image. For the scenes where we had the most creative flexibility for lighting, we used two Westcott soft-boxes that allowed us to control the amount of daylight we needed to achieve the look we wanted.

THE RESULT

The grand opening was a major success for the owner and restaurant. Reservations were booked all night and their first-day open set the scene for Rockefeller’s future success. In terms of the video we produced, in just the first 24 hours of posting the video, it had received over 65 shares and over 10,000+ views organically all across social media.