Food and drink

The food is the star, and each shot has one perfectly timed physical event.

• Casting: people appear as hands, or as a secondary human element. Hand casting (age, skin, nails, grip) is written as carefully as a face.

• Food styling [proven]: the product on its best day, like a portrait, with real product wherever possible. Leave a small sign it was made by hand, and stop before it looks unreal or cold. The food may show the hand that made it, but the pack and the client's product stay pristine (decided). Style for the market, with a stylist who knows the local cuisine.

• Camera [proven]: it moves through almost every shot. Motion control gives precise, repeatable moves. Unusual moves, collisions and drops are the genre's language.

• Light: product light first. Option: use it when the plan names product light first for this film [single strong source]. Study how the product answers light before anything else. Reflective and matte foods are lit differently, hard or soft per surface, and some subjects get a dedicated rig so highlights stay controlled from every angle.

• Edit and sound [best available, not yet validated]: real time mixed with slow-motion hero events (a fall, a splash, a pour, a crack). The sound is the pour, the fizz, the crunch and the sizzle.

• Product hero: one timed physical event per shot, then the pack and the food together.

• Two sub-styles, named in the treatment: real food on its best day, or a declared polished hyper-motion look.

• Confidence: high for camera, rigs and styling. Medium for light. Low for edit and sound.

Seedance levers:

• one hero event per generation, written as a timed physical sequence;

• light per surface where the plan names the option;

• one-way states (whole, cut, bitten) as separate assets (see Photoreal anchors (Nano Banana Pro) → State sheets);

• slow motion generated on the impacts.

Biggest risk: rubbery liquids.

Watch for in your takes:

• rubbery liquids;

• items multiplying;

• uncontrolled speculars;

• a static macro;

• food that regrows after a bite.

Recipe 11 is a food impact (see Video with Seedance → 11. Food impact).

Sources

• Jacek Szymański (LBB).

• Alex Grima (LBB).

• Tom Ryan (LBB).

• Steve Giralt (No Film School).

• Bill Bennett ASC and Rexford Metz ASC (ASC) (study the product's response to light first).