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  • There's a bustling operation behind the fancy cameras of food commercials.

  • It takes dozens of people and a few customized robots to make a burger look this juicy.

  • Oh, nothing here is simple.

  • As far as the work we do is incredibly complex, very technical.

  • Steve Gerald has filmed commercials for big brands like Hershey's, Hines, and Pepsi, through his production company, the garage.

  • And there's a lot of money on the line.

  • Filming 1:32 ad can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're working against the clock because they use real food,

  • which doesn't stay pretty for long.

  • That's the misnomer about everything.

  • Faking makes things harder.

  • We visited Steve's studio in Brooklyn, New York to see how his team films the perfect burger.

  • Today, Steve and his team are working on a test shoot for Burger King.

  • They'll use it to try and land the client.

  • -Yeah, good.

  • Brett Kurzweil is a veteran food stylist.

  • It's his job to make the burger look like a whopper.

  • He usually has a budget of a couple $1000.

  • And he always buys a lot more than he'll use, so he can pick out the perfect looking bun, patty, and veggies,

  • Then, he gets to work, but he doesn't cook the meat all the way through.

  • Because I didn't want it to shrink too much.

  • I wanted to get as much volume out of this piece of meat as I could get.

  • Even perfect patties need final touches.

  • So he uses a color made of gravy darkener and soap to add a charred look.

  • He only has to paint half the burger because the camera films from just one side,

  • a mixture of Vaseline and pulverized meat helps fill in any holes.

  • And those grill marks, another trick of the trade.

  • Brett heats up metal skewers, and then...

  • I just pushed into the burger with the hot metal, and it seared.

  • Next, he melts the cheese, using a clothes steamer.

  • How did you change it to make it for food?

  • I just chose... I just said, you're for food, but I also, I'm trying to control how much comes out.

  • So I've covered up some of the holes.

  • He cuts the onions and tomatoes on a slant,

  • so they lie flatter.

  • I think you would have been a really good surgeon in another life.

  • Well, yeah, my mother would have been happier.

  • Some other tricks, denture cream to hold up ingredients.

  • For condensation on cans, we'll use glycerin.

  • Yeah, not that much, too far, too far.

  • While Brett finishes up, Steve's team is making sure everything is ready on set.

  • The trickiest part is combining what the client wants in the commercial with what's technologically possible.

  • They have no idea about engineering.

  • Yeah, they're just like robots are cool.

  • We want a robot.

  • But since today he's working on a test shoot, he just has to implement his own vision.

  • I be one of those people that wears the protection.

  • Then, he turns to master rigger, Matthew Huber.

  • He says half the time he has to build the rigs completely from scratch.

  • They provide the structure for the specialized equipment that makes food dance across the screen.

  • His work goes hand in hand with the robots.

  • The robot obviously is a hugely complicated and expensive thing that's used for a lot of what we do.

  • But if you only just need a straight line movement, pulling back,

  • it's easier to set up a simple machine that just does a single type of movement.

  • Like these air pistons he uses to launch food or these catapults.

  • To save on buying new parts he uses a lot of the same base pieces.

  • It's like Legos, you know, just put stuff together, take it apart, do something different with it the next time.

  • So, we've used, like, all of these pieces probably like hundreds of times.

  • Meanwhile, Paula Andrea Ramirez is finalizing the set from the tables to the ketchup bottles off to the side.

  • I want it to feel real.

  • So, if it's blank, it won't feel like it's... it's a real commercial kitchen.

  • Every inch visible to the camera matters.

  • So Paula's team built this tile wall just for this shoot, but they said it still felt empty.

  • So we just added this new, these two floating shelves up there.

  • We plan for something and then we just have to be ready for the unexpected.

  • Her typical props budget is $40,000 a shoot, but she can pull a lot from her personal collection.

  • This has been 20 years of collecting, and this is like, Salvation Army, Garage sells, years and years of hoarding.

  • I always like to have extra.

  • So, if you're shooting example, glass of soda, I need to have at least six of the same glasses for quick changes if they're scratched because this video.

  • -So it's a little bit one breaks. -One breaks. -Exactly.

  • So, when that burger arrives, it's game time.

  • -I gotta go on set. -Yeah, burger.

  • Now, it's a race against the clock.

  • The angle feels right.

  • Can we melt the cheese a little more? Get a little heat in there.

  • Go ahead and roll camera

  • and push in a little bit closer.

  • All right, good.

  • Today, they have custom built water cooled lights that don't torch the food.

  • We used to have to have, like, these really hot lights that would like cook the food and it would die really quickly.

  • So like the ice cream would be, like, impossible to shoot in slow motion because it would just melt the second he turned the lights on.

  • But that lettuce will start to wilt in a matter of minutes hot lights or not.

  • So quick moving robots and tons of planning are essential to keep a shoot on schedule because any delay could mean running over budget.

  • The first action uses the dolly zoom to create something known as the Hitchcock effect.

  • But the whole background is like warping around it.

  • Hugh, the robots, they're actually the same kind that build cars.

  • This robot cost $150,000 and it can pretty much do any move you can think of.

  • Sometimes, you can program the robot pretty quickly,

  • some moves take a whole day.

  • Here's the second shot, Steve envisioned the camera moving through a field of burgers as each gets pulled out of frame.

  • We're probably only, like, an inch and a half away from that burger when we land.

  • So to try to do that with people would be almost impossible.

  • It's a really complex move that the robots do really easily, and they do it the same exact way every time.

  • But speed is not the only challenge.

  • Every shot has to be identical.

  • If a burger is even a centimeter off or if something on set gets bumped between takes, they might have to start over.

  • These fries don't want to behave.

  • This laser helps them keep track of the burgers position.

  • They also have to be really flexible on set.

  • There's always curveballs that happen because there's a lot of problem solving, which I love.

  • For the last shot, Steve ties all the ingredients on a fishing wire,

  • and a robot slices the string and the camera catches the perfect drop.

  • This exact move was actually Steve's claim to fame in 2016.

  • This famous burger drop video that went viral all over the internet.

  • He slowly raked in millions of views across platforms, and global publications started covering his work.

  • All that social media buzz earned him a lot of viewers and new clients,

  • and he was able to launch the garage in 2019.

  • The burger drop was kind of like the spark that started the path towards where we are today.

  • And now tiktok is like crazier than Instagram ever was for me.

  • Steve is a former food photographer, but he wanted to combine his love of engineering, food and video.

  • And amazingly, there's a job that lets me do that.

  • There's a lot of different jobs that my guidance counselor did not tell me about, including my own.

  • Today, his team films, 40 advertisements a year building over $5 million dollars annually.

  • Kind of feels like CGI, but it's actually done in camera.

  • And I think to accomplish that like larger than life feeling takes just a lot of technology and skill.

  • Steve says they know they've done a good job when viewers can't tell a whole production is hidden behind a shot.

  • They have no idea what we do at the end of the day.

  • It is fun for me to... for people to understand how complex this stuff is.

  • But all that complexity is worth it because there's a lot of money on the line.

  • Fast food companies poured $5 billion into advertising in 2019, and for good reason.

  • They know just how valuable the power of food suggestion can be.

  • A Yale University study found that visual cues like food ads can have an effect on food cravings.

  • Another study showed visual cues can influence over eating and even weight gain, and that can convert into traffic and impressions for a brand.

  • -You're responsible for a lot of people breaking their diet. -Yeah, me included.

  • These brands lead the pack in ad spending in 2019, and budgets just keep ballooning.

  • In September, Burger King announced it will invest $400 million in restaurant renovations and advertising.

  • A 30% increase from 2021, which is why Steve and his team filmed this whopper pitch,

  • hoping to hook a new client with their dancing robots and juicy burgers.

  • I smell like I was at a Burger King all day.

There's a bustling operation behind the fancy cameras of food commercials.

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