Cooking shows always have had a special place my in my heart. The Naked Chef lit a fire in myself as a young lad and I’ve been hooked on watching the best do their magic in the kitchen ever since. During my teenybopper years I even had a short lived cooking show “Chaos in the Kitchen” with my co-host Thomas Bouchard. The show had an abrupt cancellation….we eventually ran out of different types of calzones to cook. I still love watching other’s share their passion and it’s been fun watching youtube explode with all different types of chefs, creatives, and foodie filmmakers giving Food Network Channel a run.
So if YOU are thinking about sharing your tastes with the world and getting started with your own ‘cooking show’ - here’s a great place to start. I put together 5 videos that use simple set ups and keep the editing and production process easy peasy.
1. One Camera
Simple and quick one camera set up. Use phone or camera on a tripod at about a 5-6ft height pointing down. Then cut by ‘zooming’ or ‘cropping’ into the picture a little bit. To keep it looking crispy use a higher resolution setting like 4k.
Warning: With the camera so far away you’ll need to get some additional audio. If you search for “wired lav” you’ll find long microphones to clip on you and go direct to your phone or camera.
2. Voiceover
Binging with Babish has exploded as one of the biggest Youtube cooking shows in the last few years. Now a days Andrew Rea has put a little bit more production value into his videos, but they still stay true to his voiceover and food focused style structure.
Keeping himself ‘off camera’, a medium shot on the food, with a scripted voiceover recorded later. This makes filming easier by not worrying about a narrative and focusing on the cooking. Then allows you to create something feeling a bit more polished after with a scripted voiceover.
3. POV / First Person Cooking
If you really want show people how you cook, strap a camera on your head! Grabbing a Go Pro and head strap mount could be the simplest and easiest way to walk people through. Plus audio should be great if you want to talk while you cook. Notice in this video he uses his phone as a monitor for the Go Pro.
Be aware when filming: your head is now the camera! So keep fast movements down and try to ‘look’ with your eyes and not head in order to keep the ‘camera’ more stable. And if you don’t want to talk during it, no worries. Here’s “Peaceful Cuisine” doing a silent POV cook. Which leads us to…..
4. ASMR / Silent
I gotta say this is new to me and I kinda like it. If you don’t like your face or voice on camera - then just let people enjoy watching and hearing the natural sounds of the kitchen. Still shot with one camera, it’s moved around to show close ups of different parts of the process. Be sure to go all out with audio for best results.
5. Story Style
Last, is treat it like a social media ‘story’ and film the whole process in short clips that you publish to your platform. Tabitha Brown got a lot of attention on TikTok for her cooking videos created in this style. She brought in a lot of personality and laid out the video with a structure and short step POV process. Plus it was easy to record and publish. This is more similar to a ‘Tasty’ type recipe, quickly showing the steps, but better suited for social media consumption. Also using an app like TikTok you can record voiceover, place music in later, and easily have a version done for youtube, instagram, linkedin, etc.
The best part, no editing! Now you have no excuse, get out there and start cooking!
