Ten mistakes people make filming a recipe

A recipe films badly for reasons that have nothing to do with cooking. You are running a process that will not wait, with your hands full, in a room built for heat and noise rather than pictures, and every decision you did not make in advance gets made for you by the pan.

The short version: light the work, frame the actions, test the sound and film the finished plate before anybody eats it. Plan spoken explanation around cooking noise, keeping any ventilation the cooking needs running.

Ten is the right length because the list belongs to one activity. A general list of filming faults runs out earlier. A kitchen adds its own: a process with no pause button, a running appliance in every direction, and a subject that changes appearance while you film it.

Why does a kitchen break the usual filming advice?

Because most filming advice assumes you can go again.

A piece to camera can be reshot until it is right. A roux cannot. Once the recipe is in front of you it moves at its own speed, in one direction, and anything you missed means shopping again rather than resetting. That is what makes a kitchen a planning problem.

The other thing a kitchen does is make noise at you from three directions while you try to speak over it. That half is repairable afterwards, at a cost high enough to be worth avoiding.

The ten, in the order a shoot goes wrong

You light the kitchen instead of the counter and the pan

Overhead kitchen lighting exists so you do not cut yourself, and it does the one thing food cannot survive: it drops your shadow across the work every time you lean in. Move a single light to the far side of the counter, roughly opposite the camera, and the steam, the sear and the texture all pick up an edge. The rule for a face and the rule for a plate are not the same, and Where to put your light when you only have one is the face version.

One camera, so every process shot becomes a jump cut

With a single angle on a process that never stops, every shortening of a step is a visible jump, and a recipe is almost entirely shortening. The composition a cooking partnership settled on is two angles on the person and one on the counter, with b-roll, meaning short shots of something other than you, filling the joins. How many cameras do you need? works out whether that is affordable at your scale, and Giving every camera angle a job stops the third being decoration.

The extractor, the fridge or the oven runs through the take

Listen for appliance noise before filming. Keep refrigeration and necessary ventilation running; move the microphone closer, choose a quieter position or record explanation separately. Noise reduction may help later, but it can affect the voice as well as the noise.

Nothing is said out loud, so the footage cannot be navigated

An afternoon of kitchen footage with no landmarks has to be watched from the beginning by whoever edits it, including you in a fortnight with no memory of which take of the sauce was good. A cooking partner was asked to say the stage out loud while filming, on the recording rather than in a notebook, which turned scrubbing into scanning and saved editing time. What to say out loud while you film has the phrases worth learning.

Your hands leave frame at the moment that matters

The close angle is framed neatly for the pan, then you reach left for the salt and the half-second that mattered happens outside the picture. Set that frame wide enough to hold the reach as well, or bring everything the step needs inside the frame before you start. Giving every camera angle a job is the general form: an angle that only sometimes contains its subject has not been given one.

You film horizontal only

A wide frame cropped to vertical keeps your face or the pan, and in a kitchen the pan sits below you and off to one side, so the crop takes the food out. Either film the key steps again with a phone held vertically, or compose the horizontal frame with the action stacked up the middle so a vertical crop contains it. Cropping to vertical without losing the subject has the geometry, and Filming so you can repurpose later is the planning half.

No b-roll of the small actions

The pour, the chop, the sprinkle and the lid going on are what every join in the finished video gets covered with, and nobody films them, because they are not the recipe. Film them on purpose, straight after the step rather than during it, so they are clean and you are not doing two jobs at once. A b-roll list you can use again is written once and taken into every shoot after this.

The kitchen and what you are wearing change during one recipe

An apron appearing halfway through, a tea towel moving or a board vanishing can make a continuity cut show. Photograph the counter and yourself before a break, then compare before resuming.

The finished dish never gets filmed properly

The plated dish is the shot the thumbnail needs and the shot everybody forgets, because by then the filming feels over and the food is going cold. Give it its own small setup: clear the counter, move it into the light, and film it from more than one position before anybody sits down. Three thumbnails, not one explains why you want frames to choose between rather than the one you liked on the day.

You film the boring parts at full length

Decide which stages need to be shown in real time. A technique may need an uninterrupted demonstration; a long wait may only need its beginning, end and a clear indication of time passed.

Before the next recipe

Two things, and they are the cheapest two. Move one light so it comes from behind the food rather than above you, and say the stage out loud before every step. Between them they fix the shot people came for and the work that happens long after the cooking stops.

Start with the equipment you have. Test the light, framing and spoken markers on one recipe, then decide whether a second camera would solve a recurring gap.

Sources and evidence

What here is established food-safety guidance, and what is our own kitchen shoot checklist.

What is established. The UK Food Standards Agency's guidance on food safety in a power cut states that turning refrigeration off has real food-safety implications, which is the basis for treating "switch the fridge off at the wall during the take" as something that needs a plan to switch it back on, not just a matter of remembering. This guidance applies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Our method. Lighting the counter rather than the kitchen, and filming small actions such as pours and chops on purpose straight after the step rather than during it, are this studio's working defaults for a kitchen shoot, not fixed rules for every recipe.

References.

• Food Standards Agency (gov.uk). Food hygiene for businesses: chilling and freezing; and How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely. gov.uk. Catering display/serving allowance: chilled food out of the fridge for a single period up to 4 hours, then discard; home guidance = shortest time, chill leftovers within 1-2 hours. The 4-hour figure is a catering display rule, NOT a safe home-fridge window.