A Tip for Great Cooking videos
Amy and I love watching cooking videos; we both love to cook and are huge foodies. When we had covid, the biggest bummer about it was not being able to smell or taste…so we binged watched Gordan Ramsey, “Uncharted”, just so we could experience food. Even though we couldn’t taste or smell, we could still “smell the food”. How does that work and why is this important when creating food/cooking content?
Our Brains can Smell and Taste Food through Audio?
Our brains are amazing and have fantastic memory, especially when it comes to taste and smell. So, even though we can’t actually smell the food in a video, if we have good visuals, along with good audio, we can trigger the part of our brains that remembers the smell and taste.
Use All the Senses you Can in Cooking Videos
What helps make an impactful experience, is something that uses all five senses. Sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing. Sometimes for different reasons, we do not have all of these senses available, but our brain makes up the difference. The more senses we give, the more information the brain has to make the rest of the story. When Amy and I shot a video for Cooking Steel and HallMade a couple of weeks ago, we knew while we would love to be able to capture smells with our cameras and put them in the video, that kind of tech is not here yet. So we have to rely on the other senses we CAN capture and use them well to help the viewer “smell”, “taste”, and “feel” the food.
Audio is the Key in Cooking Videos
Having good audio can be the missing link in cooking or food videos. It’s not just as easy as making sure your camera mic is turned on. You have to know what sounds you want to capture. Knife cutting food, setting the knife down, the sizzle of shrimp cooking on steel, wine being poured, beer opening, dishes and silverware tinkling in the background, are just a few examples.
How do we Create Good Audio on our Cooking Videos
There are a ton of options out there, so I will first tell you what we use and then give you low, medium, and high options for capturing audio.
For most of our content, we use a mic mounted on the camera. These are called shotgun mics and are not super expensive. My favorite part of them, is the camera is still recording the audio and pairing it with the video as it’s recording. So when I go to edit this, the audio is already perfectly synced up and doesn’t require additional time spent trying to sort and pair it all. This is a time savor and way less hassle. The down side is, sometimes the video shot I want is too far away for good audio. If this is the case, then we’ll use external recorders. This allows us to get the shots we want and not sacrifice audio quality. Side note, I’ll still record audio on the camera, because that makes syncing audio from the external mic way easier.
Audio Options for Cooking Videos
If you’re looking for a budget option and you are using a iPhone, there are some great options for bluetooth mics. You can also get a mic like a Zoom H2 recorder. You’ll have to sync the audio, but it will be worth the effort.
For a medium range budget, you can look at a Shotgun mic on a camera, along with external recorders. Field recorders are really nice for recording people talking, and then you can get cooking sounds with the shotgun mic or the other external recorder (if you have the man power, you can also run a boom mic to get closer to the audio source).
Lastly, if you don’t have a tight budget and want the best quality, then looking at running cinema cameras. These have tons of wonderful audio options, like xlr inputs for regular mics, bigger boom mics, or even wireless mics. The wireless mics are really nice, because you can be recording audio from multiple different places all getting recorded in camera. This makes the editing so much easier! Also, getting really nice external recorders with mics for different applications is an option.
No matter what option is right for you, being intentional and thoughtful about the audio you capture is what will make a cooking video stand out. If you need some inspiration, cook a meal with someone and every few minuets close your eyes and just listen. Then, write down what you hear and this will help you when planning for your next cooking video.