By Natalie Bell

This brand is iconic.  Nando’s is a world player in all things peri-peri.

We felt proud and patriotic to be part of this of campaign, launching Nando’s new Mozambican paprika basting sauce.  This sauce is an inspired flavour cue and gives a delicious alternative to the other already entrenched flavours in the Nando’s collection 

What was captivating about this job was the variety of fresh ingredient we used to showcase the new sauce. The camera loved it.

Hair for Chips

Not all potatoes are born equal, and prepping photogenic chips can be fraught with problems. 

A good stylist will be familiar with the main varieties of potatoes that are on the market and what their particular traits are.

For example, a Sifra potato- depending on the season (new, middle, or late) – can have a high sugar content.  This which means the edges of the fried chip go dark. This is a no-no for the camera and we have experienced that most clients want their chips to be of an even golden hue. 

Nando’s chips are of an excellent grade and thus needed us to only hand select the even lengthened chips by ploughing through kilos of frozen ones.  We then shaped the tips of the chips to give a neat, photo finish

Chips have to fried up to 3 times with periods of rest in-between to get the desired look.  Also the oil in which you fry the chips is very important and stylist will colour the oil to help the chip along to runway status.

Make up For Chicken

As for chicken, well, we could write a text book on this subject, as it is one of the most difficult items to get right because there are so many variables.

Wrinkled skin is a disaster for the camera, so a food stylist has to “poach” the chicken to its maximum girth, and then apply various paint techniques to make it appear cooked.

In the old days, food stylists used Woodoc wood sealer to get the ‘cooked look’.  These days though, we have different tricks to make the chicken look golden and delicious.

For the Nando’s commercial we had to pin the chickens into shape so that when they dropped at a thousand frames a second you would not tell that they were raw.

Also, the grill marks would have been applied by using a combination of charcoal and a metal skewer held under a blow torch.

Playing with Food

We were allowed to use colour, shape, and all manner of textures of all the ingredients that made up the Mozambican sauce. We played with our food!

It took many takes of dropping the garlic for it to land like an open flower.  This was great fun and it looks marvellous at high speed on video.

The best part of this food styling job, was having lots of poetic license to romance the elements and make the product leap off the screen.

 

To find out more tips and tricks of the trade of Food Styling, join us in March for our Food Styling Course.

By Natalie Bell

This brand is iconic.  Nando’s is a world player in all things peri-peri.

We felt proud and patriotic to be part of this of campaign, launching Nando’s new Mozambican paprika basting sauce.  This sauce is an inspired flavour cue and gives a delicious alternative to the other already entrenched flavours in the Nando’s collection 

What was captivating about this job was the variety of fresh ingredient we used to showcase the new sauce. The camera loved it.

Hair for Chips

Not all potatoes are born equal, and prepping photogenic chips can be fraught with problems. 

A good stylist will be familiar with the main varieties of potatoes that are on the market and what their particular traits are.

For example, a Sifra potato- depending on the season (new, middle, or late) – can have a high sugar content.  This which means the edges of the fried chip go dark. This is a no-no for the camera and we have experienced that most clients want their chips to be of an even golden hue. 

Nando’s chips are of an excellent grade and thus needed us to only hand select the even lengthened chips by ploughing through kilos of frozen ones.  We then shaping the tips of the chips to give a neat, photo finish

Chips have to fried up to 3 times with periods of rest in-between to get the desired look.  Also the oil in which you fry the chips is very important and stylist will colour the oil to help the chip along to runway status.

Make up For Chicken

As for chicken, well, we could write a text book on this subject, as it is one of the most difficult items to get right because there are so many variables.

Wrinkled skin is a disaster for the camera, so a food stylist has to “poach” the chicken to its maximum girth, and then apply various paint techniques to make it appear cooked.

In the old days, food stylists used Woodoc wood sealer to get the ‘cooked look’.  These days though, we have different tricks to make the chicken look golden and delicious.

For the Nando’s commercial we had to pin the chickens into shape so that when they dropped at a thousand frames a second you would not tell that they were raw.

Also, the grill marks would have been applied by using a combination of charcoal and a metal skewer held under a blow torch.

Playing with Food

We were allowed to use colour, shape, and all manner of textures of all the ingredients that made up the Mozambican sauce. We played with our food!

It took many takes of dropping the garlic for it to land like an open flower.  This was great fun and it looks marvellous at high speed on video.

The best part of this food styling job, was having lots of poetic license to romance the elements and make the product leap off the screen.

 

To find out more tips and tricks of the trade of Food Styling, join us in March for our Food Styling Course.