Some time in the not so distant past, in a secret underground bar somewhere in Manchester, Coolbox found themselves producing cocktail recipe and ‘how to’ method videos for Franklin & Sons.
I’m not sure why I’m trying to be so mysterious, but the bar (Project Halcyon) was underground and we did have the fortune of spending a couple of days, filming some very tasty cocktails, with our friends at Franklin & Sons.
Coolbox were tasked with producing a series of method “How To” recipe videos that were to be under the umbrella name “In The Mix”. These videos were aimed at bartenders up and down the country to help educate them on how to prepare certain, bespoke cocktails using Franklin & Sons products. The “In The Mix” series was produced to live on F&S’ website. Coolbox also produced a shorter version of each cocktail video for Instagram and Facebook.
We had quite a simple camera and lighting set up. We went with two main camera angles; one wide angle at the end of the bar for the bartender to address and one tight angle on the cocktail itself for the detail shots. The lighting set up was simple as well. We had just two light sources, one key light using the Aputure 300D with the dome and egg crate and one hard hair light using the Aputure 120D with an open face and reflector.
We used the Sony FX9 with the Sony G-Master 24-70mm lens as the wide angle as this is the camera the bartender would be addressing and we could run an XLR straight into the camera for the boom mic, therefore syncing up the main angle and primary audio source. The Sony FX3 was used for the tight angle for the cocktail drinks, parallel with the bar and featured the Sony G-Master 70-200mm lens. Once the setup was complete, it was a case of following the shot list to keep consistency across all the videos.
The idea was to inject a lot of personality into the videos, especially the longer-form versions for Franklin and Sons’ website. Each bartender who appeared on camera, was mic’d up with a lapel mic. This was used in conjunction with the boom mic audio as a safety. By knowing that we had crispy clean audio (although we did have to slightly battle with the incessant whirring from the fridges), this meant we could focus on encouraging the bartenders to express themselves and let their personalities shine through. We didn’t want to just make another series of “how to” videos. We wanted them to be unique to each bartender so rather than following a strict script, we let them ad lib a lot, leaving in a couple of outtakes and letting Con, our editor, loose on the sound effects and comic edits.
You can watch our full behind the scenes video here and if you fancy having a go at making your own cocktails, you can find our videos on their Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/franklinandsons