Ooni | Pizza Oven Recipe Videos

Client: Ooni

Project: Season 1 : 6 x recipe videos

Location: Base Studios, Manchester

Deliverables:

6 x recipe videos in 16x9 for Youtube
6 x recipes videos in 9x16 for Instagram & Tik Tok
>50 x stills from thumbnail purposes

Dead Pixel did:

Pre-production & logistics
Food prep & on set styling
Filming inc multi-cam operating
Directing
Editing & grade

Quote of the Shoot:

““You can’t put a price on vibe’"

It all started with a simple LinkedIn message from lead producer Graeme who admired the work we did for BBC Food and asked if we were interested in collaborating on some new recipe videos.

Ooni’s brief? A blend of ultra-clean, cinematic visuals twinned with that immersive vibe. Think a pristine working kitchen meets backyard sanctuary. And it was our job to bring it all together, from building the set to nailing down the schedule and shooting the content.

Pre-production

Now, you might think we’d just shoot this outdoors given it’s an outdoor oven. But between the unpredictable Northern weather and the logistics of multiple recipes, we decided to keep it all under one roof.

So, we brought the outdoors in. Building two sets in our 3000 sq ft studio with a ton of potted plants from our extended families. We had a modern bright kitchen set and a lush, walled garden right here in the studio.

And this wasn’t just a pizza shoot. We tackled a whole Mediterranean sea bass, mouth-watering steaks, and much more. Plus, for the serious pizza fans we also included recipes crafted to perfect that iconic pizza dough.

Production

Taking inspiration from Disney’s ‘The bear’, we shot these videos with two handheld Sony FX6 cameras with G master prime lenses. We wanted the audience to feel like they were right there with the chef almost tasting the food as it came together.

The lighting is very deliberate offering up strong contrast with all year round spring sunshine and super shallow depth of field.

We actually shot two very different styles of recipe video aimed at two different audiences simultaneously. We’ve got the beautiful cinematography of the long form content shot alongside the more simple stripped back social first content. 2 technicians keeping an eye on 4 cameras wrangling all the data and keeping framing was no easy feat but one in which delivers for the audiences without forcing high end content on a User Generated platform.

Post-Production

Using a detailed post production ‘bible’ as we call it, we drip fed the recipes for the Ooni marketing team to feed back on with notes from their global team.

We supplied all edits with templated Ai voiceover to help set the pacing and once approved, switched them out with an authentic American performance to add that human touch.

Post production took approx 4 weeks from start to finish giving the Ooni content team plenty of content to keep their social feeds fresh over the coming months.