Food Prep Has Never Looked This Thrilling, An Imaginative Short Film and BTS

From St. Louis’ Bruton Stroube Studios comes the impressively cinematic tale of food preperation as it battles the elements within the kitchen. At just over a minute in length, “Cooking Up A Storm” manages to breathe an extraordinary amount of drama and depth into the culinary practice. This short film is testament to what a skilled production team and sound designer can bring to seemingly oridinary situations.

The entirety of “Cooking Up A Storm” — conceptualizing, set design, food styling, production, and post — was created in-house at Bruton Stroube Studios. Working in a modest-sized kitchen at the studio meant that the team needed to make careful considerations in composition, lens choice, lighting, and postproduction color correction in order to make the small details seem more large and ominous. Custom rigs were even built to capture certain macro shots that Director Tim Wilson wanted to achieve.

As with most motion projects at Bruton Stroube, the film was shot with a RED Dragon. “We love the anamorphic look and often push to achieve that cinematic feel for our stuff, when appropriate. So this was an opportunity to take that to an extreme, you might say,” said Andy DeVries, motion editor at Bruton Stroube.

Shooting for this project accumulated multiple hours of overcranked footage. DeVries said that the team shot a lot of scenes that didn’t make it to the final film because “ultimately we all wanted to keep it short and sweet.” He continued, “The concept is simple enough [that] it didn’t need to be belabored with a bunch of repetitive shots, and we hope it just leaves the audience wanting more.”

Check out more behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot below:

“Cooking Up A Storm” credits:
Directed by: Tim Wilson
Director of Photography: James McKenzie
Produced by: Jen Croghan
Food Stylist: Cathy Chipley
Editor: Lucas Harger
Sound Design: Steve Horne
Original Score: Steve Horne
Color: James McKenzie and Tim Wilson

All images used with permission.