Planning a stop motion video ad for a food product is great fun… and there is plenty to take into consideration if you are aiming for that ‘EAT ME’ but still effortless and creative look. Some of the yummiest ingredients just don’t stay still!

For this project, I was shooting several videos throughout the day and needed vanilla ice cream to feature in several of my recipes. The weather report predicted lovely warm June weather, plus the added heat from my continuous video lights. The problem with food, heat and stop motion is that you are documenting subtle movements, so working with melting produce is a nightmare!

BUT….there is a straightforward solution to this problem. Ice cream isn’t that hard to fake! I followed an easy tutorial by Jen of MAMA.PAPA.BUBBA and created the above vanilla delight look-a-like in just 5 minutes. The bowl looked precisely the same at the end of the day as it had done earlier that morning 🙂

I shot the videos with a low f-stop to get the soft blurry background which left the ice cream out of the immediate focus area. You might not see the contours of the ice cream in the final video but believe me, it wouldn’t have been pretty with melted soup!