Narrator: Ever wonder how food commercials look so mouthwatering and perfect? These food shoots can cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars, all so you'll buy more of these. Visual engineer, Steve Giralt, shoots photos and videos for food and product-based commercials in New York City and around the world. I bring technology and kind of traditional
image-making processes together in what I call visual engineering. Narrator: One piece of
that technology: robots. Or, as they call them, motion controls. Steve's long list of
clients include big brands, like Hershey's, Budweiser,
Pepsi, and Starbucks. Of course making food look
so good comes with a price. A single-day TV shoot can cost between $50,000 to $100,000. Steve: In these food
shoots that we create, we have a lot of moving parts. Basically, you'll have, let's
say, one item that's moving, something else that's
flashing and running into it, something else that it's gonna land on. We have to use a lot of
different technologies and synchronizing software to basically allow those
things all to happen at the exact moment we
need them to happen. We love it, here we go. Comes out pretty low. Narrator: It also takes
a symphony of people to make the products look
the best they can be. Various stylists, engineers, and operators work together to create the perfect shot. My name is Michelle Gatton,
and I am a food stylist. When I get recipes, I read over the recipe so I know what I'm gonna be doing. So, in the back of my head, I start thinking about
how I'd like to do it. It could change once we get on
set with the different props, what the art director wants could change, but I start trying to create
the recipe in my head, 'cause I'm only makin' it pretty
much the first time on set. I made these brownies yesterday, just so we're not waiting
on me making brownies. And, to make them look
like I just made them, I just warmed up the
chocolate with a heat gun, and I'm adding a little
bit of melted chocolate to the cut side. Steve: So here we've got
our motorized slider, which is moving a pump that's
gonna have caramel on it that'll be pumping down onto our brownies. So, in the end, we'll have this shot of this beautiful ribbon of caramel kind of draping and curling
on top of the brownie. Narrator: There's a
lot of trial and error. Steve: Are you ready? And here we go. Yeah! Nailed it! Narrator: Every precise moment captured is nailed down to the millisecond. This is the benefit to using robots. Human hands are also used on commercials when timing is not a crucial factor. Steve: We put a lot of
effort into these visuals. It's really cool to see your vision kinda come to life and
be spread with the world. I think you have to have a
really great understanding of what is appetizing. Everybody speaks the language of food.
