Cooking Show Adverts | Research & Development

As part of scene 7 (in the living room) we need to have a cooking show advert that appears on the screen, in order to clearly present 'The Last Dish' to prepare for the last scene of the show.
This meant that we would need to create said advert, and in order to make an effective, real-life looking cooking show advert, we needed to do some research.

I started by looking at actual cooking show adverts such as MasterChef, Hell's Kitchen, Great British Menu, Great British Bake Off, and so on.

MasterChef

This advert has quite an artistic tone to it, which is something we want for our own advert. It clearly shows there are contestants who have to cook and be judged by the judges at the end. It also presents the idea that they have to be quite creative with their cooks, potentially, and they have to be as precise as possible. The advert itself has quite a lot of slow motion effects which adds to the creativity of the advert, and the colouring of the advert is very cinematic making it eye-catching for the audience. It's set in a studio kitchen, which the audience would presume the show is set, and the few lines of text that appear give a good indication as to how the show works. The music is very loud and dramatic, adding to the cinematic tone, but also it gets the audience's attention. When hearing this music the audience are more likely to pay attention rather than finding something else to do during the adverts.
When creating our own advert, this will be good to use as influence as it has the creative tone we are looking for. We might not make it as dramatic, but we can always experiment to see what the outcome will look like.

Hell's Kitchen

In comparison to the last advert, this one is more structured through the use of a voice over. The visuals are still quite cinematic and creative at the beginning with a silhouette of Gordon's face being one of the first shots you see, followed by shots of fire, and CU of cooking. However, as the advert gets going, you start to see footage of the show and the contestants that will be appearing on that series. You also see Gordon interacting with the contestants to give the audience a little sneak peek as to what the show will be like. All of these shots have either an a faded layer of fire over the top, or a vignette to give it a dark, cinematic effect. The music is similar to the music in the MasterChef advert, as it is also quite dramatic and fits in with the dark, fire, danger theme to this advert.

When creating our own advert, I think we should think about staying away from making it seem like the actual show as this will make things a lot more complicated in the long run. I also think the voice over is quite old school and it's not effective when catching the audience's attention. I'm not sure this advert will be a heavy influence for us, but we may want to experiment.

Great British Menu

This advert has a very different tone to the others, but it takes some of the elements they have also used. Straight away, from the upbeat music and the quick cuts, the fun fast tone to the show is clearly presented. The visuals aren't as dramatic as the last two adverts, as the music gives it a fun tone, but the shots are very similar. A lot of CU are used on both the food and the chefs, but due to the quick pace of the cutting, they aren't seen as dramatic. The colours are quite bright and vibrant, making the food stand out giving it a creative feel. There aren't any voice overs, much like the Hell's Kitchen advert, but they do use footage from the show itself. Developing on from that, they use some of the audio of the judges and the chefs, and the way it's edited gives the advert a humorous tone, foreshadowing the show having some potential humorous elements/moments.
When creating our advert, the music will be one of the main elements we use as inspiration as we want quite upbeat music. The music gave it a fun positive tone, and that's something we want to be presented in our show whilst also giving it quite a dramatic feel. CU will also be used within our advert, and we will potentially experiment with fast paced cutting in order to keep the advert interesting for the audience.

Great British Bake Off

Out of all three adverts already looked at, this one is the most different due to one main element; the soundtrack. They have used the singing soundtrack as the main element that helps carry the whole advert, by giving the food int he advert faces and making it look like they are singing. This makes the advert very humorous and lighthearted, much like the show is. The soundtrack aside, they use quite a few effects such as time lapsing and slow motion, which is something we will be looking into. The main focus is the food being presented in a quick manner, through the time-lapse and stop motion effect. The colours are also very vibrant helping the advert stand out, and the location looks as if it is set in the tent itself, foreshadowing the location of the show.
When creating our advert, we want to make sure the food is our main focus, much like this advert. We also want to use the idea of a time lapse and slow motion to show this process of cooking moving forward, and it might be similar to how it is presented in this advert. The soundtrack will stray away from being too humorous but it won't be too dramatic or serious either. I think this advert will influence in certain ways, but it wont be the main influence.

After this useful research, Nisserin mentioned looking at the M&S food adverts as they have the sort of creative effect we wanted for our own advert.

M&S Food Adverts

This advert is basically the exact style and tone we want for 'The Last Dish'. All of the shots are very creative and there a mix of time lapse and slow motion effects that have been used. The shots are either CU or ECU and this helps keep the main focus on the food and the creativeness of it. the music in the background is very upbeat and creates a positive vibe, making it more enjoyable for the audience to watch. The video itself is very simple with having either a black background or white background as the main setting, this is something that we would like for our own advert.
When making our own advert, this has given us a few ideas as to what might work and look good. The lighting it natural, which is our desire, and all of the shots are very artistic and eye-catching, which is something we want in our advert.

Overall, when looking at this research, it's apparent that the main source that we will be taking inspiration from is the M&S Food Advert. However, the other TV adverts such as the MasterChef and Great British Menu adverts will help aid us when making decisions as well. This research has helped greatly as we are now able to plan and create an effective TV advert that will look real.