THE APPROACH

Tom’s the creative genius, our role is to capture him in his natural habitat and put him centre stage. Not overly filtered, nor heavily scripted; just like his food, we wanted to create honest, humble, generous and damn-right tasty creative outputs that put a smile on people’s faces, empowering them to pick up a plate and make out-of-this world cooking accessible for all.

Being a small, nimble and specialist team, we could oversee the full end-to-end management and implementation of this project, delivering high quality production levels, without the massive entourage of separate sound and lighting crews. The team are pocket Swiss army knives for content creation, each with a heavily evolved skill set, allowing us to move quickly, manage multiple tasks, and operate dynamically – a skillset that was crucial for delivering high-quality cooking content without massive budgets or lots of moving parts.

THE OUTPUT

This was a multi-faceted brief, which generated a number of different outputs. We supported Tom with launching his Youtube channel during lockdown; creating engaging content and shooting over 40 videos to date. The videos were specifically shot to debunk the myth that cooking has to be tricky – making it accessible, clear, concise and fun. Fit for viewers of all experience. We used our full range of camera kit, from the broadcast Sony FS7mkii, and three mirrorless Sony DSLRs. Four cameras operated by two in production, Dan, our MD, and George our Head of Video. Filmed over two stints of three days each, we went on to edit and output 40 videos over an intense 25 days at NSD HQ, drawing inspiration and creativity from every single member of the team.

When supporting with Tom’s Valentines Day Home Delivery box we wanted to match his humble, handcrafted and honest approach. We shot all of the dishes in one sitting, styling the shoot to accentuate the simple, rustic, unpretentiousness of Tom and documenting the end-to-end cooking process. The Shed Marlow is a treasure-trove of cooking props to choose from; in the end we opted for earthenware plates and a gnarly heavy-duty oak chopping board vibe, sticking to the rustic look and feel of the shoot. All in all, we filmed, styled, shot and (most importantly) ate Salmon Gravadlax with caviar, Beef Wellington and Truffled Chicken – certainly had worse days.

CREATIVE INPUT

We had creative input on every aspect of the job, from capturing the personality on each plate and replicating that across the menu design, to selecting the paper stock and overseeing the print run, as well as creating the promotional marketing collateral. It truly was a fully end-to-end process.

Tom is a man in demand, and one of the ways he adapted and evolved in lockdown was to run corporate cook alongs through a live video stream for blue chip businesses. We set up a full-on studio to do this smoothly, installing a widescreen TV at the kitchen of his private dining room, The Shed, in Marlow, so that he could see all 30-50 people who were cooking along live. As with all the other activations, we did our job in the background, making sure the lighting, sound and tech was on point, so that he could shine in the middle and work his magic.

THE RESULTS

• Restaurant boxes sold out and beat their initial target by more than 250%
• Live streamed ten corporate cook along videos (so far… more in pipeline)
• Filmed and edited a top-secret video of Pasture to Plate. It’s only available to people who buy a Sirloin steak from the Hand and Flowers, but I won’t tell if you don’t

BEHIND THE SCENES

All of this activity was implemented in the midst of deepest darkest lockdown. We socially distanced for every shoot, wearing masks and sterilising equipment to ensure we could do so safely. It was a logistical nightmare, but we were so hyped to be working with such a legend of the game that we went above and beyond to make it happen, learned so much in the process, and are so proud of the outcome and outputs.