Shooting Wine Commercial
 

I am shoooting a wine commercial and there is a shot where wine is poured into a crystal glass.

Is there any additive or chemical to be put into the wine to make it more visually attractive? To make it be more dense and to have a nice colour?

Thanks!

Careful - I don't know about Uruguay but in many countries there are very strict laws limiting on how much a product can be adulterated or manipulated to make it more photogenic for advertising. For example, it's perfectly fine to skillfully light and compose your shots in such as way to bring out the colour of the wine but in many jurisdictions you would likely run afoul of some 'truth in advertising' laws if you added colourants to it. To make it appear denser when pouring, mixing in some glycerin or corn syrup first comes to mind but again, it's probably not going to be legal.

The standard gag for shooting liquid for commercials is to backlight the glass--try snooting a fresnel as tightly as possible. This will give a nice glow and sparkle to the contents.

Steve: You are right about what you say, I will have to keep an eye on that, but I don't think its a major problem here in Uruguay, unless you ridiculously alter the product.

I mean, when did you get a McDondalds Burger that really looked like the one in the picture?

Charles: Thanks, I will try your suggestions.

many years ago when I was doing still photography I was working on a catalog, for those of you that are old enough to remember the days of the 300 to 500 page catalogues ;-), and a common trick for shooting coffee pots as an example was to take a small amount of coffee from OUR coffee pot (what a waste of good coffee) and put it in the pot we were going to shoot. THEN we put about 8 cups of water in the pot to lighten up the coffee. It was of course undrinkable and looked like hell in the pot but a bit of magic lighting a little dulling spray an POOF! MAGIC. The printed product looked like the most delicious and drinkable coffee around.
Ah the tricks we used. Makes me want to try to remember the "good ole days". Well maybe not. :-)

Don

Well, the burger in the ads is made with the same ingredients as the burger in the store, just that it is meticulously crafted by hand with a food stylist handpicking every item in the shot. The lettuce is real, off-the-shelf lettuce, but the stylist probably spent hours going through the produce bin in the market to get the absolutely most photogenic unblemished head of lettuce, tore the leaf by hand or cut it with surgical scissors to just the perfect shape and size, and layered it on the burger with tweezers so it was placed just 'so.' Been there, done that.

It was my undertanding that they used to or still do use elmers glue on cereal commercials. It's thicker and pours with more flow. That's what I've always heard anyway.

With beverages "brilliance" is highly valued thus if the wine is anything other than absolutely briliantly clear you would probably want to fine or filter it. The manufacturer is probably the one to go to to get this done though the necessary filters and finings are widely available to home wine makers. You will certainly want a fair amount of the light from the wine to have been transmitted through it as it is by transmitted light that beverages are usually admired (i.e. held up to the light) so backlighting is definitely called for. Try to set the exposure so that the resultant images are well saturated with color and experiment with the overall saturation of the images in post.

Ya, close up on the fluted glass, back lit. Then play with shutter speeds and some slow motion, that looks really cool.

Mike

Wine has distinct color, depending on the grape. A cabernet is different from a pinot, a merlot or a shiraz, to name just a few. Each wine has it's own distinctive color and a connoisseur will tell immediately which grape you are looking at. I would go for the backlight but no additives, because it will destroy the goal of the commercial.

The wine is pure, natural and has a fantastic taste. Do not mix, or otherwise destroy the character of this specific wine.

Some weeks ago I gave my daughter (23) a glass of wine (she had not seen the bottle) and asked her to determine it's origins. Just by looking at the color she determined it to be a shiraz grape. This did limit the options. After sniffing and tasting she was successful in determining the estate where the grapes were grown. This was a small vineyard in the Languedoc, that produces only a couple of thousand bottles per year.

The reason for stating this that you should be looking at the message your client wants to get across, not how to videotape it. If he wants his wine and specific grape in the limelight (lime is not the proper word in this context), do so and try to get the specific characteristics on video. Ask them what distinguishes them from other wines in the region. Tell that story.

Just my 0.02

Let there be Light!
 

I would have to piggy back and say Charles is right the lighting is key and maybe you could color correct it in post. If that is indeed the look you are going for. Good Luck.

Reminds me of what I think is one of the funniest moments in all of television, on the old "Taxi" series where Latka Gravis' (Andy Kaufman) grandmother sends him the herbs for her secret cookie recipe. He makes up a batch that everyone is going wild over, until he gives a sample to Reverend Jim (Christopher Lloyd). Jims takes a small nibble and says "Hmmmm....Peruvian? Columbian?" He takes another bite and swirls it in his mouth and announces "Definitely Peruvian ... 1978 ... South slopes, before the rains..."

ROFL