Sugar Shanes Promo

Sugar Shanes cookies hovering above a hand

PROJECT OVERVIEW

CLIENT: Sugar Shanes

PRODUCTION TYPE: Product Shoot

DELIVERABLES: 2 promotional videos, 100+ photos

Sugar Sugar

Sometimes, if you want a business you love to be your client, you have to act like they already are. So was the case with Sugar Shane’s, a cookie company near and dear to our heart. We’ve wanted to partner with Shane for a while now, and the only way to do that was to give his remarkable cookies the spotlight they deserve.

ThE BREAKDOWN

Harrison Dove-Green with photo and video equipment

For weeks, we had been eager for this moment: a day where all we would do is film cookies. They say that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life, and that day was just that.

The prep was already in motion. Colorful backdrops were picked up at a local art shop, pvc piping was acquired from Home Depot, and various props were bought at Walmart, including plates, a glass, fishing wire, Biscoff cookies, two gallons of milk, and a large plastic tub. All we needed now were our actors.

Devin burst through the glass doors of Midtown’s Sugar Shane’s at 11 AM. The employees didn’t see him coming. “Cookie time,” he whispered. Thank goodness they didn’t hear him.

He plundered the shop of four chocolate chip, two cookies n’ cream, two red velvet, and one dashing delta. The breakfast of champions. But we couldn’t claim victory yet.

We set up both backdrops side by side on one pvc pipe; one sky blue, the other a light purple (iconic to the branding of Sugar Shane’s). First up was product photography, so we separated the shoot into two segments based on the two separate backdrops. Lighting consisted of a simple two-point set-up, with an overhead Apurture lantern casting even, diffused light on the top of the cookies, and a sharp Apurture 300 shooting from the side through similar diffusion to create a shadow off the side of the cookies.

While setting up the lighting was easy, the photo shoot itself took longer than anticipated. By the time we had gotten what we needed, we had clocked in four hours. Who knew that tossing cookies, sprinkling Biscoff crumbles, and stacking Oreos artistically would take such time and precision?

Originally, we had scheduled four videos to film, but by the time we had wrapped photography, we only had enough energy and brain cells to shoot two: tossing cookies and dropping them in milk.

The tossing up of cookies is self-explanatory. Harrison nervously threw cookies into the air and prayed to God that he would catch them, as Devin filmed the hurling baked goods with a smile. The dropping them in milk, however, was an experiment that deserves more detail.

Placing a seven gallon plastic tub on the ground, Harrison filled it with two gallons of milk, which we had to make room for in our mini fridge by removing some shelves. We situated the camera directly above the tub via c-stand arm, using a long lens so the camera would be at a safe enough distance to capture the splash. The Apurture light with diffusion was situated to the left of camera, while a china ball was placed on the floor to the right, to better illuminate the milk. All that was needed was a cookie.

Taking a chocolate chip cookie and hovering it above the lens, Devin waited for the signal. Harrison pressed record on the camera, and stepped back to properly film the moment on his phone (because why not?). Silence. “Here we go,” Devin said, as he then dropped the cookie into the milk, causing a huge SPLASH, which sprayed our wooden floor with milk. To get it right on the first time would’ve been a dream, but sometimes we have nightmares. It took two more times to get the shot just right. Thankfully, we only needed to change out the cookie once due to sogginess.

After achieving the shot, clean up commenced. And whatever cookies survived the trauma of our shoot were subsequently eaten. We were champions, after all.

A week later, Devin returned to fulfill his Wallace & Gromit dreams by crafting a stop motion cookie ad. It took immense precision and focus, but taking bites of the cookie as he went kept him motivated.

Partnership

As stated, Sugar Shane’s wasn’t our partner at the outset of this photo/video shoot. But that didn’t matter. We enjoyed taking a step back from the corporate world and experimenting with cookies we love from a vendor we admire.

And that’s the way the cookie crumbles.