This is what real food looks like when it is professionally photographed for advertising. I think I prefer faked-up prettified sandwiches.
Thanks. I really didn’t need that appetite anyway.
In the early days of Johnny Carson’s reign on “The Tonight Show,” they used to do live commercials. One time, Ed McMahon did such a spot for Smucker’s Chocolate Syrup that featured the product being poured over what looked like a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream. After the ad was over, Carson looked at the still-solid chocolate sundae sitting under the hot studio lights and commented, “When is that thing going to melt?” McMahon then admitted they had used lard rather than real ice cream to make the sundae because it didn’t melt and looked better on camera.
Just how many cameras were on that Double Cheeseburger?
/Frie[n]ds
I thought this rant was going to be about how McDonald’s hires exclusively African-American actors with stereotypical accents in order to promote their “I’m lovin’ it” campaign.
I thought it was going to be a rant about the Burger King “King” That character just freaks me out.
Happens all the time on Iron Chef.
It would be mildly amusing if the lumberjack in the current ad had the same reaction, and began chasing him through the forest with a chainsaw.
Quoted by Duckster:
*For example, if the photograph advertises a cherry pie, the pastry used must be exactly like all the other cherry pies the company sells; it cannot be larger or more filled or made from fake products or even a different recipe. However, if one of the cherries doesn’t look so good, the stylist can substitute that individual cherry with another one. *
Worse than that… I was once involved on a product shoot for some sliced sandwich meat. End result was one glorious sandwhich, proudly sitting thre with ham or whatever spilling out of it. To reach this point, the food stylist brought in six loaves of bread, a case of tomatoes and several heads of lettuce, in addition to a box full of the pre-packaged sliced meats - all in hopes of finding the absolutely picture-perfect slices of bread and whatnot. They actually made four sandwiches and later picked the best one, but by the end of the day, you’d not want to eat any of them as they’d been out all day long.
Hamburgers are worse. Like with the sandwich bread, they’ll bring in dozens of buns so they can find one with just the perfect array of sesame seeds on it and the perfect toasty, golden brown color. Again, one of the gray ares is what’s being advertised. In the case of an ad for beef, they might actually mess with the buns - gluing sesame seeds in a different arrangement, or even air-brushing the bun a tad darker. In the case of fast-food hamburgers, they can’t mess with the bun as that’s part of what’s being advertised, so they pick the One True Bun.
There are some magazines who are devoted to the use of completely natural foods and they can put out absolutely stunning photos. Donna Hay is one that I recall off the top of my head.
I remember reading an anecdote about a cornflakes commercial in which the photographer wen’t through 4 boxes of cornflakes one by one to get a bowl full of perfectly photogenic flakes.