Saturday, January 30, 2010
Smile For The Camera
Jamie at Home is a far more relaxed series, with Jamie Oliver all grown up and showing us the kind of rustic food he obviously enjoys, without any mums going ga-ga for the lad.
Some folk have a personal trainer, but not our Jamie, he shares the screen with his personal gardener, Brian Skilton, who kind of looks like he jumped in a time machine in the hippie happening sixties and landed smack bang in the middle of Jamie's sprawling garden.
It's a series that I'm really enjoying, showing the sort of food that you want to cook.
What caught my eye when the credits rolled, there were a couple of cameramen, a sound recordist, a single graphics credit and three food stylists.
Yep, three food stylists.
I sort of paused and wondered, how much of the food is actually Jamie's? Every time the camera cuts away, do the stylists rush on set, push him out the way and produce these gorgeous dishes gracing our screens?
Is it so hard to produce natural looking food that it takes three people, four, if Jamie has any input?
There's a lot of debate over air-brushed models, attended to by teams of makeup artists and hairdressers preening them within an inch of their skinny lives for the covers of fashion magazines, how they depict unattainable perfection.
Is this now true for food too?
Some folk have a personal trainer, but not our Jamie, he shares the screen with his personal gardener, Brian Skilton, who kind of looks like he jumped in a time machine in the hippie happening sixties and landed smack bang in the middle of Jamie's sprawling garden.
It's a series that I'm really enjoying, showing the sort of food that you want to cook.
What caught my eye when the credits rolled, there were a couple of cameramen, a sound recordist, a single graphics credit and three food stylists.
Yep, three food stylists.
I sort of paused and wondered, how much of the food is actually Jamie's? Every time the camera cuts away, do the stylists rush on set, push him out the way and produce these gorgeous dishes gracing our screens?
Is it so hard to produce natural looking food that it takes three people, four, if Jamie has any input?
There's a lot of debate over air-brushed models, attended to by teams of makeup artists and hairdressers preening them within an inch of their skinny lives for the covers of fashion magazines, how they depict unattainable perfection.
Is this now true for food too?
6 Comments:
Good laugh, thanks.
Maybe I need one to serve my food at the table?
I remember a friend showing me how he had made a model for an advert on trams look so much more attractive years ago before computer graphics technology. Just cutting the photo and twisting bits of the body untill she looked svelt and "attractive" to the eye.
And have you noticed how after each cut way Jamie's bench is usually clean and spotless. His work/mess disappears! It's a miracle! I want a kitchen bench like that ...
Hi thermo, good point, you really have to wonder about any image you see and what has been done to the original, with absolutely no need to say it has been tampered with.
Hi ohjoh, I have spotted that, but it's a whole other story. Definitely not food stylists cleaning up but magic elves!
Agreed, though I do own the book & most of the recipes are really good even though they might not look so perfect when cooked by me & no stylists. My only assistant is Chloe at at nearly 3 she loves to help but is not quite ready for a tv career wither just yet!
The plain fact is that food looks like shit when it's not styled.
I have a self-published (by someone else, not me) cookbook of traditional Italian cuisine and while the recipes are the best on my bookshelf, every photo looks like a pile of luminous vomit.
Hi ange, flavour's king isn't it? Bit jealous too, wish someone wouls style my food.
Hi kh, luminous vomit - published in the seventies under purple light?
Still, if a chef needs stylists, what hope the rest of us? Is it behind the demise of home cooking along with a lack of time?
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