ESSENTIAL B-ROLL TIPS FOR FOOD CONTENT CREATORS!
As food photographers, content creators and bloggers, mastering the basics of videography is essential for establishing a strong presence on social media. While the technical aspects, especially when using a phone or coming from a photography background, are relatively easy to learn, it’s the sheer volume of content required for social media that can make videography feel super overwhelming.
That's where B-roll comes into play! Integrating B-roll into your workflow allows you to consistently produce valuable video content and effectively market your services without consuming too much time and energy, even during busy periods in your creative business.
In today's blog post, we'll dive deep into B-roll: what it is, how to create it, and how to best utilise it as a food photographer, blogger, or content creator.
B-Roll Explained: What It Is & Why It Matters
B-roll is the additional film footage that complements your main video content, known as A-roll. B-roll can be used in conjunction with A-roll to give your overall food story context and variety. It can also make the narrative of your overall visual food story more interesting, more captivating and more engaging. Furthermore, B-roll can give your audience a broader insight into your recipe process without distracting from your main narrative, but instead enhancing it and making it look more rounded and professional.
For example, in a recipe Reel, your A-roll footage includes all the essential shots showing how you actually make your dish, from beginning to end. B-roll in turn, might include shots of you going shopping, you placing your ingredients on the countertop when you enter your kitchen, you opening the fridge to get a specific ingredient or a macro shot of you pouring an ingredient into a mixing bowl of sorts. These B-roll shots serve to add depth to your Reel, keep your audience engaged and provide visual interest and context.
HERE’S WHY FILMING B-ROLL CAN SAVE YOU TIME as a food content creator!
You might be reading the above and wondering how on earth filming B-roll can save you time and allow you to show up more consistently, when capturing it simply sounds like more work! You see, the good news is that you can use B-roll to create stand alone Reels in addition to creating better and more professional looking recipe Reels! For example, you can use B-roll and overlay it with text to share inspiring words or a teaching moment. Various B-roll clips can also be converted into one behind the scenes style Reel, where you share your process of creating a recipe Reel for example. I also sometimes weave B-roll and still photos into a Reel to showcase my food work as I did HERE and HERE, to make my food photography feel more dynamic and bring a sense of surprise into food photography Reels.
ESSENTIAL B-Roll ideas for food photographers and food content creators
So the next time you’re creating a recipe reel or are in content creation mode, be sure to capture some additional B-roll which you can then repurpose in the ways I outlined above.
Here are some B-roll ideas that are perfect for food photographers and food content creators like you!
B-roll ideas: Kitchen scenes to give your work context
Capture a variety of footage that includes your kitchen or cooking set up. Maybe you have a gorgeous spice cabinet or pretty stack of ceramic bowls you’d love to show off or maybe your morning coffee making ritual in your kitchen is worth capturing. It could also be that at a specific time of the day, the sun beams into your kitchen, making it look light, bright and inviting. Even scenes where you’re prepping your veggies could be worth turning into B-roll footage. Please note that your kitchen doesn’t have to be magazine worthy or huge for it to make interesting and engaging B-roll content. As long as it helps tell your story, that’s all that matters.
B-roll ideas: Behind the scenes to establish authority
My audience’s favourite B-roll content is behind the scenes footage. And I don’t blame them because who doesn’t love taking a cheeky behind-the-scenes look into the work and life of food content creators and food photographers? Moreover, behind the scenes content of work set ups and food photography shoots lend themselves perfectly to educational type Reels!
B-roll ideas: Your editing process to show your professionalism
B-roll content that captures you editing your photos or videos can be incredibly informative and educational as stand alone Reels. That said, really any kind of footage that involves you sitting at your desk can work fantastically well as B-Roll content and show all the different elements involved in what it means to be a food content creator or food photographer. You can use this type of B-roll in A-Day-In-The-Life style reels or as stand alone reels where you outline your editing process, for example.
B-roll ideas: Everyday scenes for honesty and transparency
Although your audience loves the work you create, they also like getting to know you a little bit better. Therefore, seeing you relaxing whilst reading a book, watching you tidy your studio space, getting a glimpse of you whilst on holiday or out doing your grocery shopping, can all be compelling and interesting content. And, the best part is, it takes so little work to create as you simply need to turn on your phone camera whilst going about your daily life!
These everyday-type B-roll scenes lend themselves perfectly for inspirational or funny Reels where you use a trending and fitting audio to accompany them!
The options are endless, but I hope these B-roll ideas give you a good place to start. Anything here you’ll be trying out for yourself?
WANT MORE FOOD REELS IDEAS AND TIPS?
I love sharing short, easy to read, useful tips on food Reels creation and you’ll find lots more here on the blog. Read all about my best tips for recipe Reels, creating a great hook, the must-try camera angles and the ideal phone settings for filming food content!
Ready to go deeper? If you’re a food photographer, food blogger or food content creator eager to improve your content creation strategy on social media then why not order my brand new book, How to Make Your Food Famous! It’s packed full of practical tips that will help you improve your videography and lots of insights that will ensure you grow a loyal and engaged audience and/or client base on social media!
To find out more about the book please tap HERE! So, what are you waiting for? Go check it out to discover if it’s right for you!