The shoot day playbook: from brief to delivery

A good reel doesn’t start on the morning of the shoot. It starts about a week earlier. By the time the camera is on, we want to know what we are filming, in what order and in which light. Here is how we plan a shoot day at 404v, how the footage turns into a finished reel, and which checks it passes before it reaches you. At the end there is a short list of what the venue can prepare.

1. The brief: what are we saying, and to whom?

Every job starts with a short brief. Which product, which campaign, which audience? Three signature dishes, a newly opened terrace, or a campaign aimed at international guests?

The brief settles two things. First, who or what is the hero: a product, a person, the venue or an action. Second, what should stay in the background. Staff in white coats, a bright window or a busy wall should never compete with the hero.

2. Moodboard and shot plan

Next comes a moodboard with references for colour, light, framing and pace. Then we write the shot plan (in Turkish, çekim planı): a scene-by-scene list of what is filmed, on which camera, at what time and with which product. If the day includes drone, FPV or 360° work, weather and light go into the plan too.

The product list comes out of this step as well, so the kitchen knows what to prepare and when. All of these documents live in the client’s folder under the name of the shoot day. Months later, the answer to “what did we film that day?” is still one click away.

3. On the day

On set we follow the plan and still leave room for the moments nobody planned. A few rules hold on every shoot:

• Tripod or gimbal for close-ups. Most shaky footage comes from handheld close-ups. Food and product details need to sit still.
• Shoot 4K for 1080 delivery. Framing slightly wider than the final crop and recording in 4K leaves room to stabilise and reframe in the edit.
• 50p at a 1/100 s shutter. Natural motion blur hides micro-shake, and a 25p delivery gets smooth slow motion for free.
• Built-in stabilisation on for drones and action cameras, digital zoom off.

At the end of the day, the camera originals are copied into folders named by camera and by shoot-day number and date.

4. Edit, cover image and subtitles

In the edit we first check every shot for camera shake, then move on to colour. The grade is built in labelled, editable layers, so anyone on the team can open the project and adjust each step.

Every reel gets a cover image (we call it the kapak), and the cover always carries exactly the same file name as the reel. Turkish subtitles are generated on our own machines and then checked by hand.

Text placement in vertical video is its own craft. In a 1080×1920 frame, the Instagram interface covers roughly the top 220 pixels, the bottom 320–400 pixels and about 120 pixels on the right edge. Titles, logos and subtitles stay out of those zones.

5. The QC gate

Every reel that leaves the studio passes the same checklist:

• 1080×1920 vertical, H.264 codec, yuv420p colour format
• +faststart, so the video starts playing before it has fully downloaded
• An audio track, with loudness around −14 LUFS
• A clean file name: sequence number, client name, title. No “final”, “v2” or “new”.

Quality control is not a matter of taste. It is a checklist, and nothing ships until it passes.

The platforms don’t publish an official loudness target. In practice, −14 LUFS keeps a reel from shouting over, or disappearing under, the rest of the feed.

6. Delivery and archive

The approved file goes to you, and the same file enters our archive together with its project file and cover. The project file carries the same name as the delivered video, so when a small change is needed a year later, we find the right file in minutes.

What the venue can prepare

How smoothly a shoot goes depends heavily on the venue. Before the day, we ask for:

• A product list and running order: which dishes, at what time, how many portions. The hero dish should look freshly served.
• A quiet window: outside peak hours where possible.
• A tidy space: tables, display and counter in order; loose cables, stickers and boxes out of sight.
• Working light: curtains, chandeliers and decorative lights all on and working.
• Consent from staff who will be on camera: a separate consent form for the use of their image, and a notice at the entrance for guests.
• Brand files: logo, fonts and colour codes.

When the preparation is right, the shoot is shorter, the edit is faster and delivery stays on schedule.

If you’d like to plan your next shoot with us, get in touch.