How to Produce a Cooking Show

Learning how to produce a cooking show is something that many restaurant owners, chefs, and foodies are interested in, especially as more and more consumers are finding interest in learning to cook at home. If you’re interested in producing a cooking show that allows you to show off your recipes or favorite foods, we’ve got some tips to help you out. 

Beverly Boy Productions provides full-service cooking show production and can help you produce a cooking show that will amaze your audience. Give us a call at 888-462-7808 to learn how to produce a cooking show with our team or, continue reading to learn more about the process.

Step 1: Prepare Your Script or Scripts

The first step to creating a cooking show is to write your script. If you intend to shoot multiple segments or a series, you’ll need multiple scripts. We recommend you start with your first, and work through the process before moving on. This way you can work out any kinks as you go.

As you write your cooking show script, think about the purpose or goal of your cooking show.

Will you provide a step-by-step demonstration of how to cook your favorite meal? Will you provide information on cooking just one dish? Will you focus more on the food, or the technique?

This is all important as it can help you to decide on the most appropriate outline for your script. 

Basically, each page of your script is about 1 minute of total content once produced. Use this as your general guideline as you prepare your script and aim for a particular length of total production timing.

Step 2: Create Your Shot List

With your script complete, you’ll create your shot list. As you learn how to produce a cooking show, think about the various shots that you can reasonably capture with the equipment that you’ve got or with the equipment that you intend to rent.

We recommend at least 3 cameras in order to capture a close up, mid-range, and full view of the movement. If you can have an overhead camera and an additional camera that follows the chef, you’re golden!

Your shot list should outline what each camera is doing and your storyboard can describe the various angles and scenes that are being captured.

This is important because it allows you to adjust and change your camera angles or views on paper (in theory) before you finalize and find yourself in the studio or kitchen where making changes could be significantly more expensive.

Step 3: Have Your Ingredients Prepped and Prepare Your Final Meal

To save time on the actual production as you focus on how to produce a cooking show you should be thinking about the steps you can do to prepare your food in advance.

Prep your ingredients so that they’re pre-measured and ready for use to save time. Remember, time is money when you’re working in the studio or when a film crew is on hand!

It’s also a good idea to prepare your final meal or item that is being cooked for your show so that you can have the picture perfect portion ready for your final shots. In food shows that you watch on television, a food artist will often prepare the final foods for the show.

Step 4: Shoot 

Producing of your cooking show will likely take several hours. Expect to require multiple takes in order to get your lines right and to capture all of the important shots. 

Learning how to produce a cooking show is something that many aspiring chefs or restaurant owners realize is quite complicated and at this point, many hire a professional production crew.

If this sounds like you, contact Beverly Boy Productions to hire our professional crew to shoot your cooking show!

Step 5: Post-Production Preparation for Distribution

The final stages of learning how to produce a cooking show is post-production editing. This is where all of the raw footage of our cooking show will be reviewed and synced in order for your final show to be created.

Special effects, graphics, and transitions are included to help the show seamlessly progress. When the final cut is prepared and you’re satisfied with it, the show is ready for distribution – enjoy!

Now that you know how to produce a cooking show, are you interested in hiring a production crew to help? Give Beverly Boy Productions a call at 888-462-7808!