Entrepreneurship Story of a Beautiful Food Stylist
Food stylist Shen Yun is one of the few female food stylists in China. She has worked for internationally renowned companies such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Haagen-Dazs. She is the designer of more than half of the domestic TV food commercials. What kind of story does such a woman have? Let me share her story with you.
Infatuated with? Creative design on the tip of your tongue?
Shen Yun is a beauty born in the 1980s. She was born in an intellectual family in Shanghai. She has loved painting since she was a child and has accumulated Developed profound art skills. In college, she deliberately majored in environmental art. After graduation, she worked as an art director for TV commercials.
Shen Yun also has a hobby, which is cooking. Mom is a good cook, and as long as the various messy ingredients are arranged, it will be a table of delicious food with full color, fragrance and flavor. Sometimes, her mother would teach Shen Yun how to cook some folk specialties. After each dish is cooked, Shen Yun will carefully record it: color, taste, aroma, feeling? Then try something else. Over time, she developed a unique cooking skill.
The steamed seabass cooked by Shen Yun is a masterpiece. After scraping the scales, Shen Yun first lightly rubbed the fish body with salt to allow the salty flavor to penetrate, then fried the fish until the skin turned yellow, added ginger, sprayed cooking wine, and put in finely chopped mustard pickles? She likes to use new green pickle stalks. , I feel the taste is more refreshing. Then, pour a large bowl of water, cover the pot, wait until the high heat comes to a boil and then reduce the heat to a low simmer, allowing the umami flavor of the fish to slowly penetrate into the soup. Open the lid of the pot. The fish soup has turned into a mellow white color. Sprinkle a handful of chopped green onions and pour the soup into a deep bowl. Take a sip of the soup, and the marinated and fresh mixture creates a wonderful umami flavor, which makes your tongue slightly hot, and then spreads in your mouth, making your mouth full of saliva. The taste is so fresh!
In 2000, a friend was near a subway station. A restaurant opened in a large commercial center. There are twenty or thirty restaurants of various sizes here. The quality and price of food are similar, and the competition is fierce. Shen Yun only used a small recipe to make her friend's restaurant full of customers. This most popular restaurant wins because of its "tip of the tongue creative design", in which the food styling is very mysterious.
Shen Yun knows that guests always look at the menu first after they sit down. Many people order by looking at the photos on the menu, and the dishes made by her hands are quite artistic. For example, the simplest stir-fried shredded pork with cabbage, most of the stir-fried shredded pork at other restaurants is a mess, but she does not put the shredded meat into the plate one by one, but uses pointed chopsticks to put it into the plate one by one. . If she feels that the color of the whole dish is not attractive enough, she will put a few shreds of red pepper on the shredded pork, and the whole dish will immediately stand out.
When Shen Yun designs recipes, she starts from the source. She is very demanding on the chef's knife skills. For example, the cabbage and shredded pork must be cut into uniform thicknesses and similar lengths, and the mushrooms and bamboo shoots used as ingredients must also be cut into shreds to match the shape of the cabbage and shredded pork. When putting it on the plate, distinguish between the protagonist and the supporting role. The supporting roles such as mushrooms and bamboo shoots should not steal the spotlight from the protagonist. The center of the plate, just like the center of the stage, is the focus of the audience's vision. It must be reserved for the protagonist. Although there is not much shredded pork, it must be the protagonist.
Due to her professional relationship, Shen Yun is often exposed to many food advertising films. She learned from the Internet that in fact, there was a new profession of food stylist in foreign countries a few years ago, that is, a professional who beautifies and shapes food. They use their hands to make food as natural and perfect as possible, inspiring photographers to take ideal photos. Different from chefs, chefs value delicious food first, while food stylists value visual effects first, making the dishes look more delicious and making people feel appetizing and hungry.
European and American professionals believe that good-looking food is no less than a piece of haute couture, and every piece of food can be a work of art. Because visual perception is the preferred way for most people to perceive food, food stylists are very important to food manufacturers and play a pivotal role in marketing. A good creative style will soon bring huge wealth.
The first customer was Master Kong.
In early 2001, when she entered this industry, the first customer Shen Yun came into contact with was Master Kong, who asked her to serve Fumanduo beef. Face-to-face operation. In order to complete this look, she needs to study how to make the color of the beef red and beautiful enough, and how to use the device to create the heat and small bubbles after the noodles are soaked.
?During this period, the testing alone took nearly two weeks. The 'test' in Shen Yun's words refers to the entire production process of the bowl of noodles used for filming. ?I have to constantly study how the noodles and meat look the best. I need to cook the meat to be shiny, with tendons and meat, fat and thin, and it also looks a little steamy. ?
First, she cut the beef into cubes, diced the carrots, and put them into boiling water. The beef cubes should be taken out immediately so that their texture can be fully displayed without appearing old; the diced carrots must wait until they change color before being picked up and put into the sauce together with the beef cubes to soak and color? Raw carrots are too bright in color , it is easy to steal the spotlight from the protagonist, so cook it for a while.
Second step, put a bunch of noodles neatly into the boiling water, take it out after just soaking it for a while, shape it in the bowl, and keep adjusting it until you are satisfied.
Immediately, use sauce, cold water, food coloring, etc. to prepare the soup base, and cut the green onions into sections. Use a pot to slowly pour the prepared soup into the bowl from all sides. ?This process must be done slowly to prevent the soup from splashing into unnecessary places. ?
The next step is the most critical step. Take out the colored beef cubes and diced carrots, and pile them on the noodles one by one. ?The relationship between carrots and beef must be mastered, including the amount of diced carrots exposed, which must be carefully observed and adjusted. The final finishing touch is to put onion segments. To make it look neither dull nor loose, you must pay attention to the amount of onion segments and their visual center of gravity and color proportions in the picture. ?
In this way, a bowl of beautiful and delicious braised beef noodles will be freshly cooked. The commercial left a deep impression on hundreds of millions of people after it aired on television. A friend joked and asked Shen Yun if she took the opportunity to eat a lot of "Master Kong" that was both delicious and delicious. Shen Yun laughed and said: "When you do all kinds of research on instant noodles every day for a month, you will definitely not want to eat it." ?
Many people think that food stylists are only busy when recording commercials and are free the rest of the time. In fact, Shen Yun works 12 to 16 hours a day, and sometimes even has to stay up late to shoot. Once, the filming took 2 days and 2 nights to finish. Because each product has different needs, the technique must be innovative every time. For example, when taking a photo of a burger, customers have their own considerations regarding the thickness of the meat, the ratio of skin to meat, or the placement of cucumbers. Shen Yun joked: "To become a qualified food stylist, in addition to professional skills, you should also be able to stay up late and have good physical strength." ?
In daily life, Shen Yun also studies various raw materials anytime and anywhere. For example, it is very difficult to style ice cream, because no matter how high-end the ice cream is, it cannot be photographed under studio lights. It has already melted before the pose is ready. In order to tinker with ice cream that won't melt, Shen Yun spent more than 2 months researching the recipe at home. After seeing the commercial, the boss of Haagen-Dazs felt it was very realistic and expressed satisfaction, calling Shen Yun a "genius creative master".
Shen Yun revealed that some European and American food stylists often use mashed potatoes to make ice cream. However, you can’t take a closer look, because the texture of the mashed potatoes is very different from real ice cream, giving people a very fake feeling. Shen Yun likes challenges, so she developed a substitute food for ice cream to solve the photographers' problems. Her success was achieved through repeated trials and sweat.
There are less than 10 people in this industry in China
Shen Yun also often styles dishes recommended by some cooking, food and fashion magazines. A fan once asked: What are the similarities and differences between food styling and how chefs plate dishes? She said: When making dishes, the same dish must have a unified shape. Only when developing new dishes do you need to conceive of new presentations. Style; When styling food, what you need is unique plating. ?In addition, there is also a difference in the degree of rawness and ripeness between the two. Considering that relatively bright colors are required for photography, vegetables that change color easily after being cooked, such as bell peppers, asparagus, broccoli, etc., can only be cooked until they are seven or eight times ripe for modeling purposes. However, dishes like tomato brisket can be cooked completely.
?The best food styling is to show your appetite, but you must follow one principle: let the food appear as it is. ?Chen Yun said that the time it takes to shape a dish varies greatly depending on the degree of difficulty. ?Sometimes, an hour is enough. But sometimes it takes a whole day. ?
In fact, food stylists often have a more difficult job than other stylists, because they not only need to have a keen insight into the beauty of objects, but also must understand the character of food and have certain skills. Cooking skills. These comprehensive qualities include: basic art, basic photography, color science, geometry, cooking skills, knowledge of ingredients, food prices, cost control, prop matching, hands-on ability, and creative thinking.
In 2012, Shen Yun was invited to participate in Hunan Satellite TV's "Tian Tian Shang Shang" program. What's interesting is that when she unveiled all kinds of production tools in front of the camera, everyone was stunned. It turns out that in addition to the common tools used by chefs, her most commonly used medical instruments are surgical or dental instruments: scalpels, surgical scissors, pointed chopsticks, etc. Although there is no danger in using these instruments, it does test your patience at work, and you must be able to sit still in this job.
In April 2013, Shen Yun did a classic case of taking over an order from a famous pizza brand. Styling pizza is a great test of the food stylist's skills, because to make the pizza look delicious, you must create long and delicate drawing effects. Shen Yun added a lot of sticky cheese to the pizza and finally succeeded. But how to cut the petals? In the end, she boldly tried to use a chainsaw instead of an ordinary knife to cut, so that the drawing effect reached a perfect state: the audience can see that the cheese pulled out of the petals is continuous, which is eye-catching. The pizza is delicious and your appetite is strong.
Shen Yun said that because food modeling is so complicated, talents in this area are rare in the world. Taking the Nordic country Sweden as an example, there are only 6 people in the country; in China, there are less than 10 people doing this. Shen Yun's salary is quite considerable, with an income of up to 5 figures every 12 hours. Doing a big job and earning 100,000 or 200,000 yuan is a piece of cake.
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