Pho are a UK wide chain of Vietnamese restaurants who as part of their national expansion opened a new site on the famous Bold Street in Liverpool. A large amount of Pho’s restaurants are in city centres and as a result attract a young audience. Alongside their expansion to new sites across the UK they wanted to tap into a new audience via social media. Our brief was to create a social media friendly video that would appeal to their target audience and capture all the key elements of their restaurant.
A Challenging Brief
The biggest challenge faced when hitting this brief was condensing the many features of the restaurant and the brand into two short productions. Firstly Pho’s niche as a Vietnamese restaurant instantly makes it standout from many other national chains. Their food often gets fantastic critical acclaim and are therefore known for their quality and adventurous nature when it comes to cuisine. Furthermore their unique decor, range of specialist cocktails and other drinks and location in such a historical area of Liverpool had to be compacted into a 30 second and 60 second video.
When approaching the filming of this production our main aims were to include as many key features as possible. There is always a danger when going for this approach that too much can be packed into a video and the end result is too fast of an edit and it ends up not showing anything of worth. Thus, we had to be selective in what we chose. We looked back to the brief and chose the best key feature from each of them. For example to show off the bar range we chose one stand out cocktail and took some quality and creative shots of that one rather than quickly packing in a lot of shorter shots where the quality would not be as clear. This technique allowed the crew to hit all the key points of Pho but still maintain quality in the production.
Killer Camera Angles
When producing a promotional video for a bar or restaurant, slider shots are always very effective. We used these to great effect when showing off customers eating, food being laid out, the bar selection and general interior. Slider shots are fantastic for mainly static subject matter and allows the video to maintain a constant feel of progress. We combined these shots with more dynamic steadicam work and dipping aerial shots to provide extra depth to the venue.
As the video needed to move at a relatively fast pace whilst including lots of detail, transitions and cuts were always going to be the making of the end production. A technique we developed throughout this video was fast zooms to different shots. Such transitions meant that the pace of the video could stay at a good rate whilst key features could be focused in on in more detail. The final sprinkle of creativity put on by the production team gave the final edit extra flair and therefore that extra bit of edge needed to stand out in people’s social media feeds.
Final Production
The final production provided Pho with something that was fantastic for social media. Content involving food gains high engagement rates across all platforms due to it being loved by so many people. Therefore, restaurants and bars are already at a slight upper hand when it comes to sharing content. Simply by adding professional quality, flair and creativity to the whole production, the video becomes eye catching within social news feeds. Therefore a video such as this portrays the brand image in a professional way, attracts attention of the audience, gathers high levels of engagement and as a result performs well across all social channels.
Want to work with Glacé Media? Contact us now to discuss how we can turn your video visions into creative realities.
