Will Strawser: Organized Chaos for Taste Tea Naturals

Sometimes one small idea is all it takes to spur on a full-blown project. That is what happened when New York-based photographer Will Strawser had an idea for Taste Tea Naturals.

Constantly thinking of creative projects, Will keeps books, upon books of ideas that he thinks are visually interesting and would make for good campaigns or projects. He also likes to utilize these ideas as a jumping-off point to work with new clients. One of his ideas was based on creating a unique way to make tea look “cool” and different. Therefore, after spending some time brainstorming, he saw the vision of “organized chaos”. He wanted to show this with the destruction of a traditional English tea party in a beautiful, captivating way through video footage.

Taste Tea Naturals prides itself on its unique flavor combinations and its differentiation from “standard” teas. Will contacted the brand with his idea, in hopes of working together on Will’s pitched project. Luckily, the tea brand loved his vision and thought it matched the brand’s aesthetic, quite well. Therefore, after getting Taste on board with the idea, Will and his team moved forward to the preproduction stage of this project. There was a lot of prep work that went into this video piece. Since each video-take required a prop being smashed to smithereens, the team had to come prepared with multiples of each prop. In addition, the team did preliminary testing of all the action shots to make sure they were able to rig certain objects, like the creamer boat to spin perfectly sending the cream flying, perfectly arched in the frame.

Once the team had a plan on how to execute each shot, they were ready to go!

The shoot was absolutely a ton of fun. I mean, how can you not have fun when your work is smashing teapots all day long.

It was a long day of filming since they had to rebuild the set after every take. For precautionary reasons, they completely covered the set with plastic sheeting. This was done to contain the liquids that were flying around so they wouldn’t hit any of the equipment in the studio while the video was being recorded.

Another key component of this shoot was the high-speed aspect. To achieve this, we had to shoot on a Phantom Flex 4k camera at 1,000 frames per second. At such a high frame rate, you really need to get A LOT of light on your set. Shaping light can sometimes be a lot more difficult just due to the fact that you need so much of it to illuminate at a high frame rate. We ran into a few issues with this, especially with the semi glossy porcelain teapot showing blown out highlights. We used a little dulling spray to bring the highlight down, which worked out well!

The theme of “organized chaos” was fitting in many ways for this project. Will was happy his team was able to put in as much preproduction planning as they did. Nailing the exact shots of items flying around and being broken on purpose is not an easy task to complete the first time around. But, the team took their time and made small adjustments after every take until the shot was perfect!

Taste loved the finished video piece and everyone’s reaction to the project has been phenomenal. The video came out exactly the way Will hoped it would. Will plans to keep thinking up more creative ideas. He hopes to work with bold clients who aren’t afraid to jump into the world of beautiful chaos, to show the unexpected in a unique and beautiful way.

See more of Will’s photography on his website.

Further Reading
Read more articles about Will Strawser.
Read more articles about Food/Drink photography.

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