March 29, 2024

In Food Commercials, Flying Doughnuts and Big Budgets

It is supposed to drip twice, on cue, from the bottom right-hand corner of a forkful of tortellini — first as the fork is lifted above the plate and, second, after the fork pauses briefly in the air and starts to rise again.

Two drips. A sequence that lasts a second and a half, tops.

A dozen men at MacGuffin Films, a studio in Manhattan, are struggling to capture this moment. For more than an hour one recent afternoon, they huddle around a table rimmed with enormous stage lights, fussing over a casserole as if it’s a movie star getting primped for a close-up.

“Lights. Roll. Action. Drip!” shouts Michael Somoroff, a veteran commercial director who has shot television ads for Red Lobster, Burger King, Papa John’s and dozens of other fast-food and casual-dining chains. A specialist in the little-known world of tabletop directing — named for the piece of furniture where most of the work is set — Mr. Somoroff is hired to turn the most mundane and fattening staples of the American diet into luscious objects of irresistible beauty.

If you watch television, you’ve seen his work, and the work of the five or six other major players in this micro-niche of advertising. These men — yes, they’re all men — make glossy vignettes that star butter-soaked scallops and glistening burgers. Their cameras swirl around fried chicken, tunnel through devil’s food cake and gape as soft-serve cones levitate and spin.

Few outside the business know their names. But given the more than $4 billion in television air time bought by restaurant chains and food conglomerates each year, these directors arguably have some of the widest exposure of any commercial artists in the country. In a typical week, tens of millions of viewers see their work.

“Aside from movie directors,” Mr. Somoroff says during a break in shooting, “I don’t know anyone with an audience as large as mine.”

On this particular afternoon, he is filming a commercial for a chain that did not want to see its name in this article. And you can sort of understand why. If you’ve ever been to a restaurant and thought, “This does not look like the dish in the ad,” here’s the irony: The dish in the ad doesn’t look like the dish in the ad, either.

This casserole shot, for instance, is an elaborate tango of artifice, technology and timing. The steam wafting over the dish comes not from the food, but from a stagehand crouched under a table with the kind of machine that unwrinkles trousers.

The hint of Alfredo sauce that appears when the fork emerges from the pasta? That’s courtesy of tubes hidden in the back of the dish and hooked to what look like large hypodermic needles. Moments before each take, Mr. Somoroff yells, “Ooze!” That tells the guy with the needles, standing just outside of the frame, to start pumping.

As for that quarrelsome drip from the fork, it is the responsibility of Anthony DeRobertis, a special-effects rigger who holds his own hypodermic of sauce and is having a hard time synching with a hand model, a young man with a military haircut who is clutching the fork.

“Anthony, the second drip is about 10 minutes after the shot is over,” says Mr. Somoroff after five or six takes, sounding faintly annoyed.

“I’m right on it,” Mr. DeRobertis says.

“You’re on it, but it’s not dripping when it has to drip.”

A break is called and a tube is attached to Mr. DeRobertis’s sauce injector, which is then taped near the bottom tine of the fork, in a way that’s invisible to Mr. Somoroff’s immense Photo-Sonics camera.

Sauce and fork are finally in unison. After a few more tries, Mr. Somoroff has a take he likes enough to show to reps from the client and its ad agency, a group of whom are waiting in a nearby room that is decked out with a large high-definition TV. The pasta appears moist, the steam organic and the minuet of drip and hand nothing more than a diner on the verge of a blissful bite.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/business/in-food-commercials-flying-doughnuts-and-big-budgets.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Wealth Matters: From Honus to Derek, Memorabilia Is More Than Signed Bats

Like many Yankees’ fans, I spent last Saturday watching the coverage of Jeter getting his 3,000th hit over and over. And then, I thought of all the memorabilia that was coming — all the balls, bats, jerseys, photos and anything you could imagine signed by Jeter.

Three days later, I actually saw some of that memorabilia in the making, at the headquarters of Steiner Sports in New Rochelle, N.Y. The Steiner warehouse looked like a cross between a Home Depot and Santa’s workshop, with shelves stacked to the ceiling with sports merchandise. I saw a half-dozen men framing photographs Jeter had signed Sunday night. There were boxes of balls he had also signed, stacked like crates of oranges. Blown-up Sports Illustrated covers of Jeter were in the back, out of the way for the time being.

I had gone to Steiner Sports to see more than just the Jeter memorabilia, though. I also wanted to understand the broader market for baseball collectibles. What types of things appreciate? Can a collector expect to profit from his hobby? Most important, how do you know if what you have is valuable or just an expensive tchotchke? Here is some of what I learned:

STRIKEOUTS Chances are pretty good that the sports memorabilia most people have is not worth much. All the balls, bats and pictures being sold at retail stores and online to commemorate Jeter’s milestone fit into that category.

Brandon Steiner, who in 1987 founded Steiner Sports, which is now owned by Omnicom, said there were different levels of collectors, ranging from those who save programs and tickets to people who buy things that were used in a game.

In between is the market for so-called authentic collectibles. A day after his 3,000th hit, Jeter signed 500 balls and 400 photos for Mr. Steiner’s company. Those balls are selling for $699.99; the photos range from $599.99 to $799.99.

Mr. Steiner said this was a relatively small signing to meet the immediate demand. He has scheduled two more for Jeter to autograph game-used memorabilia as well as things fans send in and pay a fee to have autographed.

And that’s just for one moment in baseball history, awesome though it was. Retired baseball greats and not-so-greats have been signing memorabilia, for a fee, for 30 years at baseball card shows, flooding the autograph market.

The worst offender may be Pete Rose, who holds the record for the most hits ever, 4,256. Since he was caught betting on baseball and banned from the sport, he has been a prolific signer. Balls inscribed “I’m sorry I bet on baseball — Pete Rose” are being sold on Walmart.com for $189.99 and on Amazon.com for $159.95. (A ball with just his name costs $69.99.)

This segment of the memorabilia industry is an easy target for purists. “I have total disdain for the manufactured memorabilia market,” said Richard Simon, a baseball card dealer and authenticator. “That is what is going on right now, as opposed to Babe Ruth signing an autograph book or a photo of himself 70 years ago.”

But Mr. Steiner is unapologetic. “The last three or four years, I’ve been thinking, how do we get to the average fan who can’t afford authentic, let alone game-used?” he said. He cited ballpark dirt and the bricks from the old Yankee Stadium as affordable keepsakes. “People laugh at me about the dirt, but I’ve sold over $10 million worth of dirt.”

Howie Schwartz, chief executive of GrandStandSports.com and a competitor to Steiner, said the relative affordability of Jeter memorabilia — ranging from $400 to $1,000 — matches up well with the huge market for him.

“Look at how many people watch baseball and how many kids play baseball,” he said. The average consumer may think 900 items is a lot. But there were 50,000 fans at Yankees Stadium that day.”

Still, while 50,000 people buying identical signed baseballs may be good for the seller, it is not good for anyone who expects the collectible to increase, or even hold, its value.

HOME RUNS The market for high-end sports memorabilia is different.

The most famous baseball collectible of all time is a baseball card known as the T206. It depicts Honus Wagner, a Hall of Fame shortstop from the early 20th century, and there are only about 60 still around. (Wagner ordered the maker, the American Tobacco Company, to stop production, legend has it, because he was not paid enough for his image or feared that children would buy cigarettes to get it.) The T206 once owned by the hockey legend Wayne Gretzky was sold in 2007 for $2.8 million to Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=85ea56465ccdc9b0bc6d66c587abc390