Shooting inside an oven...

skategriggs

skategriggs

Active member
Hey guys,

So im gripping on this commercial shoot in a couple weeks for the Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and we're trying to figure out the best way to get a shot of the "inside" of the over for a time lapse shot as the crescents puff up.

The director has described it as if he wants the camera literally in the oven... hahaha, so in other words I'm trying to find the easiest way to get a RED into an oven, without it actually being in the over, or somehow insulating it.

I'm also thinking about grabbing a cheap over and replacing the glass with some straight clear glass, and in theory it should be able to hold the heat right? Yeah, so as you can tell, I could use your brains here if you guys have any ideas on how to approach this.

Thanks!
 
So the actual ovens don't conveniently have nice clear glass doors? Are the real ovens even relevant? - I'm fully aware that many 'factory' scenes in ads are totally faked :)

I do think shooting through glass from outside is the only sane solution - insulating sounds far too risky. Presuming the rolls will pretty much fill the screen, the surrounding oven will be pretty much irrelevant anyway, it won't be seen, so just use a domestic oven.

Worth maybe finding out from an oven repairer what it would cost to replace a oven door 'window' with a brand new one - being sure to first pick an avaialble oven with a reasonably optically clear window. You get to shoot with the brand new window while it's still nice and clean and clear, the oven owner gets a new oven window. Or just make friends with someone who's abut to replace their oven anyway...
 
there HAS to be standards of production dealing with this kind of thing. it's Pillsbury for heaven's sake, they've made 100s of commercials. seems like someone would have figured this out a long time ago.

and is it really a grips responsibility to decide how the camera isn't going to get baked? i haven't gripped in a long time, so i'm just wondering.
 
Thanks for the suggestions clang.

Hahaha Chris, yeah I've been thinking the same thing, Pillsbury's gotta have a science down for this kind of stuff. And the reason I'm looking into this is because I just went to this studio for a tour and was able to get my foot in, and the owner asked me to help with the shoot after asking me some other problems they were having, this was just the only one I couldn't seem to have a perfect answer for. Really its not my job, but I thought I go the extra mile to figure something out to make a good impression lol.
 
A friend of mine, a veteran commercial DP, has wow'ed me numerous times with his stories of stuff like giant prop Pringles chips and of course, the glass oven. On a Pillsbury commercial, they cooked the product in a large glass oven on a turntable, with the platform and the camera on motion control rigs. Not sure of the exact specs, but I would imagine that the heating elements were on the bottom and/or the top. The front, back and sides were all glass, though.

Not sure where to get one of these. I would imagine a prop house would be able to make something, or may even have something ready (these types of shots are used very often) - of course, this absolutely won't be cheap. If you're going to go with a DIY solution, be careful and good luck!

~~Dave
 
Have you tried just baking the rolls w/the oven door open? Maybe stick a meat thermometer in there to see the temp and adjust the heat accordingly.
 
Dave, very interesting idea. Im now guessing as long as we can get the area where its being cooked up to 350 degrees, it doesn't matter what its made out of or how its done. I mean with a few heat sources projected onto the crescents, it wouldn't even need to be in an actual oven except for the props to make it look like an oven. I even remember in damn middle school we made ovens out of shoe boxes with tin-foil all being powered by the sun. Haha I think almost anything could work... like a few 1k's pointed at some crescents, who knows, ill have to start testing, but it sounds like an oven in the process could just make things more confusing.
 
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