Pre-production: the real reason shoots succeed

Clients pay for shoot days. They almost never pay enough attention to the pre-production days that determine whether those shoot days will be worth the line item. After six years of running food shoots in Egypt and across the region, we have come to believe that the single most important predictor of shoot quality is not the photographer, the food stylist, the kitchen, or the gear — it is the discipline of pre-production.

Here is what pre-production actually does, in order of impact. First, it forces the brand to articulate what they want before the call sheet is locked. This sounds obvious. It is rarely true. The first version of a brief is almost always a version of 'we want it to look beautiful,' which is operationally meaningless.

The pre-pro process — at our studio, this is two weeks of structured back-and-forth — converts that brief into a numbered shot list, a referenced mood board, a defined color palette, a list of surfaces and props, and a kitchen-prep schedule. By the time we shoot, every single image has a target reference and a known role in the deliverable.

Second, pre-production catches the kitchen problems early. The shot list always reveals which dishes are going to be a nightmare — the one with the sauce that breaks at room temperature, the one with the herb that wilts in seven minutes, the one that has to be plated to order or it loses its structural integrity. We work these out at the table, not on the day.

Third, pre-production sets prop and surface decisions. This is the most underestimated phase of the process. The single largest unforced error we see in restaurant menu shoots is the use of branded crockery. Branded crockery dates fast, makes the photograph harder to license across markets, and almost always fights the food. We almost always insist on neutral props and have a small library of hand-thrown ceramics in three palettes that we draw from.

Fourth, pre-production builds the schedule. The number of shots per shoot day is rarely a function of how fast the photographer works. It is a function of how fast the kitchen can hand off plated food, how often the surfaces need to rotate, how much daylight is left in the day. A good schedule looks pessimistic on paper and ends up being calm on the day.

We have a pre-pro document we call the Map. It is a single sheet listing every shot, with five columns: dish, surface, prop, light setup, hero or supporting. Once the Map is signed off by the client, the shoot is essentially a process of executing a known plan. Surprises are limited to the food itself — which is the only place we want surprises.

The reason most shoots overrun, miss deliverables, or produce a final library that does not feel cohesive is not that the day went badly. It is that pre-production never happened, or happened in the form of a single ten-minute call with the brand. Brands paying decent money for photography deserve, and should demand, a written pre-pro document. If you don't get one, push back.

We will not take on a project without a structured pre-pro phase. We have walked away from briefs we wanted, and from clients we liked, when the timeline made real pre-pro impossible. It is the closest thing we have to a non-negotiable. Every other discipline in our process compounds from pre-pro being right.