Jacek Szymański: The Science of Making Mouths Water
Big, juicy, perfectly ripe strawberries colliding with a wave of thick velvety cream. A cacophony of brightly coloured spices sprinkled into a smooth, buttery sauce. Rich melted chocolate dripping from the soft surface of a fluffy vanilla sponge. Jacek Szymański’s imagination knows no bounds. Leaning on years of experience in the field, the filmmaker’s level of creative wizardry is capable of conjuring up a myriad of mouth-watering shots.
A pioneering tabletop talent, Jacek’s global reach has taken him around Europe, all over Asia and the Middle East, and across North America. Having worked with some of the biggest food brands in the world - McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Tefal, Cornetto, Knorr, to name a few - the foodophile signed with the Toronto-based production company, Spy Films, in 2019.
Here, he tells LBB’s April Summers about the intricacies of tabletop directing and the nuanced approaches to food films from around the world.
LBB> What was your start in the industry and what was your journey from there to where you are now like?
Jacek> I graduated from the National Film School in Łódź, Poland, as a cinematographer. Before I started working as a tabletop creator, I did a lot of music videos. But I ended up falling in love with tabletop directing because it pushes you to embrace your creativity.
Ten years ago I made a documentary series about organic farmers in Poland which marked the beginning of my fascination with food. I decided to enter the industry and I got to know many great chefs. At this time in Poland there were not as many people who would work with local commercial tabletop directors. All the filmmaking talent came to Poland from France, England and the Netherlands, with food stylists from Germany and Italy. But, eventually, I began to understand the market, and the market started to like me back, and we've been a great pairing ever since!
LBB> What do you find most exciting about tabletop directing?
Jacek> The infinite opportunities to create unreal situations. It is not purely about capturing the cutting and slicing of food, but also about the dimensions of reality, explosions, different textures, objects colliding and strange camera movements. I love when a shot surprises me. I am learning all the time and believe me, there are a lot of new things to discover.
LBB> What’s the secret to shooting mouthwateringly good content?
Jacek> Well, plates don't always look satisfying. There are plenty of ads where the food is portrayed wrong. I work with clients around the world so I see how different the approach to shooting food is. The approach to filming food in Asia is different to how clients in the Middle East, or Italy, or America shoot food – everywhere has a different approach.
Each culture has different priorities: what a Pakistani, Indian or Arab client considers to be a beautiful aesthetic for their traditional cuisine will not necessarily be preferable to a European client. Ice cream, for example, should be slightly melted for food advertisements in Central or Eastern Asia, but this would absolutely not pass in Europe. There are also cultural differences in the approach to filming hamburgers: in some countries they love the burgers to appear juicy and fatty because that's how the customer perceives deliciousness; in other countries too much fat is associated with unhealthy food. This is why cooperation with a food stylist is very important to me. The food stylist must understand the cuisine of any given region and know the secrets, but that is a separate topic…
LBB> Have any significant advancements in technology over the years that has elevated or enhanced your way of working?
Jacek> There are a lot of exciting new products coming out which means there are more possibilities than ever before for food filmmaking. We are capable of creating the impossible thanks to modern technology. I greatly enjoy it when my group of SFX engineers and I come up with interesting solutions for tossing, twisting and rolling both objects in the frame and the camera itself. I like to challenge myself and discover interesting new things, and sometimes gravity surprises me! I tend to make things difficult for myself which is why I really like working with the BOLT robot for repeatability and precision of movement. Right now I have the best toys on the market and I am surrounded by the best team – the only limitation is my imagination.
LBB> An idea at conception rarely looks the same once it’s been made. How important is it to preserve the integrity of creative ideas? When is it acceptable to remix an initial idea?
Jacek> I believe it is important to keep an initial creative idea in your head. I collaborate with both the agency and art directors on shots which is always a great collaboration. Together we discuss the goals and try to match shots to the client's needs. I like creative work, I like ideating with people.
Tabletop filmmaking is completely different to live action – there are no limits. This means there are no limits to what you can dream up. You are encouraged to create something special, as long as it aligns with the advertising goals of the agency that has hired you. I find that the tabletop world presents so many amazing possibilities.
LBB> In your opinion, what is your most important responsibility as director?
Jacek> My biggest responsibility is making the client feel comfortable. I do not make ads to satisfy my ego. I will create something that brings me satisfaction, which I am sure of, but only if I fully understand the client's needs. In order to do that, I have a lot of responsibilities. I must coordinate with all production departments and I need to know what everyone on my team is doing and what their goals are. My other on-set responsibility is to feel good, and I often achieve this by playing my favourite music from a speaker in the studio during the shoot!
LBB> There’s a pleasingly pristine and synchronised feel to your films – how would you define your signature style?
Jacek> That’s great feedback, as I would like to think I have "my own style", but I think that takes years of practice and experience, and I'm still learning!
In my opinion, it’s hard to apply the same style to every commercial project because I adapt to the products and clients from all over the world. I will switch my mentality depending on which country I am working in. For example, the nature of the work is completely different in Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey and Slovenia. Of course, each of my team tries to do their best, but the market in some countries is still developing, so it is important for me to stay involved in each step of production.
It is different in Canada, Italy or Poland, where I have a lot of support on the production side – generally teams stay ahead of my moves in these countries. It is important in this very country-specific industry to understand the various complexities of a shoot. Time is differently distributed here than in normal commercials, if I come up with complicated shots, I have to factor in the time it will take to build SFX devices that will shoot and operate the way I require, testing them many times before shooting. And for that I need a team who understands what I want to do. But, honestly, it all changes a lot, and from year to year I see more and more people qualified in the tabletop arena, which is great.
LBB> You have worked on huge global brand campaigns for KFC, Milka, Pepsi and LOBLAWS – what are the main differences to your creative approach when directing big budget brand campaigns compared to smaller, more indie projects?
It's true, I am lucky to have worked for big brands from around the world. When it comes to a creative approach, trust in the director is paramount. Especially in the tabletop world, when you don't have real actors and instead you are working with jumping tomatoes. If there is no trust for the director, it is better to let go, because it will only get worse. I always propose solutions and try to describe my ideas in detail, but sometimes it's hard to describe what the bursts of vegetables will look like and how the camera will move around them as it rotates. You have to imagine it and trust me. This is one of the reasons why I love my job – freedom!
I love the discussions with agencies’ creative teams because sometimes I like their solutions. I love receiving creative food briefs. This tabletop food commercial approach is still open to creatives in the agency, they can create beautiful food worlds, amazing irrational stories that are almost like fairy-tales. Unfortunately, agencies tend to only apply this creative thought to live action scenes with actors. This is a shame because there have been many amazing effects brought to life in long-standing food campaigns for brands like M&S, which are shot by the wonderful French duo Michael Roulier and Philippe Lhomme. These commercials do not feature any people, purely food. Another good example is Lurpak: everyone has been going crazy over those commercials for years. There are plenty of examples.
When it comes to my approach to indie productions, I will always work to make each shot the best and to meet my internal aesthetic criteria. Of course there are differences in the budget, but even for low-budget productions, I have freedom. Right now I am preparing an independent project in Istanbul for a chef friend, Maksut Askar, who’s restaurant Neolokal got a Michelin star and was featured in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants collection. We are preparing a film for him that will be a culmination of our shared artistic madness: a story about nature, Earth and the elements that feed Maksut’s imagination as a chef that composes show-stopping dishes. We have been granted total freedom to experiment and will have fun doing it.
LBB> If you had to pick your favourite ever project to date, what would you pick? How does it capture your signature style?
Each project is unique. I do not undertake work for the sake of it – each of the ideas proposed to me must be interesting and appeal to me artistically. But if I had to choose something from my works, I like my "Black Series" very much.
LBB> Why did you want to be on the Spy Films roster? How do they differ from other prod cos?
Each Spy ad is unique. As I mentioned, the most important thing for me is the relationship with people. Only when mutual trust is established can good things be created, mutual trust paves the path to success. When I first met Carlo Trulli, CEO of Spy, I felt purely positive energy – I knew that in the near future I had to work with him. The last project for Loblaws, which we did with Marcus Trulli, executive producer, was an absolute pleasure. There was a wonderfully prepared production plan in place, with every detail pre-agreed. And most importantly, I had Marcus’ full support. If you are treated as a partner a good product is more likely to be created. Teamwork is everything!
LBB> What are you currently working on that you can tell us a bit about?
Jacek> In addition to further advertising briefs and an artistic film for Maksut's Michelin Star chef, I am preparing a big project tentatively titled ‘Food Musical’. It is a 6-episode series for one of the global streaming platforms that blends three important worlds for me: food, music, and a good story. It is a crime caper with crazy humour and lots of colour. Someone is killed but we don't know who... I will combine dance, musical, singing and of course food. We've already made a trailer which is very promising and everyone who watches it says they haven't seen anything like this before. I’m taking my work in a new direction and it’s very exciting – let’s jump into the deep water!
