Brazen Hot Sauce - Case Study

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Background:

General first dealings:

Behind the scenes Images:

Final Images

Background:

I was tasked with producing photographs of BRAZEN's limited edition No.55 hot sauce. The job required 6 highly versatile still images that would see use on websites, social media platforms, and potentially signage or print.

General first dealings:

The first step I always take is to do some research. I generally do a little bit before I ever respond to an initial enquiry for this type of work. I may take a glance at a company's website and social media channels. This gives me a rough idea of what the proposed job may entail. I do my best to respond to initial enquiries the same day. If one is requested I may give an estimate at this time. If given a brief I will work from there, BRAZEN did not give me a brief, meaning the job would be developing the idea myself

Research:

With initial dealings out of the way, things get a lot more project-specific. The first thing I did in my more focussed research was to pull the definition of "brazen." I like to be very playful with my work when I can and BRAZEN was an absolute gold mine.

This is a very fun word to be playing with. What's better? The brand wanted "Cheeky humour," "Bold lighting." Something "BOLD but witty." No.55 is the hottest sauce that BRAZEN sells. The sauce packs a serious punch with a 30% Carolina Reaper payload. It is balanced out with ginger and orange for an incredible flavour (I can confirm the bit about incredible flavour for myself). "Death by deliciousness" as BRAZEN put it to me.

There are some other bits of information which I won't share for various reasons, but I've covered the main important parts for now. The development of the

Project Plan:

Quick warning: This thing is about 10 pages long and heavily redacted. Prospective clients can generally expect a similar working-document (definitely not redacted though), with varying levels of detail depending on what the specific job requires. A last minute client may not get such a document due to time constraints, in which case I will at least have some sketches on paper and a rough idea of the light required to make it happen.

Behind the Scenes:

The day before

I used a fabric waterproofing spray to seal the Doritos and prevent any liquids from soaking in. Unfortunately this has the side effect of the surface rejecting the water entirely. to remedy this, I used a charcoal fixative containing epoxy to rough the surface up slightly and help water bind to the surface of the Dorito, and prevent it from soaking in. The smell had both delicious notes and a noticeably "chemical" overtone. It was interesting to say the least.

I then glued on the googly eyes and tested it with a water/glycerol solution. The glycerol is required to help the water bead up and to increase its viscosity enough to keep it from rolling down the chip immediately.

Behind the scenes Images:

Ninja Reapers

Bottle Split

The Hero Shot

Sweating Tortilla

Hot Dog/Angel Sauce

Final Images

The Hero Shot shows the product clearly and was composed almost exactly as imagined in pre-production.

The Ninja Reapers weren't working visually with the originally planned

shadow angle. I turned the bottle slightly and changed the camera angle to better implement the shadow.

I composed the hot dog shot with a left-leaning bias to allow for plenty of text on the right. The canvas can be extended infinitely in any direction to increase the amount of space left for other assets.

The bottle split was designed for centred text. The angle background gradient makes it difficult to actually stack the images as shown in the shoot plan, however the alignment of the bottles was perfectly fine.

The Sweating Tortilla is an experimental image. There were no guarantees that it would work out as hoped, as there was a risk the sweat wouldn't be visible enough. Luckily this wasn't the case.

The Angel Sauce was the final image of the bunch. While it's nothing ground-breaking, the shadow aligns well with the bottle making it feel slightly taller. The shape looks vaguely angel-like.

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