Pubdate: Sat, 17 Mar 2012
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Mia Stainsby

VLOGGERS KEEP FOOD IN THE VIEWFINDER

Foodies are using video cameras and social media to share their
passion

Click! It's the sound of dining by social media. Cellphones, point-
and-shoots allow diners to share their food. A new gourmet doughnut
shop? Click! New food trucks? Click! It's ouchless. But when it comes
to food vloggers - that is, bloggers who post videos - it's the new
order.

Vlogging requires crazy commitment and passion. Sure, cellphones and
pocket cameras can easily capture video, but scripting, shooting,
editing and uploading is another thing. It takes a sizable bite out of
one's life and exquisite patience. Ouch!

One such local vlogger, Mijune Pak, of Richmond, posts on YouTube and
on her blog, Follow Me Foodie. "I know the food blogging community is
very saturated right now but vlogging hasn't been touched," she says.

Here's the reason in a nutshell. She and her two-man crew shot for
three hours, then edited for six hours to produce a 1.5 minute video.
Who's got that kind of time or expertise?

"We're doing it because we're passionate and it's a good way of
getting exposure," says Pak, 25. One video, The Things Foodies Say,
"went crazy," she says. "It's very challenging because most viewers
click off after two or three minutes. To lock in a recipe in two or
three minutes is very challenging."

A Vancouver woman known as Watermelon - an actor, satirist, standup
comic - does an entertaining video series called Baking A Fool of
Myself and it's all about cooking/ baking with medical marijuana ( to
officialdom, she's Mary Jean Dunsdon and to everyone else, she's named
for the fruit she sold on Wreck Beach for many years).

In Baking A Fool, which she began in 2010, the striking blond
sometimes channels June Cleaver and at other times, she's Madonna
channelling Roseanne Barr.

Her mom, a homeopath and world champion supportive mom, is her
sidekick in the kitchen. Watermelon says the first three shows,
demo-ing three recipes, took 12.5 hours to shoot but by the second
shoot, it was down to 13 hours for seven recipes. She uses three or
four cameras covering various angles, as she creates dishes like No
Frownie Brownies, Peanut Budder Cookies, Gramola, Nice Cream Cones,
Marijuana Bacon and Spinakopita Puff Pastry.

"I do have to pay for camera people and equipment. I just happen to
have great friends and families who give me a deal," she says. Her
videos are on YouTube and bakingafoolofmyself.com .

Geoff Peters is technically the savviest of the three vloggers I
interviewed. He's a software developer, blogger and vlogger. He used
to spend four hours editing footage but now has it down to one hour.
"Computers are getting faster," says Peters, who uploads his food
videos to Youtube and geoffmobile.com. Previously, he had two dining
blogs and posted photos. "It's more fun to do videos," he says.

"Restaurants don't know you're filming because it looks like
photography," he points out. But he usually asks permission. He films
with his cellphone or one of his "various" cameras and is studying
filmmaking. A tip: "Look around the edges of the frame. A lot of
people look at the centre and don't notice the edges. Move closer,
change the angle. It takes a lot of work to crop out distracting edges."

Why would anyone expend so much time vlogging? Pak is making a living
from her online life while doing what she loves - working with food.
She's got ads. She's done videos for restaurants in Las Vegas. She was
a contestant on Food Network's Recipes To Riches, vying for a big
money win with her apple pie in a jar. She's been a judge in cooking
competitions.

"Youtube got huge with the Justin Bieber story on how he was
discovered," she says. "Producers don't have to seek out chefs for
shows any more. They go to Youtube and see who they want to invest
in."

Cute helps. And that, Pak is, in spades. Her 7,500 followers on
Twitter help, too. And, she admits, her capacity to eat like a horse
without it affecting her tiny frame helps, too.

There are examples of vloggers busting into big times.
Epicmealtimes.com, out of Montreal, for example, has just partnered
with a Japanese production company for a Japanese "and international
markets" version of their frat-boy style cooking show. Think Paula
Deen gone wild. Their dishes are layer upon layer of cholesterol,
featuring bacon as theme ingredient. A St. Patrick's Day dish (
weighing at least 20 pounds) is a highrise condo of corned beef, green
mashed potatoes, bacon, bacon, bacon, green pancake, Lucky Charm
marshmallows, baconstrip candy - all wrapped in bacon. It's pretty
gross. But their Youtube channel has about 2.5 million supporters.
They sell T- shirts, attract ads, and now, an Asian market.

Watermelon champions a cause with her videos but she's into food,
too.

"Marijuana advocates for medical marijuana don't have contemporary
images to look up to. We're still dealing with Cheech and Chong. This
isn't Fast Times at Ridgemont High," she says of Baking A Fool of
Myself. "People need clarity on cooking with marijuana and portion
sizes.

"And yes, I'm absolutely a marijuana lobbyist who believes the war on
drugs is terrible and hasn't done anyone any good. I believe we should
legalize it. I want to present a more contemporary image of what
marijuana activists look like today. They're moms, dads, teachers,
lawyers. But we're serious about cooking too. I lo-o- ve food and
that doesn't have anything to do with marijuana."

When she did her feature video in 2001 called Baked and Baking, it was
kitschier and vaudevillian, she says. "We had a standup comic and
guest make appearances but we've removed all that and tried to be more
like Martha [ Stewart] and Nigella [ Lawson]. No one would know it was
about cooking with medical marijuana unless they stopped and thought
about it - like, what!

Watermelon was arrested in 2001 for "trafficking gingersnap cookies,"
she says. She was tried three times and was acquitted each time. "I
was scared shitless but I stood my ground. On The Sopranos, they were
killing everyone [ on TV] but making pot food was inappropriate for
TV."

She adds: "Nobody even smokes pot on set. Maybe at the end, everyone
will grab some of what we were making and take some home," she says.

While she doesn't have Nigella's budget with 12 bowls of flour for 12
different takes, she does get donations.

Her dream is to see Baking A Fool of Myself on Food Network. "I would
be ecstatic." But, she realizes, she's "ahead of her time."

For now, Youtube is great, she says. "Everyday, there are people
subscribing to my channel. I was quite surprised that Sweden and Japan
are really into it."

More practically, she's finished shooting a pilot called Potluck
Challenge which she'll pitch to the Food Network. "It's nothing to do
with marijuana. People make food for potlucks and one person gets '
voted off the island' in every show."

As for Peters, he vlogs for the love of making videos. "I just love
creating stuff. I feel intense happiness. I want to keep putting stuff
out there to see what sticks. I love the process, the editing, the
rhythm, the timing."

His eight-minute video on a Japanese restaurant got 40,000 views
around the world. "People around the world were suddenly interested in
what Vancouver eats," he says.

Another video about banh mi, the Vietnamese sandwich, captured up to
20,000 viewers. "I had people from Vietnam commenting on how it's made
there and South Americans comparing their sandwiches. It's really neat
to see how the global audience reacts." Peters says sharing his food
videos pretty much completes him.

"If I wasn't able to share this, I wouldn't be as happy. I started off
as an introvert."
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MAP posted-by: Matt