In 2014, Jessica Hirsch ’07 was happy in her career as a high school math teacher and casually enjoying the New York City food scene. Then she found Instagram. Today she is a full-time content creator and social media star. You can find her @CheatDayEats, cooking and delighting in all things decadent and delicious, the kind of foods you might want to save for your cheat day.
Hirsch makes it look easy, but managing a lifestyle brand is a round-the-clock job. In real life, a 30-second video takes hours of planning, production and editing before it’s ready to upload to her more than half a million followers.
Go behind the scenes with an influencer as she describes all that goes into creating a single @CheatDayEats recipe post.
I like to think about what people are interested in seeing, something that goes with the season, a heart-shaped tater tot casserole on Feb. 14 or a red, white and blue whipped cream Oreo tower in July for example. Then I’ll plan out and create a recipe. My husband, Brian aka @MrCheatDayEats, is the shopper. So he’ll go to the supermarket and get all the ingredients we need for the week.
I try to make a rough shot list ahead of time to help the filming process. There are specific shots that I have in my head that I know I want to capture, about eight key moments that help pull people into the video and keep them watching to the end.
We film in our apartment using natural light. We have a tripod set up and use two cameras and two different lenses. I try to get into the content and that's when Brian will shoot. Otherwise, I’m the one filming.
There’s a certain order that I always follow: first intro shots, then the recipe process and then those finished beauty shots that are always going to be a part of my videos. I love slow motion and people know me for that, so I’m always filming a specific type of content that I can slow down to really exaggerate those beautiful, exciting moments of that specific dish.
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For the editing process, Brian puts everything we filmed onto the computer. We use Adobe Premiere Pro and I get down into chopping it up to bring out the storytelling aspect of it. I add color correction and grading, and then the video finally goes on social media. I try to provide the recipe in the caption because I want to add value to my posts so that people can save and share them and fully understand how to recreate the dish.
Hirsch and her co-creator husband usually film recipes at home two or three days during the week. The rest are spent filming on location at restaurants, creating sponsored posts, attending classes and events, documenting moments from their lives and of course editing all that content into polished bite-sized videos that keep users liking, commenting and coming back for more.
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First rate journalism in this article. Good technique in developing interest in this unique area of nutrition and health. Author made discussion of social media involvement very readable. Readers are made aware of the energy needed to develop videos and stay abreast of the constant changes in social media. Enjoyed reading it immensely.
