Food Styling Assistance & Shot Breakdown: Mahita Manikandan
Direction: Saba Gaziyani
Agency: Dimensions Africa
Dimensions Africa came to A La Carte to build a visual library from scratch. Packshots, food styling, lifestyle setups, video treatments — for everything. Billboards, phones, packaging, vehicles.
Nigeria has its own food language. Ingredients, textures, the way a dish is put together. Crayfish flavour needs actual crayfish. There's a red pepper specific to Nigerian cooking. Figuring that out from Mumbai — while also making sure three films for the same flavour didn't all look identical.
It came together through a lot of homework. What Nigerian home cooking actually looks like, what ingredients matter, how each flavour differs visually. From there I built out the shot briefs, prop lists, food looks. Saba ma'am figured out the treatments and made it all make sense on set.
We used the brand palette as the starting point — teal, red, orange showing up in the bowls, napkins, tabletops. The idea wasn't to make it look obviously Nigerian. It was to make sure it didn't feel wrong — something that slots in naturally once the live action is around it.
Delivered and approved. Assets are out in the world now.
Honestly pretty fun to think through. We had a school lunch setup with little lunchboxes, and another where the noodles and garnishes were mid-air. You start with a brief and end up asking yourself what you can do with a bowl of noodles. Turns out, a lot.
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