Staying Nourished During Night Scenes
Staying energized on a film set under ‘normal’ circumstances can be challenging, let alone when our clients are required to stay up all night and into the early hours of the morning, whilst still maintaining peak performance. We’ve worked on various night shoots all over the world from landmarks in London on Wonder Woman, to the bustling streets of Rome on 6 Underground. Night shoots are always a challenge for the cast and crew, and it is our job to make sure that the leading actors are kept energized throughout these lengthy and unnatural shoots.
Hydration
Probably the most vital part of our clients diet on any night shoot is hydration. Hydration is essential to staying both physically and mentally alert. To ensure our clients are well hydrated we provide them with flavoured waters such as cucumber and mint, grapefruit and rosemary and pomegranate and raspberry. The flavours are subtle but it helps keep their drinks interesting whilst they continually sip them over the course of the night.
Snack little and often
The last thing you need on a night shoot is a large plate of food that makes you feel even sleepier than you already are. Large, heavy meals can cause drowsiness so we always encourage our clients to snack little and often instead. From our famous peanut butter bars to houmous with flax crackers, we provide little bites of protein goodies to maintain energy levels and ensure our clients don’t go hungry. Soups are also excellent as they also help with hydration, they are easy to digest and they keep our clients warm as night shoots get chilly! We can easily pack them with nutrients and small amounts of protein, as well as gut boosting ferments like miso.
Foods high in Vitamin D
During a night shoot, you may not have access to any natural sunlight so it’s super important to try and get as mush Vitamin D as possible into our clients diet. Wild mushrooms are the only plant based non fortified source of Vitamin D so we provide a portion of these daily, whether that’s in a soup or a warming curry. Wild salmon and eggs are additional good sources of Vitamin D, and they also contain fat which is important for the absorption of Vitamin D as it is fat soluble.
Slow releasing carbohydrates
To prevent blood sugar levels from spiking too much during a night shoot we serve a small helping of slow releasing carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes, steel cut oats or sprouted black rice. This helps our clients feel satiated for longer and enable a slow release of carbohydrates into our bodies.
Dark Chocolate – before midnight
Dark chocolate as well as being a delicious treat, has many amazing qualities that make it an actors best friend on a night shoot. We only serve chocolate which is at least 70% cocoa, but our favourite is 85%. Dark chocolate not only contains a surprising amount of caffeine, which gives a boost, but it also releases endorphins, the chemicals in the brain that create feelings of happiness! As well as this, it contains serotonin, an antidepressant that can elevate mood. We always have a healthy supply on board our trailer, but because of the caffeine we don’t serve this after midnight.
No food after midnight
It is important not to confuse the digestive system any more than necessary whilst shooting throughout the night. We try and maintain a similar eating pattern as best as possible, and eat as close as possible to ‘normal’ eating hours. This prevents the body and digestive system from being too disturbed and also helps our clients get back to regular routine as quickly as possible. We also recommend that our clients don’t eat after midnight because it helps reduce any digestive troubles, and prevents any serious blood sugar spikes which could cause tiredness. Depending on the timing of the shoot, we may adjust this to no food after 1 am, but in every circumstance, there is definitely no caffeine after midnight if we can help it!
Thanks to
Annabel Wray and Victoria Knight of Hakuna Foods for their specialist advice!
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