It takes dozens of people and a few customized robots to make a burger look this juicy.

Oh, nothing here is simple.

As far as the work we do is incredibly complex, very technical.

Steve Gerald has filmed commercials for big brands like Hershey's, Hines, and Pepsi, through his production company, the garage.

And there's a lot of money on the line.

Filming 1:32 ad can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're working against the clock because they use real food,

which doesn't stay pretty for long.

That's the misnomer about everything.

Faking makes things harder.

We visited Steve's studio in Brooklyn, New York to see how his team films the perfect burger.

Today, Steve and his team are working on a test shoot for Burger King.

They'll use it to try and land the client.

-Yeah, good.

Brett Kurzweil is a veteran food stylist.

It's his job to make the burger look like a whopper.

He usually has a budget of a couple $1000.

And he always buys a lot more than he'll use, so he can pick out the perfect looking bun, patty, and veggies,

Then, he gets to work, but he doesn't cook the meat all the way through.

Because I didn't want it to shrink too much.

I wanted to get as much volume out of this piece of meat as I could get.

Even perfect patties need final touches.

So he uses a color made of gravy darkener and soap to add a charred look.

He only has to paint half the burger because the camera films from just one side,

a mixture of Vaseline and pulverized meat helps fill in any holes.

And those grill marks, another trick of the trade.

Brett heats up metal skewers, and then...

I just pushed into the burger with the hot metal, and it seared.

Next, he melts the cheese, using a clothes steamer.

How did you change it to make it for food?

I just chose... I just said, you're for food, but I also, I'm trying to control how much comes out.

So I've covered up some of the holes.

He cuts the onions and tomatoes on a slant,

so they lie flatter.

I think you would have been a really good surgeon in another life.

Well, yeah, my mother would have been happier.

Some other tricks, denture cream to hold up ingredients.

For condensation on cans, we'll use glycerin.

Yeah, not that much, too far, too far.

While Brett finishes up, Steve's team is making sure everything is ready on set.

The trickiest part is combining what the client wants in the commercial with what's technologically possible.

They have no idea about engineering.

Yeah, they're just like robots are cool.

We want a robot.

But since today he's working on a test shoot, he just has to implement his own vision.

I be one of those people that wears the protection.

Then, he turns to master rigger, Matthew Huber.

He says half the time he has to build the rigs completely from scratch.

They provide the structure for the specialized equipment that makes food dance across the screen.

His work goes hand in hand with the robots.

The robot obviously is a hugely complicated and expensive thing that's used for a lot of what we do.

But if you only just need a straight line movement, pulling back,

it's easier to set up a simple machine that just does a single type of movement.

Like these air pistons he uses to launch food or these catapults.

To save on buying new parts he uses a lot of the same base pieces.

It's like Legos, you know, just put stuff together, take it apart, do something different with it the next time.

So, we've used, like, all of these pieces probably like hundreds of times.

Meanwhile, Paula Andrea Ramirez is finalizing the set from the tables to the ketchup bottles off to the side.

I want it to feel real.

So, if it's blank, it won't feel like it's... it's a real commercial kitchen.

Every inch visible to the camera matters.

So Paula's team built this tile wall just for this shoot, but they said it still felt empty.

So we just added this new, these two floating shelves up there.

We plan for something and then we just have to be ready for the unexpected.

Her typical props budget is $40,000 a shoot, but she can pull a lot from her personal collection.

This has been 20 years of collecting, and this is like, Salvation Army, Garage sells, years and years of hoarding.

I always like to have extra.

So, if you're shooting example, glass of soda, I need to have at least six of the same glasses for quick changes if they're scratched because this video.

-So it's a little bit one breaks. -One breaks. -Exactly.

So, when that burger arrives, it's game time.

-I gotta go on set. -Yeah, burger.

Now, it's a race against the clock.

The angle feels right.

Can we melt the cheese a little more? Get a little heat in there.

Go ahead and roll camera

and push in a little bit closer.

All right, good.

Today, they have custom built water cooled lights that don't torch the food.

We used to have to have, like, these really hot lights that would like cook the food and it would die really quickly.

So like the ice cream would be, like, impossible to shoot in slow motion because it would just melt the second he turned the lights on.

But that lettuce will start to wilt in a matter of minutes hot lights or not.

So quick moving robots and tons of planning are essential to keep a shoot on schedule because any delay could mean running over budget.

The first action uses the dolly zoom to create something known as the Hitchcock effect.

But the whole background is like warping around it.

Hugh, the robots, they're actually the same kind that build cars.

This robot cost $150,000 and it can pretty much do any move you can think of.

Sometimes, you can program the robot pretty quickly,

some moves take a whole day.

Here's the second shot, Steve envisioned the camera moving through a field of burgers as each gets pulled out of frame.

We're probably only, like, an inch and a half away from that burger when we land.

So to try to do that with people would be almost impossible.

It's a really complex move that the robots do really easily, and they do it the same exact way every time.

But speed is not the only challenge.

Every shot has to be identical.

If a burger is even a centimeter off or if something on set gets bumped between takes, they might have to start over.

These fries don't want to behave.

This laser helps them keep track of the burgers position.

They also have to be really flexible on set.

There's always curveballs that happen because there's a lot of problem solving, which I love.

For the last shot, Steve ties all the ingredients on a fishing wire,

and a robot slices the string and the camera catches the perfect drop.

This exact move was actually Steve's claim to fame in 2016.

This famous burger drop video that went viral all over the internet.

He slowly raked in millions of views across platforms, and global publications started covering his work.

All that social media buzz earned him a lot of viewers and new clients,

and he was able to launch the garage in 2019.

The burger drop was kind of like the spark that started the path towards where we are today.

And now tiktok is like crazier than Instagram ever was for me.

Steve is a former food photographer, but he wanted to combine his love of engineering, food and video.

And amazingly, there's a job that lets me do that.

There's a lot of different jobs that my guidance counselor did not tell me about, including my own.

Today, his team films, 40 advertisements a year building over $5 million dollars annually.

Kind of feels like CGI, but it's actually done in camera.

And I think to accomplish that like larger than life feeling takes just a lot of technology and skill.

Steve says they know they've done a good job when viewers can't tell a whole production is hidden behind a shot.

They have no idea what we do at the end of the day.

It is fun for me to... for people to understand how complex this stuff is.

But all that complexity is worth it because there's a lot of money on the line.

Fast food companies poured $5 billion into advertising in 2019, and for good reason.

They know just how valuable the power of food suggestion can be.

A Yale University study found that visual cues like food ads can have an effect on food cravings.

Another study showed visual cues can influence over eating and even weight gain, and that can convert into traffic and impressions for a brand.

-You're responsible for a lot of people breaking their diet. -Yeah, me included.

These brands lead the pack in ad spending in 2019, and budgets just keep ballooning.

In September, Burger King announced it will invest $400 million in restaurant renovations and advertising.

A 30% increase from 2021, which is why Steve and his team filmed this whopper pitch,

hoping to hook a new client with their dancing robots and juicy burgers.

I smell like I was at a Burger King all day.