About the work
Story From The Kitchen is a private chef practice in Northeast Tarrant County. I cook multi-course dinners in clients’ homes: anniversaries, proposals, milestone birthdays, corporate evenings.
I’m building the video side of the business and I need one person to shoot it and cut it. The biweekly production schedule is the core of this job. Everything else is secondary to it running on time, every time, at the same standard.
What good looks like in this format
The reference points are the silent hands-only cooking channels: Peaceful Cuisine, Nino’s Home, HidaMari Cooking, Cooking Tree, Emojoie. Not the eating-ASMR genre (SAS-ASMR, Zach Choi and similar). Those are mukbang with a microphone. This is cooking, filmed quietly and well. If you don’t know the difference, watch one of each before applying.
What those channels have in common, and what I’m asking you to deliver:
Sound and picture are locked to each other. When the viewer hears the sizzle they see the oil moving. When they hear the knife they see the blade at close range. Every sound has a visible source in the same frame. A cut that plays a sound over the wrong image is the fastest way to break the effect.
The mic lives three to eight inches from the source, just out of frame. Directional, aimed at the food rather than the room, mounted on something that doesn’t transmit vibration from the counter or the burner. Stereo where it earns its place, since chopping and stirring have spatial character worth keeping.
Sound design in post is real work. A gentle low-end roll-off to kill room rumble, a lift in the high-mids where the crunch and the crackle live, and compression that evens the loudness without flattening the dynamics. This is the difference between footage of cooking and a video someone watches twice.
Silence has to be usable. The near-silent moments carry as much as the loud ones, which means the noise floor has to be genuinely clean rather than merely quiet.
Texture over spectacle. The sounds that work are the ones with a distinct signature: the sear, the crackle of skin, bread tearing, a knife through crust, liquid reducing. Pick the beats with sound in mind, not just picture.
Soft, raking light. Texture is the whole point. The gleam on an oiled board, steam off a pan, fat rendering. Hard light and glare kill it. So does flat, even light.
No preamble. No intro sequence, no branding animation, no logo sting. The first frame is already the cooking. These channels earn attention by starting immediately and never asking for anything.
Hands and pace do the acting. Unhurried, deliberate movement. No fast cuts, no whip pans, no reaction shots. The confidence has to read in the hands.
The format
Every video is silent ASMR, hands only. No voiceover, no music, no face, no presenter. The framing is hands, food, and pan for the entire runtime. I am never on camera.
The sound of the cooking is the whole soundtrack: the knife on the board, the sear when the protein hits the pan, the crackle of skin, the pour of the sauce, the plate set down. All of it captured live in the room. Nothing foleyed, nothing pulled from a sound library, no music laid underneath.
Recipe, measurements, and full instructions live in the video description, written by me. The video’s only job is to be watched.
This makes audio the most important technical skill in the role, ahead of camera work. If the sizzle is thin or the room hums, the video has failed and no amount of grading fixes it. I can silence the kitchen, appliances off and phones away, but you need to arrive knowing exactly what you want to mic and how.
The production day
One day every two weeks, in my kitchen in Colleyville. Three dishes cooked and filmed back to back, each becoming its own video. Roughly eight hours, on your feet, in a working kitchen, while I cook around you.
Camera coverage is three positions: a locked overhead for prep and hands, a locked 45-degree for the stovetop, and a moving low angle for plating, the pour, and the reveal. One operator, three positions. Two of them don’t move once they’re set.
Because it’s my own kitchen, the setup is semi-permanent. Mounts, marks, and lighting positions stay in place between shoots, so setup gets faster every session rather than starting from zero each time.
Delivered from each production day:
- 3 long-form videos, four to eight minutes each, one dish per video
- 5 to 7 vertical cuts, 10 to 60 seconds, for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok
- 3 photographed hero stills, one per dish, shot within 30 to 60 seconds of plating, food filling 60 to 75% of the frame
- Organized, labeled, backed-up raw footage handed to me
Turnaround: first cuts within [7] days of the shoot. Two rounds of revisions included. Further passes billed hourly at a rate we agree in advance.
Editing includes color grading that keeps food looking real rather than over-saturated, sound design and cleanup from the captured audio, and clean restrained titles. It does not include writing. I write everything.
Live events, separate and paid per event
A few times a quarter I cook a dinner in a client’s home and want it covered. These are booked and paid on their own, not part of the retainer, and there’s no obligation on either side.
It’s documentary work under hard constraints: candlelight, no added room lighting, no direction, no second takes, and no becoming part of the evening. What gets captured: the set table before anyone sits, plates leaving the kitchen, the host seated and being served, the room mid-conversation, the cleared kitchen at the end of the night.
Client privacy is absolute. No client named, no identifiable interior shown, no guest in frame without written consent secured beforehand. Breaking that ends the working relationship immediately.
If live work interests you, say so when you apply. If it doesn’t, the biweekly job stands on its own.
Requirements
- Serious audio ability. Close-miking at three to eight inches, a genuinely low noise floor, and post skills in EQ, compression, and cleanup. This is the first thing I’ll be judging, ahead of your camera work.
- Food videography in your reel. Not only weddings, events, or corporate work.
- Your own camera and audio gear. Bodies, prime and macro glass, shotgun and close mics, a dedicated recorder. I’m covering the overhead rig and kitchen lighting since they live here.
- You edit what you shoot. Not a shooter who hands off, and not an editor who has never been on location.
- Reliability on a fixed schedule. The production day is the job. A shoot that slips a week costs two weeks of publishing.
- Week-over-week consistency. This only works if video 30 looks like video 3.
- Based in the DFW area with reliable transportation.
- Comfortable working around a cook in a hot kitchen without getting in the way.
- Willing to sign an NDA.
Preferred
- Previous ASMR or no-narration cooking content
- Professional stills photography
- Experience cutting for both YouTube long-form and vertical platforms, which are different crafts
- Interest in the live event work as well
How I work
The brand runs on restraint. No trending audio, no hype edits, no big overlay text, no stock or AI-generated imagery. Food is graded to look real and appetizing, never over-saturated or AI-looking.
You’ll get a written style guide covering grading, titles, pacing, and the sound standard, so you’re not guessing at what I want and I’m not rejecting cuts on taste.
When I say I want someone creative, I mean creative inside those rules: composition, light, patience, and the one frame that does the work of ten. If your reel’s best moments are fast cuts and big text, we’re probably not a fit, and that’s fine.
Read the site before you apply, at storyfromthekitchen.com. The tone there is the specification. Two minutes on it and you’ll know whether this is work you want to do.
How this starts
One paid trial production day. Two dishes rather than three, delivered as two long-forms, three verticals, and two hero stills. Paid at the full day rate. It’s close enough to a real day for us both to know whether the pace and the standard work.
If it does, we set the biweekly schedule, and it runs ongoing.
Screening questions
Deal breakers, yes or no:
1. Are you located within driving distance of Colleyville, TX and able to work on site?
2. Do you own professional camera gear and a dedicated audio recorder with close mics?
3. Do you both shoot and edit your own work?
4. Can you commit to a fixed production day every two weeks on an ongoing basis?
Free response:
1. Link one food video you shot and edited yourself. What would you do differently now?
2. How would you mic a six-minute silent cook so the sear, the knife, and the pour all land? Name the mics, where they sit, and what you’d do to the track in post.
3. Name a silent cooking channel you think does this well and tell me what specifically they get right. Naming one you think gets it wrong is just as useful.
4. Three dishes shot in one day, then three long-forms and five to seven verticals out of it within a week. Walk me through how you’d actually run that.
5. What’s in your bag?
Skip the template cover letter. Short, specific answers will get read.
Pay: $400.00 - $500.00 per day
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
