Achieve instant beach vibes in your product videos with this rippling underwater effect

There's no doubt that the beach is an inspirational setting for styling products. The only trouble is that the conditions on location can often be extra challenging for capturing photo and video, such as dealing with harsh outdoor lighting or grappling with waves that may want to sweep your product away before you've had a chance to shoot.

Creating a beach inspired scene inside your studio is a much more efficient way to create the content you need within a safe and controlled environment.

In this tutorial we will be showing you how to create a mini-beach from your home studio, complete with gentle, rippling waves for a sandy and sun-drenched product video that looks just like the real deal. Grab your sunglasses and let's create some waves!

What you'll need?

• Transparent acrylic tray or glass baking dish
• Sand inspired backdrop - we used a brown textured one to look like sand but you could also use the real thing in a thin layer on your workspace
• Beachy props such as stones or shells
• Product

Setting up the scene

You'll be laying out your beach scene right onto your table or photography surface.

For our underwater scene we used a brown textured paper that looks like sand and some props we foraged from our summer beach holiday.

You could also use a blue or tiled backdrop to simulate a swimming pool scene. Get creative!

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Creating gentle waves

Next you'll need to add a shallow layer of water to your transparent tray.

Use both hands to hold the tray so it's slightly elevated from the product. Rock the tray back and forth to create wavy water motion.

Bonus tips

In real life, a scene like this would be under the direct sun. To make your beach scene look extra realistic you'll need a bright, direct light so the shadow from the water ripples is reflected onto the background.

For our setup we used a cantilever arm for our camera and set our video to shoot at a higher frame rate (100fps). The higher the frame rate, the more you can slow down the footage in post for a lazy summer day effect.

Instant beach just add water

These gentle rippling waves are the perfect way to create a premium looking summer scene for your next product video without lugging your gear to the beach!