Cooking, Composing, and Creation

The opportunity that working on Dr. Meredith E. Abarca's food studies project as an Undergraduate Student Research Assistant through the Humanities-Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP, a grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has contributed to developing my skills as a film studies major.  However, it has also taught me the process of developing a research project on a topic that has allowed me to see how and why food is never just about what we eat, but how what we eat says much about who we are historically, culturally, and politically. 

I’ve always known food to be an interactive medium for communication and stories. What is interesting though is the way at which the stories differ between public to private kitchens. In a private kitchen, food is a conversation piece; it brings with it fond memories of family and lifestyles of years past, whereas public kitchens focus on the business side of cooking. For these people, cooking and baking are their livelihoods, and their intensity for the craft is remarkable. Being the fly on the wall while these conversations unfold has allowed me to experience fantastic moments in time that are privy only to the parties in the room. The added benefit of being granted permission to record them is that I have had a unique chance to share these stories with the world. And through careful videography, sound engineering, and editing, I aim to have their stories told in the best quality possible.

While working with Dr. Meredith E. Abarca, I've also noticed that people have a tendency to change their outward appearance while on camera. One such person was Mr. Jake Jacobs, who was a fantastic conversationalist off camera, but as soon as the cameras were fixed on him, he became “camera shy." However, most the time this is short lived as the interviewee becomes more accustomed to the camera and focuses more on the conversation. Mr. Jacobs overcame the shyness when he focused on recreating the sweet potato pie recipe he learned from his grandmother. The closer the pie came to being finished, the happier and more talkative Mr. Jacobs became. Other times, the person being interviewed couldn’t care less about the camera and would talk normally, as if there was no silent audience off to the side with cameras. Sally, from El Paso Cookies Inc., was one such person. This was most likely the result of her already being a comfortable speaker while teaching cooking classes.  Watching these people follow the intricate processes of cooking, all while they discussed certain recipes and how the diverse ingredients and variables in making these dishes, made me think about how the care and connection with their cooking mirrored how I approached video and film editing and sound mixing to make a special, final product.

After all, I could say that this is my first "recipe," as this project can be labeled as my first venture into professional editing and camera work as well as audio work. It is also the first time I am given free rein to set up cameras and lighting without guidance from someone who is more experienced. The nervousness decreases with each new task set by Dr. Abarca because I have learned from each part of the project I’ve created. The first interview video with Mr. Jacobs was by far the hardest to master, which is a technical term that means balancing all audio elements in a recording such as volume and pitch to make sure that what you hear is the best possible version of that audio. So to clean the audio means to go through it and make sure any undesirable noises—ambient room white noise, table thumps and creaks, vocal breathe-ins or metallic clinks—are either cut from the audio clip or reduced so that they’re not as noticeable in the final mix. This process is vital and takes time to carefully go through. Personally, for me, if it’s a poor audio sample, or bad recording, it can take up to an hour for every 10 to 15 minutes of recorded material.

Editing is deceptive in its difficulty. The act of editing is simple to describe and understand; however, the work that goes on to carry out said action requires an almost unfair amount of time. The hardest parts are when after working over something for a substantial amount of time you find out that all the work you had put into it will not be suitable for the overall vision of the story, and the work has to be put aside in order to find a better alternative. Luckily, though, these days most editing work now is done digitally, and with the digital age comes the use of an "undo" button and easily made copies. So, most work is non-destructive, and you don’t lose any material, but it’s a learning process, and with each iteration I gain more efficiency and skill.

Editing and rendering videos requires time, which is why proper planning and coordination are needed to help keep things moving smoothly and efficiently. When a video is rendered it’s going through a process where the edited material is being converted into a single video file. This is what takes the longest to do when creating videos, so it’s best to add the images or cuts you want to the video first before rendering it out. It’s also normal to have to re-render a video to add or remove elements that weren’t in the first rendering. Little tweaks or minor edits are simple to do, but the rendering process does take time each instance a new video is rendered out; it’s best to try and include all new fixes to the new edit before rendering.

As many cooks realize, sometimes the tools with which you work really don't feel like working.  There is a saying by Emmert Wolf that goes, “A man is only as good as his tools." I took that to heart when I decided that I wanted to do editing work. I made sure that my computer and its internal components were able to handle even the most taxing of effects that can be placed in a video. But even with careful preparation and planning there can still be hiccups or bugs in the software that even the best hardware can’t overcome. When this happens its best to remain calm and thoroughly explore your options on how to fix the situation. Most the time it’s as simple as closing the program and reopening it. Another option is to shut down the computer and allow it to restart. Anything beyond that is when your research skills come into play; wording your issues clearly helps immensely with finding a solution. After some time, I was able to fix the hiccup and return to work, but it left with the question: What happens to the person whose tools don’t want to work? Apparently, the answer is to improvise, try, and improvise again.  It's from this sometimes messy process that enable creation, whether a video, a movie, a painting, a novel, or even a recipe.

Of course, the other side of this project is to introduce me to the field of food studies and hopefully introduce me to new foods. I’m pretty good at saying no to things, but I will always try something if it’s my first time being introduced to it. So when Dr. Abarca and I were recording a cooking demonstration inside Parul Haribhai’s kitchen, she made traditional Indian food, which included rice, curry, naan bread, and potatoes. During the cooking, she was talking about all the spices and how they’re connected to Indian history and culture. The aromas of her cooking were was delightful, and I was under no assumption that I would be given food, but after cooking she offered me a sample of all she cooked. I happily accepted. When it came to the spices I was expecting heat from the food, the kind that comes from chiles. I had forgotten that spices don't always equal heat, and the spiced food was instead incredibly flavorful and unique. The words to describe what I ate are unknown to me, but all I can say is that I wanted more.

Another new food experience came from recording a historical recreation of Chuck Wagon cooking. We were served steaks, green chile, beans, biscuits and gravy. These foods are common to me—I have a variation of them almost weekly with my dad’s cooking. However, this time the food was unlike anything I had ever tasted. The steaks were delicious and a bit chalky in texture, which sounds awful, but I found it to be quite interesting, and it gave the steaks and interesting depth that I didn’t think possible. The beans and chile were par for the course, but the biscuits were another new take on common food. They weren’t typical biscuits; they were heavy and flaky, buttery in flavor but not overpowering; they complemented the beans and the gravy and functioned as an edible sponge; soaking up the leftover juices.

With each story and food demonstration I’ve helped record and edit, I’ve been exposed to the history and culinary culture of the U.S. southern cooking, of cattle dive cooking, of Mexican contemporary and ancestral foods, and of South Asian cuisines. My knowledge of how food serves as communication has expanded to experience what types of stories food communicates—family, regional, cultural, national—and in what ways it communicates: memory, emotions, and through the senses. I've seen and continue to see how food reveals and connects us as I hadn't before, and I've also seen how the humanities help us to draw connections between unexpected spaces like the kitchen and the video editing room.  

Written by Solomon Contreras
EPCC Undergraduate Research Fellow, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP

(Image courtesy of Vincent C. Martinez)