Manto and Bettys Giant Easter Egg

We are proud to partner with Bettys to celebrate their special centenary year.

One hundred years ago, Bettys’ founder, Frederick Belmont, a Swiss baker and confectioner came to England in search of opportunities to develop his craft skills. He opened his first Café Tea Room in Harrogate in 1919. Today, there are six Bettys Tea Rooms across Yorkshire.

Bettys briefed us to create a Facebook video about the making of their annual Imperial Easter egg.  Weighing in at five kilos – the egg inside a giant egg – is handmade by one of Bettys’ master chocolatiers, Kirsty and one of their highly skilled cake decorators, Emma.  

The egg was hand moulded from pink coloured white chocolate, and decorated with intricate sugar wild roses and golden leaves made from royal icing – it truly is a work of art. Bettys are renowned for doing things beautifully, so we set out to show this craftsmanship through film.

We shot the film over two days at Bettys HQ (where you’d mostly find us by the Eccles cake). The original idea was to use solely timelapse to film the skill and attention to detail in the egg making process – but in practice, we learnt that we needed some in motion shots to vary the pace.

The challenge was that we only had one egg to shoot with. So we had to rehearse lots and work closely with the chocolatiers on timings.

We hired a motorised slider (see photos) combined with our gimbal, to create a motion timelapse rig which we were able to control with our phones. This helped to show the skill and craft of how the egg was built over time and enabled us to showcase the art of creating Bettys’ Imperial Centenary Egg.

The result?  The Facebook video  alone has over 1 million views, 1,000 comments, and 1,400 shares. We’ll take that (and some of the egg!).

If you need some content making for social media or about your company in general then get in touch info@mantofilms.com or call 0113 2692 814.