Director of Photography on Condé Nast Traveler's Where the Chefs Eat in Phnom Penh

I was director of photography on Condé Nast Traveler's Where the Chefs Eat episode in Phnom Penh, which has now passed a million views on YouTube. A Pro Chef's Favorite Places to Eat in Phnom Penh, Cambodia follows Rotanak Ros, better known as Chef Nak, to three of the places she eats in the Cambodian capital. They are a Khmer restaurant on Street 360, a modern Khmer tasting menu at the Old Market and a grilled seafood spot on Samdech Monireth Boulevard.

Condé Nast Traveler's Where the Chefs Eat with Chef Nak in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Director of photography: George Jefferies

How the job came together

I was hired locally through Bophay OukChan of Cambodia Film Fixers, who was the fixer on the shoot. I've written about working with Bophay before, in my post on flying drones in Cambodia. The production came through Mbrella Films, Joshua Dixon's production company in Bangkok.

The episode was directed by Preshita Saha, a director at Condé Nast who oversees the shoots for the series. We met her at the hotel on the morning of the shoot and were filming within half an hour.

The crew was small. I was director of photography and operated A camera. Kongkea Vann was B camera, and Sokha Hun recorded sound. I'd worked with Sokha before on Loot, the feature documentary about Douglas Latchford and the theft and return of looted Khmer artefacts to Cambodia. On Loot I filmed the master interview with Thanaren Than, a former cultural heritage investigator, and the return of 14 artefacts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was my first time working with Kongkea, but I'd seen his work at this year's Cambodia International Film Festival. He was director of photography on Fresh as Daisy, Socheata Van's short about two young women from conservative families in the same Phnom Penh neighbourhood, which screened in the festival's Cambodia in Short programme. He's a Cambodian filmmaker and cinematographer, and he co-directed and shot the short film Sound of the Night with Chanrado Sok. That film was nominated for the Pardino d'oro at the Locarno Film Festival.

Setting up two cameras to match

We shot handheld on two Sony FX6s, and the job began with a technical preparation meeting the day before the shoot to match the two cameras. As director of photography, I was responsible for lining them up so the footage would cut together in the edit. Both were set to S-Log3 in S-Gamut3.Cine with a 180-degree shutter, recording internally in XAVC-I. File names were set up to differentiate Cam A from Cam B.

Each camera carried a Deity TC-1 timecode unit, and we checked that both were syncing with the Sound Devices MixPre-10 that Sokha was recording into. Each camera was also fitted with an Atomos Ninja V as a monitor, which gave us the option of recording ProRes RAW. The footage was being uploaded straight to the production's cloud storage, though, and the file sizes would have been massive and taken a long time to upload.

At the start of each scene, we shot an X-Rite ColorChecker Passport on both cameras so the colourist could match them. That was followed by a slate app on my phone with a short description, so the editors knew which scene they were looking at.

We both shot on the Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS, using Cinesaddles. The whole episode was shot in under eight hours at locations across the city, so although we had more lenses in the bag, there wasn't time to change them. The built-in stabilisation helps when you're shooting at that pace. The zoom range also covers you in a small kitchen, where you need to get as wide as you can, and lets you punch in for a close-up at the 105mm end, as long as you can hold it steady.

Matching the series style

Before the shoot, Kongkea and I watched earlier episodes of Where the Chefs Eat together to study the framing and shooting style, so our footage would match the rest of the series. There was no gimbal and no drone. Everything was handheld.

I assigned Kongkea the close-ups of the food being prepared and served. That left me free to stay with Chef Nak and get the meat and bones of each scene, picking off food shots wherever I could. We worked with the available light throughout and made everything look as good as we could.

Three restaurants

The first stop was Meatophum, on Street 360 near Tuol Sleng. Chef Nak talked with the owner, Meas Phanida, and worked through a mixed banana blossom salad, fried fish with seasonal pickles, Khmer beef sour soup and mango sticky rice.

Where to Get the Best Cambodian Food in Phnom Penh, filmed at Meatophum for Condé Nast Traveler

Next was Pi Sa, at the Old Market, which serves a modern Khmer tasting menu. The episode closes by naming Pi Sa as a 2026 Condé Nast Traveler Hot List restaurant winner. I'd definitely go back for the tasting menu, and for the quality of the food, it's good value.

Inside Pi Sa, Phnom Penh, filmed for Condé Nast Traveler

The last stop was 123 Grilled Seafood on Samdech Monireth Boulevard, past the Olympic Stadium. This was street food at night, so we worked with the light that was there and positioned Chef Nak where it fell best. If friends and I fancied seafood, it's where I'd take them.

Grilled seafood at 123 Grilled Seafood, Phnom Penh, filmed for Condé Nast Traveler

Working with Chef Nak again

I first met Chef Nak when I was working as camera assistant and drone operator on CNN's Nomad with Carlton McCoy. We filmed with her at a floating village on the Tonle Sap, near Siem Reap.

In this episode of Where the Chefs Eat, she describes how the capital's food comes together. "Something amazing about food culture in Phnom Penh is that it is a hub," she says. "When people come, they bring their own traditions from where they grew up and that makes the whole thing quite diverse."

Handover

At the end of the shoot, I uploaded the footage directly to the production's cloud storage, wrote up camera notes and went through everything with the team. The morning after we wrapped, we were on the road to Siem Reap to film an episode of Ask a Local for Condé Nast Traveler, so I carried on uploading from the road. I'll cover that shoot in a separate post.

A million views

The episode has now passed a million views on Condé Nast Traveler's YouTube channel, and three shorts cut from it have been published alongside it.

You can see more of my work as a director of photography in Cambodia, including the CNA Insider documentary on the Funan Techo Canal, where I also ran a two-camera setup.

Got a shoot coming up in Cambodia or Southeast Asia? Feel free to get in touch.

Flying Drones in Cambodia: Permissions, Experience and What You Need to Know

Drone showreel, aerial videography across Cambodia

I've been working as a drone operator in Cambodia since shortly after DJI launched the original Phantom in 2013. Since then I've flown the Phantom 2, 3, 4 and 4 Pro, the Mavic Pro, Mavic Pro 2, Mini 3 Pro, and now the DJI Air 3. I've used drones on productions ranging from NGO field work and corporate videos to broadcast documentary and feature film. The progress in that time has been remarkable, with the introduction of dual lenses, omnidirectional obstacle sensing, extended battery life, and stabilisation that makes aerial footage possible in conditions where earlier models simply couldn't fly.

This post covers the two locations where you'll definitely be asked for permission, Phnom Penh and the Angkor Archaeological Park, along with some notes on indoor flying, drone photography, and some highlights of my drone flying in Cambodia.

Flying in Phnom Penh

For television and documentary productions, the permissions process in Phnom Penh is a two-stage process. You apply first to the Ministry of Information, which processes the permit. You then take that letter to City Hall, where they countersign and confirm that you have approval to fly within the capital. If you're making a feature film, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts is the relevant authority.

When I was flying for CNN's Nomad with Carlton McCoy, the local fixer gave me a copy of the permission letter, which was a good idea. Every time I took off, a security guard arrived and asked to see the permission. You will be asked to show your paperwork when openly flying in central Phnom Penh, so make sure you have it.

People have been detained for flying in restricted areas, and some incidents are well known in the production community here. For professional work in Phnom Penh, obtaining permission before you fly is not optional.

At the time of writing, there is a blanket ban on drone flights across Cambodia as a result of the Thailand-Cambodia border situation. Permissions are still being granted for the right projects, but this is worth factoring into your planning if you're scheduling a drone shoot in the near future.

Flying at the Angkor Archaeological Park

Angkor operates through the Apsara Authority, the body responsible for managing the archaeological park. You apply in writing and the process typically takes between two weeks and a month. The Apsara Authority will confirm whether permission is granted and advise on the fee, which is set case by case rather than at a fixed rate.

I've been lucky enough to fly my drone at the temples twice. The first was for Taste of Cambodia, a travel series for the Cambodia Ministry of Tourism produced with Hanuman Films, where I had a three-day permit covering Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm, the temple featured in Tomb Raider. The second was for CNN's Nomad with Carlton McCoy, shooting at Angkor Wat.

I was up before sunrise on the first two mornings of the Taste of Cambodia shoot at Angkor Wat, waiting for light that never came through the cloud. On the third morning it had rained overnight and, as the sun rose, mist lifted from the stone path leading up to the temple and the surrounding jungle. The footage from that morning made up for the earlier disappointments, and it's the kind of image that's only available if you have the right permissions and the patience to wait for the conditions to arrive.

Indoor Drone Work

Part of the drone work I do has been flying inside buildings, which is a different discipline from outdoor flying and one that demands a drone with reliable obstacle sensing.

For a corporate film for Endo Lighting, I flew inside AEON 3 Mall in Phnom Penh to capture their lighting installation. Flying up through the full height of the central atrium and along the skywalk, a key part of the design they wanted to show, gave the client footage that couldn't have been achieved any other way. You can see the video here.

For a video produced with Pixel Peers for the ILO's Better Factories project, I flew inside a garment factory in Kandal Province on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, documenting the manufacturing environment as part of their Better Factories programme.

I also flew inside Cambodia Zulite Stone's quartz manufacturing facility for a corporate film delivered for exhibition at a trade show in New York. The DJI Air 3's omnidirectional obstacle sensing makes it well suited to indoor work of this kind.

On a number of shoots, drone photography has been delivered alongside the video. The Air 3 and many other DJI drones make switching between modes straightforward. You press the left-hand shoulder button and it switches between photography and video. Once the settings for both are configured, it's easy to switch at the click of a button, and then another click either takes a photo or starts recording. Stills and video can be captured in the same session without significantly disrupting the shooting workflow. Both Endo Lighting and Cambodia Zulite Stone received drone photography deliverables alongside their films. Drone stills are something I can offer alongside videography on most shoots.

Flying Across Cambodia

Across Cambodia as well as Phnom Penh and Angkor, I've flown for a wide range of productions. Locations include Kampot and Kep on the coast, the highlands of Mondulkiri, Kratie, Stung Treng, Battambang and Kandal Province. Outside the capital and the archaeological park, enforcement is lighter and I've never been stopped when flying recreationally, though technically a local authority approval from the relevant sangkat is required alongside the Ministry of Information permit for professional productions.

Productions involving significant drone work include a 46-minute documentary for CNA Insider on the Funan Techo Canal, where I flew over the Mekong River, Battambang's rice paddies and the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port, and the Taste of Cambodia series for the Ministry of Tourism. For the CNN shoot I flew Central Market, Wat Phnom, Vattanac Tower, the CBD and the Angkor temples. For Wild Frontiers, one of the UK's leading adventure travel companies, I flew across India, Ukraine and Moldova. You can see a selection of that aerial work in my drone reel for Khreativa.

Cambodia as a Production Destination

The Cambodia Tourism Board recently launched a Location Scouting Programme designed to support international film, television, documentary and commercial productions. The programme covers up to five days of on-ground expenses during location scouting, including accommodation, local transport, fixer or guide services, and entry fees for national parks and heritage sites. Flights are not covered, but it's an encouraging development that reflects a genuine effort by the Cambodian government to attract international productions to the country.

Kit

My current drone is the DJI Air 3, with 28mm and 70mm lenses and omnidirectional obstacle sensing, suitable for both indoor and outdoor work. Additional drones are available to hire for productions requiring different specifications. Full production kit, including lighting, sound and grip, is available alongside drone services.

You can see more of my drone work on the drone operator page, and further examples across the corporateand documentary portfolio pages.

If you have questions about flying drones in Cambodia, whether for a production you're planning or just to understand the permissions process, feel free to get in touch. Based in Phnom Penh and available for assignments across Southeast Asia.