Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design

Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design today announced that professional knife manufacturer, WÜSTHOF, created a specialist live streaming series, relying on URSA Mini Pro G2, Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and ATEM Television Studio Pro HD to reach fans across the globe during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Delivered from inception by production agency HerzbergMedia, the thirteen part Cutting Academy helped viewers develop their kitchen knife skills. Each show featured celebrity guest chef René Steinbach, who delivered live practical demonstrations, as well as Viola Wüsthof of the Wüsthof family, who shared guidance on sharpening and caring for professional kitchen knives. The content was available through Facebook Live and the brand’s YouTube channel, with audiences encouraged to comment and ask questions.

Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design

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“The lockdown kickstarted a massive surge in the number of brands streaming content online. Although there were lots of cookery shows, we hadn’t seen anyone taking on practical cutting skills. With 200 years of experience, we knew WÜSTHOF was in the perfect position to share its expertise,” explains Jens Harald Herzberg, owner of HerzbergMedia. “We developed the premise of the series, then worked with the Wüsthof family to get production up and running.”

Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design

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Working from a studio in Cologne, Germany, the production team faced two key challenges: delivering high quality content with a limited number of people and ensuring that social distancing was upheld throughout filming. “With just four of us, including myself as host, producer and streaming operator, it was instantly clear that we would need to streamline the workflow and rely on remote control via the ATEM switcher for the main camera positions,” explains Jens. “We had four locked off positions and a fifth handheld unit to give us the all important detail shots, which would help elevate the production even further.”

Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design

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“We made a move to Blackmagic Design cameras for all of our corporate work some time ago, and they have become our workhorses, producing excellent quality content for our commercials and image films. We were conscious that so much online content has been produced during the lockdown, so we had to ensure our set up would deliver the picture quality we needed for a highly professional finish.”

Wüsthof Broadcasts Cutting Academy Livestream Series with Blackmagic Design

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To date, the series has generated more than 600K views across WÜSTHOF’s social media channels, which massively exceeded the team’s initial estimations. “We’d been discussing the concept of live streaming for a long time, but we were always cautious about the costs and resource involved,” concludes Jens Harald. “The engagement and excitement for the WÜSTHOF Cutting Academy demonstrated that there is a demand for this type of insightful, detailed content, and the Blackmagic Design workflow has proved itself as a reliable and effective foundation on which we can develop more programming formats across our client base.”
 

About Blackmagic Design
 
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

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