Despite being based 100 miles from the nearest port, The Fish Society has been providing a wide range of fresh fish for 25 years, and is now the UK’s leading online fishmonger.
Having witnessed the online spike of home-cooking videos being produced for YouTube and TikTok during the pandemic, the company decided to branch out and build a studio kitchen at its Guildford offices to deliver its own ‘how-to’ content. The ‘lifestyle kitchen, which was inspired by MasterChef, is fully equipped for a filming session thanks to Flipside AV.
“The team wanted a premium system with cameras used for recording and streaming live content, and after going through various options, we mapped out a solution that was right for them,” says Flipside managing director, James Cooper. “When they mentioned MasterChef as their inspiration, I had a feeling there would be a technical challenge that can often happen in a separated studio kitchen. But I think we mapped it out just right with the camera and mic positioning to get some good footage – it’s a proper broadcast set-up.”
Amy Birse, The Fish Society’s marketing content manager, says: “The main objective was for the space to feel authentic, so that when viewers watched, they felt comfortable – like they could easily achieve this recipe at home. We got a lot of inspiration from MasterChef – the way in which they did their filming is how we want to engage our audience. But we don’t want it to feel as sterile as that. We want our content to feel trendy and fresh.”
The kitchen studio has been installed with three BirdDog P200 PTZ cameras, with two placed either side of the kitchen, and one directly above the cooking station for an aerial view of the food preparation. Along with two sub-miniature wireless Audio-Technica 892 headset microphones to be attached to the on-screen chef, Audio-Technica shotgun mics have been placed on either side of the kitchen, in addition to a large diaphragm XY microphone.
“The XY covers the general background noise,” adds Cooper. “The two shotguns are focused on the cooker and grill, to capture that crisp sound from the grill and chopping-board counter area. There is just enough audio in the mix to be able to fiddle around with it a bit, so it’s not just dry, close-mic sounds. It’s not an echoey room, so you can fiddle about and try to get it to sound as natural as possible.”
It was important for The Fish Society to capture this audio aesthetic. “I became obsessed with the recent Lurpak butter adverts,” adds Birse. “The sizzle, the chop, the flames – I wanted to make sure we got all that drama into our videos. These mics are going to be great for that, as not only do they capture the energy from the cooking, but also our tone of voice and our brand as a whole.”
Flipside also installed a PC-based rig for live streaming and recording mixed output. “They can record the mixed output, but they can also record the continuous feeds from the cameras if they want to do more post-editing for a more polished video,” adds Cooper. “This ultimately had to be computer-based rather than any sort of hardware video mixer, to offer total control. The joystick controller from BirdDog, for example, means they have some pre-set recall and movement on the cameras on a separate unit.”
The installation came up against a challenge when one of the aerial cameras needed to be repositioned, so that the lens was not affected by steam from the stove area. “There were a few setbacks with the repositioning,” adds Birse. “But the Flipside team just said ‘no problem’, came back to studio, moved the camera and dropped another one down.”
