Craig Heffernan, now focused on business development and strategic planning withinthe company, is this month’s featured guest in Industry Voices, which highlights influential leaders and executives taking on new responsibilities

*This content is included in the December issue of TM BROADCAST. You can access the full magazine here.

Blackmagic Design has played a decisive role, from the very beginning, in democratising access to professional technology worldwide. Among its guiding principles is a firm commitment to delivering high-quality performance at competitive prices. “Our ethos as a technology manufacturer is that budgets should never be an obstacle to creative professionals — that access to premium products should not be restricted and limited to everyone by premium pricing,” explains Craig Heffernan, EMEA Director at Blackmagic Design.

Craig Heffernan is this month’s guest in the Industry Voices section, which features some of the most influential figures in the sector, with a particular focus on executives taking on new responsibilities. In his case, at the beginning of 2025 he shifted his focus to business development and strategic commercial planning. Heffernan has been a Director at Blackmagic Design for seven years, previously concentrating on pre-sales technical, sales support and training services.

In this conversation, we discuss how Blackmagic is navigating a context of global instability, as well as the differences he sees between broadcast and AV clients, among other topics.

The full interview follows below:

You’ve been serving as EMEA Director at Blackmagic Design for nearly a year now. How would you assess this period so far?

I’ve been a Director at Blackmagic Design for 7 years, previously focusing on our pre-sales technical, sales support and training services, but at the start of 2025 I moved to concentrate on Business Development and strategic commercial planning. My role places me in the ‘space’ between our Marketing and Sales Directors; working to guide our own teams and channel partners as we adapt to market challenges and introduce new products, technologies and workflows.

This change was part of a wider restructuring of our business in EMEA, recognising that, as we continue to grow as a technology manufacturer, we need to maintain a strong emphasis on working directly with customers across market verticals, ensuring they are aware of emerging and evolving solutions for their businesses.

It’s been an interesting shift from a technical, product-oriented leadership role focused on what we can offer today to one that demands deeper consideration of what is coming next and seeks to build strategic plans that ensure our teams are best prepared to proactively support customers.

About his new role: “It’s been an interesting shift from a technical, product-oriented leadership role focused on what we can offer today to one that demands deeper consideration of what is coming next”

What are your strategic objectives for the EMEA region in the coming years?

We’re moving through a period in our product lines where we are updating and evolving underlying technologies; building exciting new workflows that hopefully solve issues for customers and offering cost-effective, efficient tools to creative people so they can work closer together and deliver their vision to audiences faster and on budget.

We’re continuing to fine-tune and improve services within Blackmagic Cloud. This isn’t a basic cloud service that offers online storage or access to software, but one that is dedicated to collaborative workflows – linking teams with shared projects, globally synced media and fast deployable tools to support productions and deliver content live, online and through post-production, all with DaVinci Resolve at the heart of the production management and delivery.

Elsewhere, 2110 IP continues to grow in breadth and depth in our products. We introduced our first IP-based products a few years ago and worked closely with customers to understand how we can introduce additional 2110 IP products as a foundation for their studio installs or field-based kits for productions or events. Along with the introduction of our own 10-bit, broadcast-quality codec – Blackmagic IP10 – we have an incredible, pixel-accurate transmission system for HD and Ultra HD that’s fast to deploy and incredibly affordable as an SDI alternative.

“The benefit of owning our own manufacturing is that we have some control over working within the tariffs applied to certain countries”

How is the company addressing the current global context, marked by instability and more restrictive trade policies?

It’s a constant challenge and one that involves coordination with our colleagues across our global offices, and with our CEO, Grant Petty, in Australia. We believe we are agile and adaptable enough, as a privately owned manufacturer, to respond quickly to a highly unpredictable worldwide situation. It’s really about working together internally, monitoring updates and ensuring the impact on our customers is as limited as possible.

Alongside this, the benefit of owning our own manufacturing is that we have some control over working within the tariffs applied to certain countries. It’s obviously not a situation we can entirely control, so we’re committed to being open and honest with customers on the situation when it changes, as we were earlier in the year with US tariff changes, and we often work to absorb currency fluctuations rather than passing these costs to customers.

How has the profile of Blackmagic’s customer base evolved in recent years? Which new segments are growing the fastest?

I believe the line is gone… 10 to 12 years ago, we saw growing interest and investigation of broadcast products and solutions across various AV verticals, starting in staging and rental for live event production and expanding from there.

Today, our broadcast systems for vision mixers, digital glue, monitoring, cameras and streaming encoders are deployed across a wide range of AV projects, from events and staged performances to house of worship, education and more. This encompasses customers with smaller studio installs through to our work on global, world tours, such as the Billie Eilish ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ tour, built with Blackmagic Design to deliver complex live performances to thousands of fans at stadium venues.

We’ve often found that AV customers are faster at testing and investing in new technologies, usually because they have more freedom to experiment or respond to market developments than slower-moving broadcast companies, which are often locked into their production toolsets for longer. With this in mind, when we design and bring new production hardware to market – for example our ATEM production switchers – we often reach out to key customers for their insight, and always consider what AV customers would require or how they will utilise them.

“We’ve often found that AV customers are faster at testing and investing in new technologies, usually because they have more freedom to experiment or respond to market developments”

What role does price accessibility —one of Blackmagic’s hallmarks— play in your mid-term strategy?

It’s vital. Our ethos as a technology manufacturer is that budgets should never be an obstacle to creative professionals – that access to premium products should not be restricted and limited to everyone by premium pricing. This has been a foundation for Blackmagic Design since our early days.

Unfortunately, price perception bias has always been an issue we have had to fight. It’s ingrained in our thinking and in our industry to accept that if something costs more, it must be of higher quality, and conversely, priced products must be poorer. That’s simply not true nowadays with technology.

However, it’s not enough to say we want to keep products accessible; we have had to take the time to ensure products are what we say they are, and we have to continue to drive innovation and ensure we build trust with customers. We feel we’re earning that trust all the time, and our brand’s perception has shifted over the years through being true to our ethos and doing right by our customers. Beneath all of this, we invest heavily in our own company and our own production facilities and factories, ensuring quality and reliability and managing final product costs for customers.

“It’s ingrained in our thinking and in our industry to accept that if something costs more, it must be of higher quality, and conversely, priced products must be poorer. That’s simply not true nowadays with technology” 

Which areas of technological innovation are you currently focusing on?

We’ve recently introduced several technologies that we believe elevate our products and drive innovation from Blackmagic Design.

Our URSA Cine 17K 65 digital camera opens the door to shooting IMAX-level digital film content, which is out of reach for all but the biggest Hollywood feature budgets, and is underpinned by a new RGBW large-format sensor for incredible image reproduction and colour fidelity. Alongside this, URSA Cine Immersive is the world’s first camera system specifically designed to shoot for Apple Immersive Video formats, with dual 8K RGBW sensors and a designed Immersive workflow through DaVinci Resolve for Apple Vision Pro. Both of these cameras have potential for AV applications to build new, exciting creative customer experiences.

At an infrastructure level 2110 IP is a core innovation that we see offering fast and affordable point-to-point solutions for lightweight IP installs. The benefits will reduce cable costs and weight, introduce greater network control and distribution, and better integrate multiple production deliverables for live and online audiences.

As we reach the end of the year, which innovation, trend, or news story would you highlight as the most significant in the audiovisual industry in 2025?

We are really excited to see how new Immersive formats will be adapted and used to create new experiences for customers. Early productions in the summer of 2025 utilising Blackmagic immersive products and workflows, have already taken customers to sporting and music events you couldn’t experience without a ticket. It’s still early days for this emerging technology, but it’s already proving to be an amazing addition to 360 VR, XR and AR formats used by AV companies to build content for their audiences.

As immersive formats and workflows develop, it will be great to see how they expand into live-streaming content for Immersive – letting you be part of concerts, games and events as they happen!

“It’s not enough to say we want to keep products accessible; we have had to take the time to ensure products are what we say they are”