For many television viewers, the first experience of digital effects was during the 1976 Montreal Olympics, when a video image inset into the main picture displayed a close-up of the Olympic torch as the runner entered the stadium. It was Quantel's first major success in providing a delivery platform for innovative visual effects, and since then they have consistently raised the standards for television production and the expectations of viewers.

Roger Thornton, Corporate Relations Manager, explained that the age of multimedia has brought about many new challenges, which Quantel is meeting through immersive engagement with their clients and a large degree of creative guesswork.

Quantel's formula is to ensure that its 70-strong team of research and development staff regularly 'escape' the headquarters in Newbury to visit the creative people who use its products. "We can see the trends, monitor those things and then look ahead and say, 'with current tools, where are the limitations for the people doing those jobs?' Then we can look at the emerging technologies and say, 'now where can we help that process?'"

Such an open approach naturally may lead to many conclusions, and this underpins Quantel's developmental process. By accounting for all possible pathways, Quantel seeks to design and build products which may be used in any one of those cases. "And in some cases," Thornton said, "the market doesn't just go in one direction, it goes off in all those directions at the same time, and you find yourself entering new markets with your products, which Quantel has done on a number of occasions."

Quantel typically spends three to four years developing products, planning for each to enjoy at least a seven-year life-cycle. The latest generationQ range of products - including QEffects which runs on a desktop PC - is conceived to meet the needs of all variety of digital media, allowing the swift delivery of creative products. The flagship iQ media platform is capable of "shovelling out a standard TV commercial in record time" while it also has the capability to down-convert film material into several different definition broadcasts, and to process "the modern-day Lawrence of Arabia" movie epics.

It is Quantel's contention that the creative industry is currently in an exciting phase of crossover and overlap. So-called 'traditional markets' within the industry no longer exist as discrete departments. For instance, companies formerly engaged only on TV work may now work with DVD or cinema. And many diverse effects can now be processed using one particular product, such as iQ, rather than utilising a whole facilities house.

Computer games, Thornton argued, can no longer be looked at in isolation either. "As processing becomes more powerful, what is the drawback of mixing in some real world there as well? Where do the borders of the mental 3D creation come, and the real world scenarios? Indeed, why try to build a real world scenario if you could have one available to you already? Even within 3D you're going to see some overlap."

So powerful, in fact, is the technology that one of Quantel's clients, DigiGuys - a new games developer based out of Pinewood - is working with an iQ system to make a movie of a game and release it at the same time as the game of the movie. With production processes lasting about the same time for each, the two can be released synchronously. Quantel's technology is therefore enabling separate processes to operate within one overlapping creative sphere. Increasingly, such creative overlap will become the norm.

Quantel already has a technology base installed that Thornton believes will serve the needs of the creative industry "for the next five years and beyond". However, they are constantly re-analysing the market, "and tomorrow we will be looking again to see if there is something that has come up on the horizon beyond the next five years, and it may be a technology that we've not heard of today that will instantly solve a whole list of problems."

By working collaboratively, both in-house and with their customers, Quantel is helping to envision and shape the future of visual digital effects for all broadcast media. They cannot tell us what will happen in ten years' time but through creative exploration and development, they expect to provide us the tools we need to go and find out.


By Jo Morrison, Director of Design, Futurelab