One of the most important aspects of developing a creative production is the finishing touches, which is why choosing the right post-production team is critical to ensuring the best possible result.

Effective post-production is what turns a largely green set into a completely new world, transforms motion-captured people into superhumans or fantastical creatures, and makes a sporting event or game show into an appealing multimedia experience.

Game shows, in particular, are fascinating for their use of CGI and post-production, given that the vast majority of such shows are infamously made on tiny budgets with relatively small teams.

These post-production effects are what makes, for example, the entrances in The Chase so dramatic, but they also make the game playable for people at home, something that is the primary appeal of a game show.

Possibly the show that relied more on post-production effects than most was a children’s game show which used a weather studio to create an intricate and enthralling interactive fantasy world.

Welcome Watchers Of Illusion

Developed by Tim Child and Broadsword Television for Anglia Television in 1987, Knightmare was an attempt to create a fantasy adventure game as evocative and involved as those available for the home computer systems of the era.

Specifically inspired by Dragontorc and Atic Atac in both style and gameplay, the key to Knightmare was to create a blue screen room that they could fill with evocative room backgrounds, animated monsters, items and lighting changes that could interact with live actors.

At the time, this was barely seen even in Hollywood; The Last Starfighter and Flight of the Navigator were only just starting to showcase the potential for interactive CGI.

The systems were developed, but the one problem was that whilst live actors would be able to perform around the big blue room, a contestant “dungeoneer” was a real person and would immediately lose the illusion.

Justice Is Blind

The solution was to place a helmet over their head that blocked their vision, forcing them to be navigated by their three “advisors” who were watching a live feed of the room with the backgrounds and animations included.

This meant that not only was live post-production important for enhancing the show for the audience, but it was vital to make the game aspect function in a way that had never been seen before and has not been seen since.

The illusion was maintained for the dungeoneer, the advisors were wowed and even the show’s host, Hugo Myatt’s Treguard the Dungeon Master described his amazement and wonder at seeing the effects.

The Official Knightmare Website has some fascinating information on exactly how the Spaceward Supernova Paint System (worth £85,000 in 1987) rendered the graphics for a room and helped to keep the game looking unique.

Too Ahead Of Its Time

In 1987, the show was utterly groundbreaking, and Tim Child kept trying constantly to find new ways to revise the format.

The show’s fourth series in 1990 introduced the Eye Shield, which led to the incorporation of heavily post-processed footage of walks around UK medieval castles with mixed results, eventually concluding with 1994’s fully CGI-rendered dungeon.

The problem with the show was that ultimately it was designed to eventually become a true virtual reality show, but the VR technology at the time was nowhere close to what was needed to make a compelling show. The failure of Knightmare’s follow-up Virtually Impossible proved this.