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Joining a company already recognised for innovation with the expectation of building on that legacy might seem daunting. But Estelle McGechie gives the impression that her recent appointment as chief executive of on-camera monitoring and live switching developer Atomos is the continuation of a career that has included time at organisations built on technological originality.

Walt Disney Television and the Walt Disney Company, where Estelle McGechie was a producer-editor between 2009-11 and 2011-13 respectively, and cloud-based collaborative workflow pioneer Frame.io, at which she was vice president of marketing (2020-21), illustrate the two ends of a long tradition of developing new technologies to further creativity in media production.

“I love technology, specifically where it meets the creative,” McGechie says. “One of the things I followed even when I was young was the craft of storytelling in movies and TV. When computers started to take off and non-linear editing [came in], I couldn’t get my hands on that technology fast enough. I’d done tape-to-tape and some film editing but I liked the ability to touch something, move it around and create a story.”

This led McGechie into producing and editing video projects. More experience with non-linear editing systems took her more into the technical side and, ultimately, Apple certification. “They asked me to go to the US and after that I wrote my first [instruction] book for them,” she explains. “I became a technical expert and trained the trainers around the world.”

McGechie also acted as a consultant to major broadcasters in the US, Mexico, and Australia, as well as London and Hong Kong facilities. Part of this work for Apple involved defining workflows from server to delivery, which was helped by her own experience as an editor and producer. “The more I sat in the chair, the more I understood about the problems that needed to be solved. It isn’t necessary to have experience, but it helps because you can understand what the core pain points are. Being able to work with complex problems and solve them is what the creative-technical [approach] provided for me.”

After working in product marketing for Apple between 2004 and 2010, McGechie left for Disney. When she returned in 2013 it was to work on product development, notably ProRes RAW. This saw McGechie “driving the project”, which partnered Apple with Canon and Atomos. This, she says, was very engineering led and utilised both the Canon EOS R5 camera and the prototype version of what became the 8K Atomos Ninja V+.

This existing relationship led to McGechie being offered the role of chief product officer in June 2021, giving her the opportunity of returning to her home country. “One of the draws of working with Atomos was that they want to be leading edge,” she comments. “They’re also Australian and I’m originally from Melbourne [where Atomos is headquartered]. I had been based in the US for 21 years, so to come back and work for a company with a broad vision hit every one of my aspirations.”

In September 2021, it was announced that McGechie was taking over as chief executive of Atomos from co-founder Jeromy Young (who remains with the company in a less prominent role). In a statement on this at the time, McGechie said she would be bringing “everything I’ve learnt from my international career home to Australia to continue our positive momentum.” Part of this, she says, is the driving force that was part of the Apple culture: “It’s a leader in hardware and software, as well as platforms through the App Store. The method of working is collaborative, the entire focus being on making the whole product and pushing the boundary.”

The aim, McGechie observes, is to see how customers are working and produce what they need, even though they might not be able to articulate what that is exactly. “There might be lots of ideas but is one the right idea for that time and does it provide a solution that the customer never understood they needed?” she elaborates. McGechie’s previous involvement with Atomos goes back to the original Ninja V, which she says came from a research approach similar to how she worked at Apple.

“The Ninja brings a monitor, recorder, playback and metadata together. It has that same kind of drive [as at Apple] to find the best solution, combining all those pieces. It’s not just a monitor, it’s not one-dimensional.” Being able to see the multi-purpose aspect of a device is key, she adds, as is giving users something that is intuitive, as with the Atomos touch screen.

Atomos is closer to the acquisition stage of production than Apple but McGechie’s maxim of having practical experience to know how to develop a technology still holds. “I wouldn’t call myself a cinematographer, but I have done a lot of shooting,” she says. “One of the most significant things is being able to record on a mezzanine format like ProRes RAW or Avid DNxHD,” she says. “With Atomos devices, there is the ability to record in whichever codec makes sense for someone’s project and also do it on the fly.”

In the past year the Innovator feature has highlighted a number of Australian technology companies that have made a mark on the field of filmmaking, many of which are based in Melbourne. McGechie jokes that it rains a lot there, which presumably keeps people indoors and working. “The culture of Australia is one of tenacity,” she continues, “they really persist in solving a problem There is a real drive here to be in the technology space.”

In keeping with that, Atomos is preparing to move into Melbourne Connect, an “innovation precinct” featuring the latest ‘smart building’ technology for regulating power consumption and creating a more conducive working environment. “It’s alive,” McGechie comments. “It’s no surprise that this technology comes out of Australia, and it will be the intersection of creative and the technical.”

As for future plans in product development at Atomos, Estelle McGechie says she is looking to instill a different design process. “You can get stuck, so it’s about getting unstuck,” she concludes. “People can get fixed in a mindset and worry about constraints. I want to push out the constraints, build the right product and deal with problem solving later. I want us to have the ability to take a new idea and be brave enough to pass through the market challenges.”