A decade of Bluebolt
Trevor Hogg chats to the co-founders of award-winning visual effects company Bluebolt as they celebrate over ten years of VFX brilliance
The award-winning VFX company discuss how they’ve grown
The Bluebolt staff celebrate with champagne the 10th anniversary of the company
An idea written on the back of a cigarette pack in Patisserie Valerie in 2009 set in motion the establishment of Bluebolt by Lucy Ainsworth-taylor and Angela Barson, who at the time had no business plan, lacked financial backing and were wondering where their first job was going to come from. “Angela and I had worked together at MPC and had left at separate times, but knew there was a gap in the market for VFX work on television and mid-size budget features that didn’t need the big VFX facility pipeline,” says Ainsworthtaylor. “It was a natural conclusion to give it a go and with our then third business partner, Chas Jarrett, we three embarked on setting up Bluebolt. We spent a bit of money forming a website saying who we were and then just announced our arrival by email to anyone and everyone we knew, and a week later we had our first shots in. Then we had the problem of buying a few machines and the start of a render farm.”
In 2018, Ainsworth-taylor and Barson were awarded Barclays Business Achievement Award at the Women in Film and Television Awards, and have been able to maintain private ownership of the awardwinning Soho-based visual effects company that specialises in compositing, computer graphics and digital matte painting for film and television productions. “We initially set up as an environment house, and have grown from there,” states Barson. “We feel this is our strongest area; however, we are now populating these environments with CG crowds or armies, some on CG horses. We have done a lot of work involving CG planes, ships, submarines and trains, in fact most forms of transport. We also have a tendency to create a lot of destruction through fire and explosions, which mostly involves close collaboration with the special effects team. We have always been more 2Dheavy but over the last four years have really grown in 3D, and it’s just an organic way of growing and doing more interesting work.”
Season one of Game Of Thrones resulted in a major breakthrough in regards to international recognition as Bluebolt won the VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program in 2012. “Game Of Thrones was mainly a
challenge as it was our first exposure to high-end American TV,” notes Ainsworthtaylor. “We had to learn the different way TV works, being far more producer-led, and the sheer number of people involved in the decision-making process. The schedule was very tight and we were still finishing work on the last episodes as it had started to air. The baby dragons were a big technical challenge as it was the first time we’d created CG creatures. The whole project was a fantastic learning experience about the world of HETV.” Bluebolt has gone on to contribute to a variety of television and film projects, including Catherine The Great, Peaky Blinders, Johnny English Strikes Again, The Imitation Game, Snow White And The Huntsman, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
“We have grown carefully and organically and do not overextend ourselves on the jobs we take on,” remarks Barson.
“We started off on one floor of the building we are still in and have recently taken over a third floor, meaning our workforce has tripled since we opened. Our size is just under a 100 headcount, so we divide artists into shows relevant to their skills. Our 2D department is now only twice the size of 3D, where it used to be much bigger. We have all the usual departments, including compositors, matte painters, modellers, and lighters, although most of our 3D artists are generalists. There is constant interaction between all departments, which is facilitated by our production team.”
Key software programs are Nuke, Mari, Hiero, Substance, Maya, Houdini, Golaem, Photoshop, Arnold and Shotgun. “We mainly use off-the-shelf software and pipeline around those, but we do publish some of our own tools,” explains Ainsworthtaylor. “The pipeline is constantly evolving to try and make the flow of information and data more efficient. The more complex the work gets then the more people and departments need to share information. As the resolution we are required to work at keeps getting larger [4K is now standard], and with the introduction of HDR, the
“WE NEED TO EDUCATE AND NURTURE THE VFX TALENT OF THE FUTURE” Lucy Ainsworth-taylor, CEO, Bluebolt
sheer amount of data that needs to be rendered, shared and viewed has increased year on year. A lot of time goes into making that as fast and smooth as possible. We have 50 nodes on prem and burst our capacity using cloud rendering on AWS for some projects.” There are no plans to establish multiple facilities in different time zones. “London is the best place in the world for VFX and it’s our home, so that’s what we want to continue to focus on. We find that we can control the quality of the work much better when we keep it in-house, and it is also more efficient when you don’t have to deal with different time zones. Giving feedback is so much easier when you can sit down with artists and discuss in person.”
Over the past decade the visual effects industry has changed a great deal both in the UK and globally. “VFX is now a line item in every production; it was originally only for the Hollywood big-budget blockbusters,” observes Barson. “That along with the rise of HETV, the market was screaming out for some mid-size facilities to appear. Over the last ten years, the landscape has constantly changed but the influx of HETV has now led all the bigger facilities to open TV arms.” The same techniques are used for film and television projects. “We work closely with the filmmakers in preproduction and during shoot to understand the evolving situation and react quickly. Our bidding and scheduling processes are speedy and reactive, plus we aren’t too rigid with separate teams below the supervision level. We use the artists’ skills where they can be best placed on the creative challenge required at any given moment. We have a close-knit production and supervision team who are great at sharing resources and moving fast to support changing needs. Episodic HETV schedules can be very up and down, for example a giant 200-shot battle and water FX in one episode and a couple of minor clean-ups in another. Our working practice allows us to deal with this by swinging resources quickly across multiple shows.”
“The amount of content being made at the moment is mind-blowing,” states Ainsworthtaylor. “All of the big VFX facilities are now opening TV divisions, which is great and I love the way our VFX industry rises to the challenge and continues hitting it out of the park on quality, but to be able to maintain this we need to really think about educating and nurturing the VFX talent of the future. The talent side is a difficulty as we all grow and although the quality of post-graduates now is incredibly high and continually improving, there’s just not enough artists out there. ACCESS:VFX are working on this and reaching out to schools so children are more aware of the different types of VFX jobs, and universities are now working much closer with the industry. The key challenge for all facilities is finding that talent, training them and then retaining them, so a good company ethos is essential.”
Barson adds, “The rising demand has generated a great deal of work in London and allowed us to take on another floor in
“WE USE THE ARTISTS’ SKILLS WHERE THEY CAN BE BEST PLACED ON THE CREATIVE CHALLENGE REQUIRED” Angela Barson, creative director, Bluebolt
our building, so we’re now at four floors. 2020 is already looking busy with some very interesting projects on the horizon for us to get our teeth into, so the impact has allowed us a steady growth.”
PEASANT CROWDS TO PLANE CRASHES
Bluebolt talks about the challenges of working on HBO miniseries Catherine The Great and Sky One action series Cobra…
Oscar-winner Helen Mirren plays the title role in Catherine The Great with Bluebolt having to recreate Russia of the mid to late 1700s. “The main challenge for us was creating the peasant crowds in episode 2,” explains Barson. “The sequence was originally shot to use 2D elements, which didn’t quite work when it came to creating the shots in post, so we had to create a series of animation cycles [based on multiple plates], as well as cloth sims to replicate the various clothing worn by the extras. We did not have the particular crowd actions for peasants stumbling which would match to the shots, so we hand-animated actions to match the live-action characters in the plates, then took those motions into the Golaem crowd software.”
For the contemporary production of Cobra where Robert Carlyle portrays a British prime minister trying to deal with the chaos caused by a nationwide power blackout, Bluebolt had to create a plane crash in the first episode. “The plane crash was originally conceived based on the ability to shoot drone plates,” states Ainsworthtaylor. “When it turned out that this wasn’t going to be possible, we were forced to build the entire environment. Although this was a big change of course and a lot more work, it ended up giving us way more freedom. We also simulated the entire plane crash then positioned virtual cameras to capture the action, rather than animating shot by shot. This allowed us to turn the shots around much quicker, and the clients favoured this approach because it was more based in realworld physics.”