BlueBolt has officially turned 10 years old. Set up in Soho by Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor and Angela Barson, the VFX studio opened its doors for business in 2009 and the co-founding duo are CEO and VFX Supervisor respectively.
BlueBolt has always juggled both film and TV work but TV was very much at the forefront of their minds when they set up. The company worked on Season One of Game of Thrones in 2010 which was the start of High End TV and as a result made a mark on the industry.
Lucy Ainworth -Taylor explains how BlueBolt came to be, “BlueBolt was literally founded as an idea on the back of a cigarette packet in Patisserie Valerie in 2009! We had no business plan, no financial backing and no idea where our first job was job was going to come from. We 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.”
BlueBolt is a privately owned concern and this is something that is not only rare but hugely important, Lucy went on to say, “I do feel proud, we are an independent company and have worked really hard to produce some brilliant VFX work over the years. We do not over extend ourselves on the jobs we take on if we cannot deliver to our clients. Our clients like our honesty when we say it’s not the right gig for us or we just don’t have the capacity and I think this has contributed to our success.”
BlueBolt started with three people in the basement of the building in Soho that they are still in. They are about to take over the fourth floor, so will soon have capacity for 80 artists. Their stellar credit list includes: Little Drummer Girl, Skyfall (Eon / Sony Pictures), Johnny English (Universal Pictures), The Little Drummer Girl (BBC) Mary Queen of Scots (Universal Pictures), Peaky Blinders (BBC) and The Last Kingdom (BBC).
This year the company has solely been working on High End TV, they recently delivered on ‘Catherine The Great’ for HBO starring Helen Mirren and are currently working on an impressive slate including Cobra (Playground/Sky), Belgravia (Carnival Film & TV / ITV) and The Great (MCR), 2020 is already looking busy with some very interesting projects on the horizon.
To mark the special occasion of their tenth birthday, the whole company celebrated in style with a weekend party at Brocket Hall for all their employees, the event was a chance to reflect and celebrate their achievement, Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor was delighted with festivities and said: “10 years of BlueBolt, it’s incredible and I guess it’s quite special really. We have grown from three of us to the team of 95 we have today and I feel proud that many of our crew from the early days are still with us today.
We can certainly say back in 2009 we had no idea we would be here now. We have incredible staff and throwing a rather lavish weekend party was our way of saying thank you. We hope it showed them how much we value and appreciate their contribution.”
See more about Bluebolt VFX on their website.
Author: Allan Torp Jensen
Allan has worked on visual effects for feature films and television for 20 years. He has experience of the full VFX pipeline but has focused on compositing for the past 15 years and has been a Lead Compositor and Compositing Supervisor on various shows. He has worked with the talented people at Cinesite, Bluebolt VFX, Automatik VFX in London, and Weta Digital in New Zealand. For the past five years, he has worked remotely at his own Torper Studio on various high-end TV and feature film projects.