Andy Boyd, Jake Montgomery and Asher Edwards Form 'Artist-Driven' Studio

VFX Supervisors Andy Boyd and Jake Montgomery and Executive Producer Asher Edwards have started up Jamm, a new VFX boutique in Los Angeles. Described by the founders, all formerly at MPC L.A., as an "artist-driven, independent creative studio focused on quality not volume," Jamm is already working on a Jake Scott-directed Super Bowl spot as its first project. We asked Andy Boyd, whose resume includes 2013 Super Bowl spot "Space Babies" for Kia (not to mention the creation of Kia's Hamsters mascots with agency David & Goliath), for a little more information on what Jamm is up to.

StudioDaily: How many artists will Jamm employ (as a baseline)?

Andy Boyd: There will be six of us to start, but we have built the infrastructure to allow us to scale very easily. We foresee growing to about 15 artists over the next few months.

What hardware and software are at the core of your VFX pipeline?

We took our years of experience seeing what works and doesn’t at the different studios we have worked at and developed a custom pipeline based on that. We are using Ftrack for our database/shot management, and for our actual creative tools we are using [Side Effects Software] Houdini and [Autodesk] Maya for 3D and [Autodesk] Flame and [The Foundry] Nuke for 2D.

Larger VFX companies have been leaving Hollywood to chase incentives in other states and overseas. Why is now a good time to open a new VFX house in L.A.?

Most of the companies that are leaving L.A. to follow the incentives do film work. In the commercial world, we find that clients like the work done locally as the creative pace is so fast. What is unique about us is that the clients know exactly who the talent is that will be working on their work, with a close collaboration to achieve their goals. With a lot of the larger studios, it’s hard to know who will be doing the work. By being lean and having only highly talented artists working on the fastest equipment, we can be competitive and offer clients the quality and attention to detail normally associated with larger studios—and that is only if you are lucky enough to get their ‘A-Team’.

More eyeballs for ads are going online. How does that change the equation for VFX?

We are working closely with clients on the different deliverables as media formats evolve. One noticeable change with the move to the Internet is the length of the content is increasing. Where for TV it would be a 60-sec, the online version is often a 90-sec. We have designed our workflow to allow us to easily change to meet the needs of the changing landscape of media.