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

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.”