Hollywood, Calif. – Chainsaw, a leading independent provider of post production services for television, feature films, and other media, has hired Boyd Stepan to head its newly-launched visual effects department.
Formerly a Lead Visual Effects Supervisor at Prime Focus/Post Logic Studios, Stepan brings broad experience as a visual effects artist and supervisor with credits ranging from Avatar and Inglourious Basterds to Desperate Housewives and the new AMC series The Walking Dead. At Chainsaw, he will perform hands-on work as a visual effects artist and will also be responsible for growing and supervising the department. Chainsaw’s aim is to build a full service visual effects department to complement its creative editorial, editorial finishing and color correction services.
“We want to offer our clients the ability to take care of all of their post production needs within one workflow, both for the sake of efficiency and to ensure greater creative control,” said Chainsaw co-founder and Emmy-winning editor Bill DeRonde. “Boyd’s arrival brings us a step closer to that goal. He is a very talented and experienced artist who can help us build a visual effects department capable of delivering the quality our clients expect from Chainsaw.”
To support Stepan, Chainsaw has built a visual effects production suite equipped with an Autodesk Flame workstation. The system includes Autodesk’s latest generation software and full stereoscopic 3D capabilities. The company expects to add further staff and technical resources. The new department will offer a full slate of visual effects services including visual effects generation, titles and graphics, 3D integration, beauty work and digital clean-up.
Stepan began his career with Post Logic Studios in 2000 and was named a Lead Visual Effects Supervisor following its purchase by Prime Focus in 2007. As such, he coordinated visual effects work between Prime Focus facilities in Hollywood and India, supervising more than 80 artists involved in film and television projects. Recently, he has been working as a freelance visual effects artist at several Los Angeles area facilities. Most recently, he worked on the films Gulliver’s Travels (20th Century Fox), Skyline (Relativity Media) and Battle Los Angeles (Columbia Pictures) via Hydraulics.
Stepan said that he was excited by the opportunity to build a visual effects department at Chainsaw. “It is a wonderful opportunity to join a company that is growing, that understands today’s technology and the evolving needs of clients, and has a commitment to high quality work,” he said.