Shadow Magic Studios elevates indie post-production into the cloud era with Iconik and Storj

Independent filmmakers often struggle with limited budgets,  lack of organizational structure, scattered tools, and workflows designed for big studios. Traditional post services are expensive, location-bound, and slow.

Shadow Magic Studios wanted to change that. Born out of post-production, the company set out to deliver the same high-end digital lab services and collaboration used by Hollywood studios — but built for independent filmmakers. During the pandemic, Shadow Magic pioneered remote rigs and cloud-based workflows, removing the need for costly facilities and enabling teams to work from anywhere.

As productions grew, however, upload speeds dropped when shoots moved between regions, and data had to be manually managed across multiple cloud buckets. The process became fragmented and time-consuming.

To unify its pipeline, Shadow Magic Studios integrated Iconik for orchestration and Storj for globally distributed object storage. Iconik provides a single window into each project, while Storj delivers fast, location-independent access to every file. From production through post and delivery, DITs, editors, producers, sound, color, and VFX artists collaborate in real time—without redundant uploads or regional storage hassles.

Jordan Maltby, founder of Shadow Magic Studios, said “the transition was transformative. Storj took away the friction — no more juggling uploads or waiting on transfers — allowing teams to stop thinking like IT managers and start thinking like filmmakers again. With the technical barriers gone, their energy could go back into what mattered most: storytelling.”

The results were immediate. Uploads and downloads performed consistently across regions and internationally. Storage costs dropped by roughly 30–40 percent, and hours of manual management disappeared. The integration also consolidated review and archive environments, enabling seamless collaboration, approval, and delivery from a single platform.

Shadow Magic Studios now runs a fully cloud-native post-production pipeline that rivals large facilities. The team can trigger complex tasks such as VFX pulls, DCP/IMF creation, and data orchestration, while sharing review links with hundreds of collaborators. Iconik’s automation, synchronized review tools, AI-driven metadata, upload portals, permissions, and dynamic watermarking keep projects secure while maintaining a single source of truth for every production.

What was once a technical burden has become invisible. Storj and Iconik allow Shadow Magic Studios to focus on what matters most: empowering filmmakers to tell new stories and bring fresh perspectives to the screen.