Shadow Magic Studios built its entire production company on a radical premise: deliver studio-caliber post-production for independent films without the traditional brick-and-mortar infrastructure. To make that work, they needed cloud technology that could handle complex workflows across locations without teams babysitting files or juggling storage regions.
By implementing Iconik's media asset management platform with Storj's decentralized cloud storage, Shadow Magic unified its entire pipeline, eliminating the need to manage multiple storage buckets across regions, cut storage costs by 30-40%, and saved tens of hours of unnecessary management time per project. The result is a streamlined operation where post-production workflows "just work"—letting the team focus on what matters: supporting filmmakers and making great films.
Shadow Magic Studios is a vertically-integrated production company providing a full pipeline from development through post-production, post-management, finishing, and delivery. They specialize in giving independent filmmakers access to studio-caliber digital lab services—including dailies creation, VFX pulls, DI conform, color finishing, DCP/IMF creation, and LTO archival—without the overhead of a traditional facility.Their mission is to bring studio-caliber attention to independent filmmaking—supporting exciting stories without ego getting in the way.
Notable projects include Rosemead (2025), The Dutchman (2025), Cellar Door (2024), and Ponyboi (2024).
The company originated as a lean post-production house. Jordan Maltby, CEO of Shadow Magic Studios, explains, "It started and still operates today as a digital lab services company that uses remote rigs, remote operators and cloud technology instead of traditional brick-and-mortar post-production facilities."
The way it works: Shadow Magic ships specialized digital lab rigs (“Magic Boxes”) to production offices. After a shoot day, a production assistant plugs in a shuttle drive, and then Shadow Magic's team takes over remotely to process the footage.
"To facilitate this, we built the entire infrastructure of Shadow Magic as being either on a remote rig or cloud-based," Jordan says. "The traffic cop of that cloud-based environment is Iconik."
For independent filmmakers and boutique studios, technical infrastructure can quickly become overly complex and prohibitively expensive. "A lot of the technical stuff, especially in the indie space, is very often the Achilles heel of productions," Jordan notes.
As he and his team set out to make that process leaner, more accessible, and more flexible for indie-budget films, they needed to solve for several workflow challenges along the way:
The underlying issue: independent filmmakers shouldn’t have to be IT experts. "Indie filmmakers don't have fully staffed IT teams," Jordan explains. “They say, ‘I don't want to have to deal with this nonsense. I just want it to work.’”
Shadow Magic implemented Iconik's media asset management platform with Storj's decentralized cloud storage, creating a streamlined, cloud-native system that eliminated their infrastructure headaches.
"It took about 33 seconds to implement Iconik and Storj," Jordan says. "The deployment couldn't be simpler."
Iconik serves as Shadow Magic's primary review and approval tool, but with a critical difference from traditional platforms: it sits directly on top of their storage rather than requiring separate uploads.
"What Iconik allowed us to do was use the cloud storage we were already using, which in this case is Storj, and extend the functionality of it," Jordan explains. "Basically just add an app layer on top that allows us to send out review links."
This architecture eliminates the double-upload problem, which occurs with popular review-only platforms. Instead of managing multiple environments, "With Iconik, everything is in one place in the storage bucket. I don't have to think about it,” Jordan says.
The platform also solved the per-user cost issue. "One of the things that's particularly cool about Iconik is that collaborators are free, so I can send out daily review links to 200 people and basically offer this as a free service," Jordan notes. "It sits on top of the same location that also has my archives, and all of the media assets and other storage associated with the project."
Shadow Magic has built custom automations that turn Iconik into a command center for complex post workflows. They created an app that translates EDLs (Edit Decision Lists) into Iconik search strings.
"We can take an EDL from the editor that says, 'Here are all the visual effects shots,'" Jordan explains. "I can pull that string into Iconik, and then, from my phone, I can send all of these clips to a certain machine. When I get back into the office, all those files are ready for VFX pulls and processing."
This level of automation has replaces hours of manual, repetitive work that traditionally slows down indie productions.
Storj's decentralized architecture reduced upload times and removed the need for region-specific storage management. "The second I switched to Storj, I stopped having to think about that altogether," Jordan says. "No matter where the shoot was, we always got amazing performance."
No more creating separate buckets for East Coast and West Coast shoots. No more moving files between regions. No more upload speed drops when productions relocate.
Film productions often involve sensitive material that requires careful distribution. Iconik's permission system lets Shadow Magic control exactly who sees what.
"Films can be tricky sometimes," Jordan notes. "We always make web dailies and edit dailies. The edit dailies obviously go to the editor to edit. The web dailies have a completely different window burn. They probably have a watermark on them."
Iconik provides forensic watermarking, which has generated positive feedback from Shadow Magic's clients. More importantly, the platform makes it simple to restrict access to sensitive clips—particularly important when dealing with nudity or other content that requires careful handling.
"I really like how Iconik lets you stack the share links, so you can have three subfolders and then send a share link to the master folder that goes to some people, and then they can distribute the subfolders to different groups," Jordan says.
Beyond post-production workflows, Iconik serves as the central hub for all production departments. Different teams generate various reports and materials throughout production, and Shadow Magic uses Iconik's upload portals to funnel everything to one location.
"I can just create these upload portals in Iconik for each department, and then they can upload their materials into it and it hits my archive," Jordan says. "So we can actually facilitate that single source of truth for the entire production."
This consolidation removes chaos, produces consistency, and gives everyone—from camera to VFX to post—a trusted home for their media.
"In terms of metrics, I would say that price of storage was down about 30, 40%," Jordan reports.
Beyond direct cost savings, the real win came from eliminating unnecessary work. "More importantly, the amount of management that it took to make sure that there was always something in the right region and moving files around probably translated into tens of hours of unnecessary management time per project," Jordan says. "That all went away."
With Iconik and Storj in place, Shadow Magic no longer spends time re-managing buckets, duplicating uploads, or chasing slow transfers, freeing their time to focus on creative tasks.
Perhaps the most valuable result isn't quantifiable in hours or dollars. "Not having to think about things—that's one of the biggest advantages," Jordan reflects.
When infrastructure requires constant attention, it drains focus from the creative work. When it simply functions, the team can concentrate on making great films.
“It could almost be said Iconik together with Storj made Shadow Magic function in the first place.”
- Jordan Maltby, CEO, Shadow Magic Studios
For Jordan and the Shadow Magic team, the technical infrastructure isn't an end in itself. It's a tool that enables their core mission.
"We want to remember that this is all in service of making art, making movies, and things that we really care about and are passionate about," Jordan emphasizes. "These technologies are very exciting because they allow us to do this in a new and interesting way."
Shadow Magic's model—bringing studio-quality post-production to independent films—only works if the technology disappears into the background. With Iconik and Storj, it does.
"It could almost be said Iconik together with Storj made Shadow Magic function in the first place," Jordan concludes.
Iconik is a cloud-native media asset management platform that helps creative teams organize, search, and collaborate on video and media content. Built for modern workflows, Iconik integrates seamlessly with leading cloud storage providers and editing tools to create unified media operations.
Learn more at iconik.io
Storj is a decentralized cloud storage platform that provides secure, performant, and economical storage solutions. By distributing data across a global network, Storj delivers consistent performance regardless of geographic location while reducing storage costs.
Learn more at storj.io.
