Jay Harwood: “In Five Years’ Time, This Industry Will Be Totally Unrecognisable”

For Jay Harwood, curiosity is second nature. That much was obvious from an early-age, where the self-described ‘tinkerer’ set about dismantling a motorbike engine on his bedroom floor in search of knowledge and spare parts. “There was oil all over the carpet”, Edisen’s ECD recounts without an ounce of regret. “Mum wasn’t pleased… but I learned a tonne about how that machinery worked”.

Today, Jay’s work is slightly less messy - but no less driven by curiosity. It’s always easy to connect the dots looking backwards, but his journey from teenage tinkering to tech-driven creativity seems perfectly logical and obvious today. “One really pivotal moment I can remember was getting a free music-making software CD inside a pack of Cinnamon Grahams as a kid”, he says. “I absolutely loved it - just playing around with creation tools making what I’m sure were absolutely terrible pieces of music, but falling in love with the process”. 

From there, it didn’t take Jay long to pursue what could (generously) be described as the more practical benefits of his creative talents. “Discovering Photoshop was huge - I figured out how to make fake IDs and bus tickets with no trouble at all”, he recalls. “That helped me save money to spend at Fopp [a UK-based music and video retailer], where I picked up the whole collection of a series they sold called ‘The Work of Director’”. 

It was in these moments that things really began to click for Jay. Some of the directors featured in that series include Jonathan Glazier Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, and Spike Jonze. Already, Jay was getting a feel for the kind of creativity which his burning interest in technology could help bring to life. 

Above: Chris Cunningham – Portishead music video, this video was a big inspiration to him 

That essential alchemy - innovation fuelled by the collision between creativity and technology - has, in various ways, stayed with Jay throughout his career. In one of his earliest jobs, the creative saw first-hand how exciting that formula could be. 

“I worked for a company called TEG and invertedly MK12 and one of my first roles with them was helping to create the opening sequence for Quantum of Solace - Daniel Craig’s second Bond film”, he says. “I was able to get on the shoot and help get some VFX elements for compositing. When I went on-set for that scale of production, I knew it was what I wanted to do. They had the largest motion control camera rig in the world, Phantom High-Speed cameras and a plan to shoot some beautiful moments that were to be stitched together in post. That was the single most important moment in my career. It changed where I was going to go and kept me focused for over a decade to learn the skills needed to make moving pictures”. 

How that ambition has played out over the rest of Jay’s career up to today is fascinating to look back on. Whilst he’s been involved in plenty of eye-catching creative projects for the likes of Uniqlo, Spotify, and HP, that thread of technology has always been present. It’s most obvious in work such as an AI-driven experiential campaign for fashion brand Rag and Bone, featuring music from Thom Yorke. 

Above: Jay’s work with Rag and Bone was hooked around a dinner party event hosted by an AI. 

“Everyone wants to be the first to play with a cool new toy”, reflects Jay. “That’s no different with AI. But it’s hard to overstate just how huge this technology is going to be. I think that 2023 is going to be a massive year for art and technology - I sincerely believe that all the messy technology we have collectively been grappling with over the last five years will start making sense. Each innovation has driven us to the next step, and I think we’re not far away from experiencing it in a seamless manner”. 

When pressed to expand on that, Jay takes a step back. “I recently saw a great quote which went something along the lines of, ‘we’re not going to be replaced by AI - we’re going to be replaced by people who understand AI’”, he says. “True art has nothing to worry about. The kind of tasks which might find themselves replaced are things like rotoscoping, clean up, and we’ll see tools that expedite the creative process. Helping to visualise and iterate along the journey of production. 

“It will empower a new generation of filmmakers to focus on storytelling and pure creative rather than problem-solving and repetitive tasks that put walls up to amazing minds without big budgets”.

Building on that thought, the ECD points to the amount of busywork that AI could take away from creative people. “So often, creatives will be asked to spend time visualising ideas that never get used. But AI tools - and you can see rudimentary versions of this with the likes of MidJourney - make that rough ideation process so much simpler or create new inspiring thoughts that are unexpected.”, he says. “Making a big creative statement has always been seen as a risk for brands, because you can invest lots of money in ideas that end up being dropped or not fulfilling their potential. But with AI that risk is lessened - you don’t need to commit as many resources to experimentation. I think it’s going to help brands and people to be more creative, not less. This industry is going to be totally unrecognisable in five years’ time, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing”.

On which note, that leads us neatly toward Jay's role today - ECD at Edisen. Breaking down what first drew him to the position, his response is emphatic. “I want to get into more cinematic visuals with design and VFX, and Edisen’s incredibly talented team have these capabilities”, he says. “Our brand is about an ‘us’ mentality rather than a single rostered talent that does one thing. It’s Edisen making you a kick-ass commercial or sequence in a film. We’re big enough to get sh*t done, but small enough to be a creative force”. 

There’s a feeling that, with Edisen, Jay has ended up in the right place at the right time. His positive take on the impact of AI is one the industry needs to hear right now, as anxieties increase regarding other parts of AI could lead us to.

Ultimately, it’s not quite clear where this latest technological revolution is going to take the world of creativity - and our industry along with it. But a conversation with Jay is at least one way to feel a lot more optimistic about it.