Jason Troughton SFX Supervisor

Jason Troughton – Special Effects Supervisor

Jason Troughton is a UK-based Special Effects Supervisor whose SFX work began in 1988 alongside product and industrial design. He moved fully into film in 1991 and founded Agog SFX in 1998. His first supervisory feature was Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000). He has worked across five continents and more than 45 countries.

Film, Television & Commercials

Credits span war, period, contemporary and horror productions: The Eight Hundred, Coriolanus, The Way Back, Krakatoa: The Last Days, The Imitation Game, A Bigger Splash, Inside Man, Bodies, This Town, Seed of Chucky, The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors and Wednesday.

Commercials and music videos include Jonathan Glazer’s award-winning Sony BRAVIA Paint, featuring large-scale coloured-liquid and pyrotechnic effects; Sam Brown’s Sainsbury’s Christmas commercial featuring Roald Dahl’s The BFG; and Calvin Harris and Rag’n’Bone Man’s Giant, directed by Emil Nava.

Awards & Recognition

Jason was a named recipient of the 2020 AACTA Award for Best Visual and Physical Effects for The Eight Hundred and received a Primetime Emmy Nomination for the effects on Tim Burton’s Wednesday. Krakatoa: The Last Days, on which received a BAFTA Television Craft nomination for the Special and Visual Effects. Sony BRAVIA Paint won major advertising awards, and many other commercials involving Jason and Agog SFX have received award nominations.

From Battlefield Spectacle to Subtle Atmosphere

Jason’s work runs from battlefield pyrotechnics, explosions, fire and mechanical sequences to delicate physical details that make a scene convincing. Period drama may need discreet rigs and controlled weather or smoke in sensitive interiors; contemporary productions need believable everyday effects; horror calls for inventive mechanisms and precisely timed action.

From gentle rainfall to driving storms, a light breeze to the blast of a nuclear explosion, and delicate snowfall to violent hailstorms, Jason creates weather and atmospheric effects at every scale. Mist, fog and smoke can be almost imperceptible or central to a sequence. The aim is what Jason calls a “heightened reality”: physical atmosphere and detail that belong naturally within the shot. He discussed this approach in the 2011 MovieScope feature, The Art of the Invisible.

International Supervision & Design Engineering

Jason works internationally, providing complete SFX crew and equipment packages or smaller supervisory teams working alongside local crews and resources. For The Eight Hundred, he spent several months in China collaborating with local SFX teams on major war sequences.

His product and industrial design background brings a practical engineering approach to SFX, supported by Agog Engineering’s specialist design, manufacturing and fabrication capabilities. From bespoke rigs to complex mechanical effects, solutions are developed around the needs of each production.

Leading from the Front

Jason’s approach is as practical as it is collaborative, from early discussions with a director to working alongside the crew to deliver safe, repeatable effects in camera. Awards are appreciated, but he’d generally rather be on-set getting his hands dirty.