Step inside Jas Davis’s wild digital universe

Jas Davis’s career has been a series of wild rides. From his early days filming friends as they skated and skied their way across New England, to his years on tour with some of America’s hottest musicians, documenting their most intimate moments on video, Jas has been on the move since picking up his first DSLR camera, both literally and creatively.

He has also built amazing connections along the way, becoming the go-to collaborator for remarkable artists like Skrillex and Will Smith. Jas joined Smith's team at Westbrook Inc. in 2018 when Smith had just launched his Instagram account and wanted to work with digital creators who could help make unique social content. Jas hit it off quickly with the team and they have been pushing creative boundaries together ever since, recently wrapping up a world tour to promote Smith’s latest film, the aptly named “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.”

“I’m lucky to work with true content masters. Everyone knows them for their films and music, but the artists I work with also have an incredibly creative approach to digital storytelling,” says Jas. “I recently started playing around with AI-generated content, which is really cool territory and provides plenty of opportunities to experiment along the way.”

In a career defined by constant evolution, the three constants for Jas have been his camera, his laptop, and the Adobe Creative Cloud tools he uses to shoot and edit his content, from Adobe Lightroom, to Premiere Pro and After Effects, to Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of generative AI capabilities.

Changing the game with generative AI

In addition to helping Jas shoot, edit, and publish content more quickly, Firefly has unlocked new possibilities for Jas at the ideation level, allowing him to experiment with unique editing techniques and visual styles. For instance, the Structure Reference and Style Reference matching capabilities in the Firefly web app allow him to turn an illustration and image into striking elements that pop with feeling.

In the below example, Jas uses Structure Reference and Style Reference to give “boring” lettering more interesting textures, ranging from fluffy to rubbery using simple text prompts.

Meanwhile, Firefly capabilities have made Jas more focused and efficient in his editing. Tasks that were previously time and labor-intensive, like resizing videos for different viewing platforms and screen sizes, can now be done much more quickly.

“Say you have a video that was shot in 16:9 horizontal aspect ratio, but you want to make it vertical. That change can now be made in minutes by using Firefly features in Photoshop to extend each frame up, and then loading them back into Premiere Pro,” Jas explains. “That’s a gamechanger for digital filmmakers like me who create content that needs to connect with people through their phones.”

The time Jas saves with Firefly also gives him the bandwidth to get more detail-orientated about his work. For example, while he previously let the occasional background element slip through into his videos to publish quickly and stay on schedule, Jas now uses Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop to remove these unwanted objects with ease, resulting in cleaner videos stripped of unnecessary distractions.

Empowering filmmakers to blow people’s minds

With more than 200,000 loyal followers on Instagram, Jas has become more than a content creator to his audience. He is also a source of inspiration and knowledge for fellow filmmakers who want to elevate their own creativity with new techniques and technologies.

Jas ’s tutorials cover everything from advanced 3D face-tracking techniques to the creation of unique visuals using Structure Reference and Style Reference. By sharing these instructional pieces, he gets to experiment with new generative AI capabilities in his own workflows while bringing his followers along for the ride.

Make discovery your comfort zone

When asked about his view on the future of generative AI and its role in creative industries, a single word comes to mind for Jas: limitless. Limitless opportunities to experiment and push boundaries. Limitless ways to edit and play with content. And limitless ways to streamline and simplify creative workflows.

“Generative AI software, like the solutions powered by Adobe Firefly, help people bring their creative ideas to life faster than ever. Grunt work that once took days or weeks can be wrapped up in minutes, leaving artists with more time to focus on their craft and deliver experiences that hit their audience at an emotional level,” says Jas.

His advice for anyone curious about generative AI is to dive in and start playing with the technology while being careful to maintain a creative mindset. While some people will be tempted to use AI to handle every time-consuming task on their list, Jas says it’s important to differentiate between cutting admin hours and wasting creative hours. The true power of generative AI, he argues, is that it allows artists to do less of the former so they can spend more time creating and experimenting with new techniques.

“If you want your work to evolve, you need to get comfortable diving into the unknown,” he says. “Follow as many artists, creators, and digital makers as you can, pick apart how they’re using AI, and then see how you can apply that in your own art to create something new and exciting.”

To learn more about Jas Davis and his use of Adobe Firefly, check out his Instagram.

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