shots Awards 2011: Editor of the Year

Having a bit of OCD is a good thing, isn’t it? Well, if it bags you shots Editor of the Year award, then yes. Paul Hardcastle emerged a cut above the rest in the category with work for Intel (also shortlisted for TV Commercial of the Year), IKEA, Talk Talk, Cravendale and Coca-Cola, but modestly jokes that to be a good editor all you need is a bit of obsessive decision making and luck.

“The one thing you can never equate in your career is luck,” says the editor and founder at Trim Editing. “I was lucky to have early meetings with Joji (Woof Wan-Bau) and Ben Dawkins, then Adam Berg and people like Gaelle Denis. It’s possibly the most important thing to find good creative people who trust and push you hard.”

It also probably helps if you’re born in Soho with a background in film (his father was a film historian). Having “jobbed around” for a few years after leaving school, Hardcastle started working at the London Film Festival, and then got a job at Swordfish as a runner and creative assistant during the Britpop era. It was in 2004 that he opened Trim, his Bethnal Green-based company. “All I knew is that I didn’t want to wear a suit and didn’t want a boss,” says the editor, and here he is seven years later with a shots Award.

Give a bit of your soul

Scanning the shortlist, Hardcastle considers what makes something a ‘good’ piece of work in terms of editing, but admits that he has never really been able to put his finger on editing awards: “One of the best jobs I ever saw was a two-shot video, so it’s not necessarily about trying to get as many shots in as you can. It’s very easy to edit but you’ve got to make sure you take on the right jobs and try to get an emotional hit out of it, be that a laugh or tear.”

A job from the list he remembers well is IKEA Happy Inside, created through Mother London, which involved a cast of unruly cats in an empty store at night. “It was possibly the craziest and scariest shoot I’ve been on,” he admits, “and was three nights of complete mayhem. There was Adam (Berg) trying to set up emotional and photographic scenarios, but the cats were just kind of doing what the hell they wanted.”

He recalls the edit being as hectic as the set, with 14 hours of rushes and only seven days to cut it down. “After trying to make a big story out of it, it just wasn’t really working, so we stripped the idea down to its simplest form and worked hard on the tone, trying to bring through the cats’ different personalities without making it too cuddly.” Summing up the IKEA job as a whole, he says “it’s one of those jobs that you really give a bit of your soul to”.

When he isn’t editing conniving cats, Hardcastle is a keen collector of shoes and furniture. We don’t doubt that his collection of shots accolades is just getting started.

Editor of the Year Shortlist

Paul Hardcastle @ Trim Editing London

Bill Smedley @ Work London

Rick Russell @ Final Cut Los Angeles

Paul Watts @ The Quarry London

Gregers Dohn @ Nostromo Stockholm

Editor of the Year Judging Panel

Laura Gregory, MD, Great Guns London

Russ Lidstone, CEO, Euro RSCG London

Carlo Trulli, MD, Spy Films Toronto

Mischa Rozema, owner and director, PostPanic Amsterdam

Flavio Pantigoso, ECD, Y&R Peru

Frederic Levron, head of digital and branded content, Ogilvy Paris