Working Remotely Is Nothing New For Marshall Street Editor Joe Wilby

Joe Whilby at Marshall Street Editors is accustomed to working from home, global pandemic or not. Here, he delves into his his life of living and working in Finland. 

Finland is an unusual place, it’s a technologically advanced western society in the remote north east edge of the continent with weather that will kill you. The first job I did here was a Fisherman’s Friend ad with the director Will Clark (now at Merman). He said to his producer that he was happy for me to cut remotely and the producer was all cool with that until he was putting the drive in a box and asking for my address.  I think it freaked him out a bit that it was going off nearly 2000km away. Properly remote editing.   

Anyway it all went fine as you can see. 

Fisherman's Friend 'Talk About Strong' Will Clark / MindsEye 

Road Safety Scotland 'Live Fast Die Old' Will Clark / The Gate Films

Will and I had cut other stuff together remotely in the past, so there was already a trust there. We did a fun job for Road Safety Scotland but that was far less remote as I was down in West Sussex at the time. For both of those jobs we just emailed links to cuts and chatted through feedback over the phone or email.

Since then, technology allows for better communication. John Mayes the wizard at the heart of MSE introduced me to a special blend of hardware and software that allows us to truly work collaboratively with directors and agencies in real time. It’s now almost like being in the room together even though they’re in London and I’m in a wooden house near Russia.

As long as you’re not on dial-up you’ll get a smooth clean playback of the edit output all in sync directly to your internet connected device wherever you are. It’s mind-blowing. No, I’m not talking about screen-sharing, it’s a proper output, but we can screen-share too, if seeing the timeline is a liked thing. I recently did some agency changes this way for a project for some Dunelm idents.  

The creatives at the agency were impressed. George of George & Bernard - MullenLowe London​: "Feedback can become lost in translation through email chains so I think this is the perfect way to remotely work. It was invaluable being able to see changes as they happen and allowed for quick bits of live experimentation.”  

Dunelm ' Autumn Idents' - Joe Roberts / 2AM Films

I’ve just put in an order for a gigabit fibre optic link, it’ll be installed once the ground has stopped being frozen solid. So in the near future rushes transfer will be like I’m in the next room, I’m very excited. 

__________________

Contact Joe to talk about your next remote project via sj@mse.tv