Ben Harrex

The vagaries of the web make having a piece of film go viral akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. That means few people can boast of having one web wildfire moment. Final Cut editor Ben Harrex has two. The 32-year-old, Brighton-based editor cut together Evian’s monster viral hit “Rollerbabies”, which secured its place in the Guinness Book of World Records with 45,166,109 hits as of last November, and T-Mobile “Dance”, which has garnered more than 18 million views.

Although the undeniable cuteness of Michael Gracey’s adorable toddlers and the charm of a train station flashmob can lay claim to most of the two spots’ successes, the production value certainly played its part. “I don’t think you can or should approach any job with anything except the attitude of trying to do the best job you can wherever it’s going to be shown,” says Harrex. “You can’t make something successful just by putting it on the Internet. You need people to involve themselves with it and like it, and if you have done a good job then people will. Then in today’s technological environment you will have a viral success.”

Brought up in Brighton, Harrex studied film and video production at Surrey University. Just weeks after graduating, he joined Final Cut as a runner in 2001, working under heavyweight editors David Webb and Rick Russell. Assisting and then cutting spots for Nokia, Ford, Renault and AOL, he got his producing wings in early 2008.

Getting his editing chops on the most basic equipment has shaped his editing mantra: “Keep it simple. The most effective thing an editor can do is cut from one shot to another. If you do this well then a job will work. My first experience of editing was using twin VCR machines and after that using Steenbecks at university. This meant that all I could do was cut, not use effects or even easily try a thousand options of an edit as you can do with Avid, so I guess my brain is always looking for a clean simple cut and not a lot else.”

That simplicity-first ethos was put to the test with “Dance” for T-Mobile, which was the perfect test for Harrex’s speed, creativity and accuracy – and all under sleep deprivation conditions. “There were only 24 hours from wrapping to when the first TV spot had to be played out,” recalls Harrex. “With about five-and-a-half hours of footage to select, cut and edit in order to allow time for online telecine etc, it was difficult. The second T-Mobile job shot in Trafalgar square was crazier with 36 hours of footage shot 36 hours before the first spot was aired! ‘Dance’ had myself and [fellow editor] Diesel Schwarze up for about 28 hours without sleep and for ‘Singalong’ we somehow worked for 66 hours without sleeping – I don’t remember the Friday between the Thursday shoot and the Saturday when we had the client in Final Cut at 6am.”

The web has not only changed the speed at which work has to be posted, but technology has evolved what is expected from editors. “In terms of an edit I don’t feel I’ve seen many changes since I started at Final Cut. The process of putting some shots next to each other on Avid is still the same. Technology is changing some aspects of the offline. There is a greater expectation of what can be shown at the offline stage in effects-heavy jobs. This also allows the editor to work in ways and places that weren’t practical before. For example, with Evian I was in the studio in Prague tracking babies’ heads on to a 3D animatic produced by MPC, sometimes with 10 or 12 heads in a shot, all on a laptop using Avid.” Q

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