In The Post: Russell Icke

Russell Icke is the editor behind advertising classics such as Levi's Drugstore, Sony Bravia Balls and Nike Tag. Here, the man from the Whitehouse talks to Isobel Roberts about his work with Michel Gondry, winning an Oscar - and teaming up with Madonna.

Looking at editor Russell Icke's reel is an envy-inducing process. These are spots most industry folk would sell their first born to have their names on - Nike Tag follows on from Sony Bravia Balls, which is snuggled in next to Levi's Drugstore, which leads on from Traveler's Snowball. Not bad for a boy from the Home Counties.

"My father was an art director at Leo Burnett for 30 years," relays Icke, "so in terms of me getting into this business, we used to go to shoots with him and I was always fascinated by what he did. I had a fascination for it I but didn't plan it - I guess I fell into it."

Icke's rise to the top began in a traditional way, with a job as a runner. Four months in and he transferred over to the cutting room, and then heard about a job going at Garrett & Partners. "They were looking for a first assistant editor, which I certainly wasn't, so I lied and said I was more qualified than I was and I somehow got away with it," grins Icke.

After learning the cutting room ropes, Icke signed on at The Whitehouse just after the edit house opened its doors in London. Now celebrating its 20th birthday, Icke has grown as the company has too, expanding into the States in XXXX (check).
Russell Icke
"When I first started I did a lot of work with Partizan," he recalls, "and through that I met a young French guy who came along, Michel Gondry, and we started working together. He was pretty much unknown at the time but he had a couple of music videos he was really proud of. I forged a relationship with him and we then came up together."

As well as cutting promos for the likes of Björk and Foo Fighters, Icke and Gondry collaborated on a series of commercials too, including action spot Smirnoff Smarienberg and, of course, the seminal Levi's Drugstore. "That was amazing, as I had no idea how good it would be. I remember I was sat in the telecine and I saw those rushes and thought, 'fuck, it looks amazing'. The film was stunning. How something comes together like that, with the music and the pictures, is fascinating."

With the strength of even his early reel acting as a high-class calling card, Icke has teamed up with the cream of the crop of the commercials directing world - names including Tarsem, Frank Budgen, Noam Murro, Dante Ariola, and Nicolai Fuglsig, with whom he cut Sony Bravia's infamous Balls spot.

"That was another wow, too," he reminisces. "Only when we saw the rushes did we realise how beautiful it was. It sounds really shitty but when I sat down with Nicolai and we started watching them it felt really artistic and when we heard the José González track to it, it felt beautiful and pure."

As well as racking up hits in the advertising world, Icke has plied his trade in features too, debuting with Gondry's first film, Human Nature. "But the film bombed," he remembers. "I watch it now and it's alright but there were mistakes and there are things that we learnt, but it was also released on September 11th." More recently he was part of a more curious collaboration, working with Madonna on her film Filth and Wisdom. "I met her on an H&M spot she was directing, and strangely we really got on!" he says.

But it's his involvement in last year's short film The New Tenants that he seems most proud of. Directed by Park Pictures' Joachim Back, the film went on to bag the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in February.

"We'd worked together on an RBS spot and he showed me the script off the back of that," Icke explains. "I just agreed to do it straight away as it was such a brilliant script. And when it got nominated, Joachim called me to say he had a ticket to the awards for me but I was on a job in New York. In the end I decided to go at the last minute and flew out at 9am the day of the Oscars, and I was still drunk at the airport the next day. The whole thing was brilliant, and I even got featured in Hello! magazine - standing behind Rachel McAdams."

With a taste for the red carpet, Icke's now keen to get his teeth into some more long-format content, but still wants to keep his feet grounded in the commercials world. Because whether it's a two-hour feature or a 30-second spot, for Icke the idea is king. "That's what rules me to an extent," he concludes. "Even if something's badly shot or lit, if the idea is good then it'll still come together, and what turns me on now is finding the tone and emotion of a piece."

Better make some more room on that reel.