Post Profile: Sam Ostrove Learning From Legends

He didn’t do well at school, spending most of his teenage years in a band. He didn’t know anything about film theory before becoming an editor, and his first encounter with a major collaborator involved a punch-up. So how has Cut+Run’s Sam Ostrove turned into one of the most creatively satisfied and conscientious editors in the business? As Ryan Watson finds out, it’s pretty simple…

Being born to a successful journalist mother and English teacher father in genteel Barnet, North London, where he attended the prestigious Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School for Boys, you’d expect Sam Ostrove to be well educated. But instead of applying himself in the classroom, he spent his teen years in a band with four friends, recording in a studio and touring the UK. “I spent most of my time there not really doing any school work,” confirms Ostrove. “We were living a bit of a Spinal Tap life for about five or six years. My mum wasn’t very happy about it. I thought I was going to be a rock star and was certain I was going to be in a band and that was going to be it.”

After signing to Nottingham-based indie Field Records and enjoying mild success, Ostrove’s dream ended when the group, Score One For Safety, separated in favour of university life. After completing a foundation year at the Arts University Bournemouth, Ostrove returned to London to take a year out, during which he was offered work experience at Cut+Run by family friend and legendary editor Piers Douglas. “Within two days I thought it was something that I’d really love to do. It was everything I enjoyed about creativity. Just putting things together, coming up with ideas and making people feel something,” explains Ostrove, thinking back to his time running for some of the top editors in the business during the late 2000s.

Before the exodus

Ostrove was lucky enough to be inspired by the likes of Steve Gandolfi, Gary Knight, Dayn Williams and Joel Miller, who would all form part of an impending exodus to the United States. “My timing was amazing. I feel so blessed for it because I had the last of the great editors who were all heading off to America,” Ostrove says.

They didn’t all leave, however. Perhaps Ostrove’s most notable inspiration, someone who helped to fill his academic void, is fellow Cut+Run talent James Rose.

“He’s all about the craft and comes from a real theory-of-film background. Having not gone to university, although I would always read about and watch films, I didn’t have any film theory aside from Goodfellas, The Sopranos and maybe the three Godfather films.

“He gave me Walter Murch’s book In the Blink of An Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing and The Film Sense [Sergei Eisenstein]. I remember thinking that surely this was completely unnecessary, but he just said ‘Read it and you won’t regret it’ and that was the start of it all for me,” Ostrove remembers.

Having cut his teeth on music videos, a medium he’d recommend to all aspiring editors, Ostrove has since been making a name for himself in commercials, with work for Nike+ FuelBand, Levi’s, San Miguel and most recently for Tiger beer, shot by Stink’s Rohan Blair-Mangat. The editor and director had become acquainted in the school playground in Barnet years before.

“I remember Rohan; he was a few years older than me and was a prefect. He got me in trouble because I was having a play fight with one of my friends and he split us up. I told him he was an idiot and didn’t know what he was doing,” recalls Ostrove. But it wasn’t until they collaborated on adidas for the editor’s first commercial job that they realised they’d shared the encounter.

“We were sitting in an edit suite about four years ago and realised we’d been at school together in different years. It hit me, we both looked at each other at the same time and it was completely mad.”

The result of the edit was I Am the PSM, for the sports brand’s Originals range, a biopic-style, music-themed commercial featuring Gorillaz drummer Pauli Stanley McKenzie. The pair developed the film’s structure together, opting for a three-part, non-linear approach.

“I just remember the moment when we realised it was working and that feeling is awesome,” Ostrove enthuses. He’s currently working with the director on his first feature-length film, a documentary on the history of hip-hop music, titled The Boombox Project.

The meaning of success

Making good work makes Ostrove happy, but so does making work that does good, such as for the Helen Bamber Foundation.

“We work in advertising, which is about making a profit, but if I can bring it back occasionally, whether it’s for Greenpeace, Amnesty or Helen Bamber, a human rights charity that campaigns against sex slavery, I’ll be happy.

“It is possible to be a righteous dude, who just works hard and really cares about what they’re doing,” Ostrove concludes. “And you see the success in that, which is a really humbling thing, not just success in editing, but in life. If you work hard and really care, people will notice.”