Page 12 - Fujifilm Exposure_25 Jean Francois Robin_ok

here’s a large West Ham United poster on the wall behind his desk, so Geoff Poole, one of the mercuri- al football club’s most devoted fans, knows all about unpredictability.
Like the Hammers, Poole’s business is, in his own words, “most definitely not nine to five. I’ve always had a very close relationship with the clients, and a lot of the work I do is because of that relationship.
“Without trying to sound big-head- ed, we wouldn’t get some of the work if I wasn’t there. It’s that personal touch which I’ve always tried to keep.
“Because of that, most of my clients are friends as well. But they must know they can call me 24 hours a day, seven days a week and I’ll sort things. End of the day, though, the work has to be good.”
Poole describes The Editpool, currently celebrating 15 years of active life in Soho – first off Wardour Street, now in glass fronted offices behind Greek Street – as “a personal editing/post production house.
“It’s not a big facility house; in fact, I’ve always tried to keep away from the idea of a production line. I try to keep control of everything, though I don’t think I’m a control ‘freak’ as such. Sometimes, I can probably be a bit too hands-on,” he concedes, with a smile.
His busy showreel graphically sums up the range of film and video work undertaken by The Editpool, which ranges from trailers, TV spots and promos to junkets, electronic press kits and premieres.
But, back on that theme of unpredictability, Poole can always expect the unexpected.
“Last week, for example, I got a call at 11 in the morning, asking me to get a crew down the Dorchester for an interview with Ewan McGregor at three o’clock that afternoon.
“On another occasion recently, we were asked to go to the Grosvenor House to do a piece with a young American actress/singer, Mandy Moore, who was in town publicising her latest role as the US president’s daughter. The twist here was that they wanted us to construct a set behind her, in a suite, which looked like the Rose Garden at The White House!”
You’d have thought there was a kind of inevitability that Poole would
a rather fancy Anglo-American cast including Joseph Cotten, Barbara Bel Geddes, Stefanie Powers, Roddy McDowall, Edward Fox and Jane Asher.
“I took a while to get into it but it seemed I had an aptitude,” Poole recalls. After that it was the usual freelance round on films like When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth as well as TV spin-offs such as Steptoe And Son, The Likely Lads, On The Buses
lowing Monday, renting some rooms from a friend in Wardour Mews.
‘Of course it was a big worry. I won- dered if the phone would ring. Thankfully, the Warner connection stayed and the first big job I did was all the TV spots for the first Batman film. I was on my own to start with, managed that way for a month or so and then began to use freelance people.
“After three months, I took on another permanent person and, since then, have always tried to keep the staff to a minimum. I now have four permanent staff but at any one time there could be 30 to 40 people work- ing for me depending on the job.”
One of his most regular collabo- rators is a sister company – his ‘technical partner’, if you like – Trevor Hunt’s Picture It Facilities, based in Neasden just off the North Circular Road, which does all Poole’s “crewing, cameras and so on. They even have a studio there, with con- trol rooms and gantries.”
Poole (whose daughter Sarah has followed him into the business; she works for Pathe on the technical side) admits that he does rather miss the business of “old-style film.
“Very occasionally, if we have to make 35mm censor cuts or with other 35mm work I’ll get involved in that because that’s what I know. While they’re brilliant on Avids, some of my younger staff wouldn’t know a Steenbeck and splicer from a plate of sandwiches. I still love get- ting hold of film and cutting it – but that’s dying out now.”
Poole is disarmingly modest about his business. The bottom line? “If someone rings we can nearly always accommodate them, but if we can’t we know who can and will rec- ommend them. Whether working with the biggest or smallest we always try to give the same service and attention – and that’s the way I’ve tried to keep it.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
be involved in the film industry; after all, his late father Harry worked for Hammer Films while his uncle, the redoubtable Frank Poole, was a pillar of the Rank Organisation.
But when he was still at school, Geoff knew he wanted to be one of three things, none of them remotely connected with film: “One was a chef, but then I quickly worked out that I’d be working while everyone else was enjoying themselves. Secondly, an architect but I didn’t really have the brains for that. Thirdly, a farmer but only a gentle- man-farmer.”
So, with a little help from his father, the film industry it was, starting out as second assistant editor in the late sixties on Journey To The Unknown, a Hammer-produced TV series with
and many more, working as top sound editor Frank Goulding’s assis- tant. He then progressed on to big- ger features like Rollerball ,The Omen,The Man With The Golden Gun on both sound and picture editing.
Eventually, after Goulding and another experienced editor David De Wilde had, in the mid-seventies, set up their own facility company, Edit 142, they invited a newly-married Poole to join them. Towards the end of the eighties, by which time Poole was a director of the company, he was becoming increasingly “disen- chanted” with the job.
“Why not set up on your own, and we’ll come with you,” he began to hear from some of the clients, includ- ing Warner’s. In 1988, he decided to do just that. “I left my old job on the Friday and set up on my own the fol-
Photos inset above: One of The Editpool Suites; right: Geoff Poole, the main man with the personal touch;
inset right: Two of The Editpool and Picture It Facilities collaborations - Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets and The Matrix Reloaded
10 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
The Editpool celebrates 15 years proving ‘small is beautiful’
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