Spotlight: Carl Ward – Editor and Motion Graphic Designer

Who is Carl Ward?

I’m a fast and efficient editor with an innate flair for storytelling and motion graphic design. Always searching for new challenges to nurture my professional growth, I’m experienced in long form and online but I’ve also excelled in other disciplines both in an offline and short form capacity, as well as doing some grading work.

How did your career path develop?

A year or so after leaving university I managed to get a job as a runner at a television studio back in Kent (of Art Attack fame). As far as running gigs go, it wasn’t so bad. Besides looking after the onsite clients I also got to work on a number of shows, so I have had some sort of experience in just about all sides of production. I even once doubled on as security during a particularly heated episode of Trisha Goddard (cringe!). I met a lot of people there and I owe a large debt to one of the productions on site, The Foundation (and one of their producers in particular) since they gave me the fantastic chance to assist on their edits.

I freelanced a little amongst other jobs (too many to mention) but edit work was hard to come by so I thought I would try to get a job in London and I ended up taking a small step back to start running at a prestigious post house. This was rather short-lived due to my dislike of the working practices and the cost of the commute making it impossible to afford. I got a job as a QC operator (which paid far better) at the Discovery Channel, before finally getting a full-time staff job as an editor. Having spent around 6 years in the edit team I finally jumped ship to the freelance world around 2 months ago.

Any projects you are most proud of and why?

Ivory Wars with Laurens De Groot – the content was interesting and tackled an important issue. It was rewarding due to the very tight deadline and budget we had to work with and I basically got to cover the whole editing process, offline and online as well as some of the GFX creation.

What do you consider your greatest achievement so far?

Probably buying our first house just under 2 years ago. I come from pretty humble beginnings, so to manage to afford a house in the borough of London took a lot of scrimping and saving. It is a do-er upper but I am embracing the DIY wholeheartedly.

Share your biggest lessons in life and work

Know when to bite your tongue, grit your teeth and pick your battles wisely. But most of all, try and be nice. When you go freelance you really notice how much easier life is when everybody is trying to help you out.

View Carl’s portfolio