At Lost Planet, Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

^{L-R, Casey Cayko and Gary Ward}

​Lost Planet’s executive producer duo Gary Ward and Casey Cayko are pretty much inseparable. Well, aside from the close to 3,000 miles between the edit company’s Los Angeles and New York studios.

That’s right. The pair, who get “offended” if the other fails to call them in the morning, are responsible for steering the ship in both New York and LA. But distance doesn’t define their relationship, and they’ve found a unified way of working across offices since Casey returned to the company as EP in 2022.

He’d initially joined as an intern at the age of 23. New to New York and “going broke”, he’d been working on documentaries and bartending in tandem, before deciding that he had to find a new opportunity… an internship at Lost Planet.

“I had no idea what that business model even looked like, and here I am all these years later,” he says. "I learned about and figured out the business, and then I realised I didn’t want to edit, so I became a producer. All of a sudden, I found myself in a very creative environment, and I was doing something. I was meeting editors of films that I appreciated and loved, and hearing their creative insights was fascinating.”

Since then, he’s left and returned to the company twice. “Lost Planet’s like my home,” he says. “To a certain extent, it feels like I grew up here. When the opportunity to be an EP came up in 2022, I was at another company, but I thought if I was going to move up to that role, it should be with my people and the team I knew best. I’ve spent many years of my life with the people here because they stick around, and I think that’s a testament to the company culture and everything. It’s my place.”

That stickiness rings true for Gary too. He’s been part of Lost Planet in LA for over 16 years, and was familiar with the company even before that. “The previous company I worked for was a neighbour to Lost Planet on Main Street,” Gary explains. “I knew the work of Hank [Corwin, founder], obviously, and when the company I was working for closed, I was introduced to him. We met for coffee in the little courtyard that separated our two buildings, and we hit it off fairly quickly. He hired me the next day.”

Gary adds that he joined the company at an “interesting time”, following some significant change that had seen some employees move in a different direction. “There were only a couple of editors on the West Coast who had remained after a split, so we hit the ground running,” he continues. “We built from within.”

According to Gary, over those 16 years, the company’s principles have stayed the same: interesting projects, interesting collaborations, putting the creative first, encouraging experimentation with the work, and having a wide variety of people come through the door.

However, Casey’s arrival brought something new to the mix. Moving to from the Midwest, he brought a sense of clarity and coolness with him, changing the way the offices communicated for the better.

“Casey was a point of calm,” Gary explains. “The East operated in a far different way from the West, but he was the person who was able to manage these jobs. Even if there was a storm brewing below the surface, we could make things work because Casey and I communicated in a way that made things simple. The first thing would be, ‘Well, we’ll just call Casey and he’ll take care of it’. We found that once we actually spent some time together, we had a shared view of the business and even the world. There’s a sense of humour about it.”

Meanwhile, Casey’s initial impressions of Gary… were first about his size. “I initially met Gary, and he’s a tall man. He’s got a big beard. He’s a presence,” Casey recalls. But soon, he found that Gary was warm, welcoming and generous with his time, helping to ease Casey’s nerves.

“He was also incredibly kind and helpful, and he’d give you a hug when you met him,” Casey adds. “So, I was slightly intimidated by everything, but Gary was also very welcoming and giving with his knowledge at that time.”

When he returned to the company in 2022, Casey’s first port of call was to reach out to Gary, rekindle the relationship, and plan to knock down the “fairly big wall” that separated the two offices. “It quickly became clear that there was a better way to operate,” he says. “This was post-covid-19. There was no reason to have geography determine anything at that point. People could work wherever. I don’t think any one project is in New York or Los Angeles; it’s Lost Planet.”

This more unified approach quickly felt natural. After all, the company’s rosters had always been shared. And, soon after, Lost Planet was awarded a job for AT&T, something Gary notes “would never have happened” if Casey hadn’t been in his role as EP.

“We had multiple editors from both coasts, Casey came to LA; assistants from both places and editors from both places. Both offices shared in that project in a way that had never happened previously, nor do I think it would have, because there would have been a fear that one would have overshadowed the other.

The efficiency of working this way paid off, and has been repeated numerous times since. Often, editors have jumped in to work on projects within hours of the first phone call coming in.

“Part of it was having an intimate knowledge of how things operated,” Casey adds. “I could see how we didn’t want to do things. I could see what didn’t work and what frustrated me initially. Gary and I both come at this with a lack of ego. I think we’re very good behind the scenes, and that works to our advantage because it really is about the editors. We can do anything, but you can only do that if you cooperate and work out a solution in real time.”
The work from Gary, Casey and Lost Planet’s roster of editors has paid off. The company, founded by Oscar and BAFTA-nominated editor Hank Corwin, was built on a commitment to ‘unabashed individuality and fierce creativity’, and right now, according to Gary, it’s experiencing creative success that’s not been seen since Hank edited commercials full-time.

“It speaks to the change in how the relationship between offices has been forged. Because of this and how we’ve communicated, I think the quality of work for everyone has risen. It’s still eclectic. The pandemic changed how our offices operate; they’re both in new places. There was a lot of history in both of our old offices, but it’s coming around in a way that hasn’t happened in many, many years.”.

Casey shares the same sentiment, adding, “We’re working with the kind of people and doing the type of work we wanted to be working on this whole time. We’ve developed great relationships with agencies and clients that have been consistent and allowed us to do what we do: let the editors do what they do and take some risks. Everything we’ve done over the last couple of years has led us to the point where we can do that and have some freedom.”

^{Recent work for Nike, 'Why Do It?' Edited by Hank Corwin}

Adding to this, Gary describes the company in its present state as “a very rarefied space that we’re fortunate enough to work in”, with a unique take on creativity that allows editors to become their best “quirky selves”.

“There's no polish, there are mistakes, it’s funky, and things get broken,” he continues. “Like, let’s get a bunch of rabbits, let’s paint on the floor, let’s try to animate something – I mean, half of Hank’s ideas are wacky as shit, which means now this generation of editors has wacky-as-shit ideas that sometimes scare people to death.”

However, Casey and Gary aren’t scared; they’re embracing the madness, together. Describing their relationship as that of a “married couple”, the two share everything from musical likes and dislikes to the odd rant. “It went from a working relationship with a phone call here, phone call there, to there are points in the day where if we haven’t spoken, one of us takes offense and texts, ‘What did I do?’,” says Gary.

“I get offended if he doesn’t call me in the morning,” Casey adds. “I don’t know what he’s up to and assume he’s mad. It’s a working marriage, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”