Leap Year Post: Travelling Through Time to Make Great Work

Free time is a kind of superpower. There are few better feelings than finding a spare moment in the day, or having the bandwidth to truly dive into a project and make it as great as it possibly can be. That’s a feeling which the fittingly-named Leap Year Post have managed to bottle, and it feeds into everything they do as a studio. 

“What resonates with me about the concept of ‘making time’ is that it’s about carving out space to hear people, be intentional, and be present with them”, says co-founder and creative director Charles Frank. “Part of making work which stands out is simply having that capacity to listen in order to effectively collaborate”. 

That word, ‘collaborate’, is also woven deeply into Leap Year’s DNA. Their process is more like an organic web than a factory floor; flowing and adapting based on the context of a job rather than robotically handing their work off to another part of an assembly line. Speaking to the Leap Year team, it’s clear just how much they value their own ability to be an effective, reliable, and fundamentally human partner. 

Perhaps that can partly be attributed to how multi-disciplinary their team is. Leap Year has sprung out of Voyager, a production company with a hard-earned reputation for creative experimentation and quality through work with clients like Adidas, McDonald’s, Kia, and Jack Daniel’s. 

“Over the years, we’d found that our directors really appreciated working closely with an editor and being able to see their vision through”, recalls Andrew Hutcheson, Charles’ fellow co-founder of both Voyager and Leap Year. “We started incorporating post into our offering with Voyager. But as we thought about ways to structure it, saying ‘we’re a production company that also does post’ felt like a half-measure, as well as a disservice to the editing talent we represent”. 

That was at least part of the thinking behind setting up Leap Year as a separate entity to Voyager, a company which has detached from the mothership and become its own defined presence and brand. But in addition to that clear distinction, another benefit was the ability to simply work with more people from other production houses. “It’s been a new way to collaborate in an industry which can often feel closed-off and competitive”, adds Andrew. “That’s been one of the most rewarding things about Leap Year”. 

The team has clearly put a lot of thought - and experience - into the relationship between a director and their editor. In many ways, Leap Year Post feels tailor-made to maximise the benefits of that central collaboration for the benefit of the overall creative. There’s a glint of excitement in Charles’ eyes, for example, when the topic shifts to Leap Year’s studio space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. 

“Having that physical space to hang out, work, and connect with people is really important to us”, he says, “not least because we’ve been based on a fifth-floor walk-up until now! So I’m really excited for that new, front-facing part of the company”. 

That sense of freshness is palpable, too, when hearing from Kira MacKnight, Leap Year’s managing director and EP. She joined forces with the studio having established herself at the audio post house One Thousand Birds (OTB), and feels a keen appreciation for empowering great creative minds. 

“I had an amazing experience with OTB, and I’m looking forward to building on that and being part of the entire post process with Leap Year”, she says. “What I’ve learned is that the best productions come from the best people. So we’ve made collaboration as easy as possible, so that creative people can come together and make something good”. 

And Leap Year’s recent work for AXE makes for a perfect example of ‘something good’. The entertainingly bizarre spot invites viewers into an ‘ice cream trance’, with surrealist imagery hitting home the brand’s memorable message. “This is our first project with the Martin Agency, and it was really unique and ambitious creative”, says Charles. 

The ad, directed by Grayson Whitehurst and edited by Leap Year’s Kauai, is a great example of a pure creative idea expressed and elevated through people who really care about what they do. Likewise, the recent music video for Vampire Weekends’ ‘Capricorn’ was edited by Jeff Watterson, another knockout example of great creative, communicated expertly. 

Going back to Kira’s point about the best work coming from the best people, the EP is eager to stress that ‘best’ does not exclusively mean the most talented. “The best people are the ones who make time for each other, nurture ideas, and develop strong relationships through collaboration”, she says. “To make sure that’s true for all of our projects, we want to be the best people”. 

To that end, Jeff and Kauai are joined on Leap Year’s editorial roster by Austen Deery and Nico Frank. “What I like about our roster is that it’s like a kind of venn diagram where everyone overlaps when it comes to emotional storytelling, but they all have their own tastes and voices”, says Charles. 

At a time where the industry’s dominant conversation seems to be focused on robotic creativity in the form of AI, there’s a refreshing comfort to the way the Leap Year team valorises the human aspect of their work. That’s not to say that they’re technological naysayers (“I’m totally open to using it as a tool”, notes Andrew), just that the way the studio works is proudly organic. 

It’s a theme which folds nicely back into the studio’s central idea of making time. In a seemingly attention-deficit culture where our focus is constantly being dragged from one task, or one piece of content, to another, it’s easy to forget that we really do have time to play with. There’s a focus and an intentionality to Leap Year’s ethos which feels at odds, and yet perfectly-timed, for the moment we’re living in. The time to give to quality, impactful work is out there. Like Leap Year, we just need to find it.