No Sushi, the filmmaker-first post house built around acclaimed film and television editorial talent, has signed editor Isaac Hagy to its roster for commercial representation.
Hagy’s work spans some of the most distinctive film and television storytelling of recent years, including Atlanta, Widow’s Bay, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Station Eleven, American Vandal and Chef’s Table, alongside features including Waves and The Friend. His career has also encompassed music videos and collaborations with artists including Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver and Bruno Mars.
Most recently, Hagy edited four episodes of Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay, the genre-defying series that went on to win a record-breaking 14 Emmys. The project reunited him with longtime collaborator Hiro Murai, with whom Hagy has worked for more than two decades across music videos, television and film.
For No Sushi, Hagy’s signing reflects the company’s belief that the best advertising is entertainment, and that the storytelling instincts developed across film, television, documentary and music can help brands make work audiences genuinely want to watch.
“Isaac has an incredible instinct for tone,” says Alexander Jamieson, founder and managing director of No Sushi. “His work can be funny, strange, unsettling, emotional and cinematic, sometimes all at once, but it always feels coherent. That ability to build a world and guide an audience through it is enormously valuable in advertising, particularly as brands look for work with a stronger voice and a more genuine emotional connection.”
Hagy first discovered editing growing up in the 1990s, making films with neighbourhood friends on his parents’ camcorder before disappearing into his bedroom for hours to cut them together on iMovie.
He briefly experimented with cinematography too. His first professional job saw him working as both cinematographer and editor on a documentary.
“The camerawork was not great,” says Hagy. “But I discovered that I could fix that in the edit.”
The early years were less straightforward. Hagy balanced music videos and documentary work with jobs designed to keep the bills paid, including knocking on doors for non-profits, working film promotion events and doing school parking enforcement while carrying significant student debt.
Without a safety net, he kept cutting whatever he could get his hands on, building both technical finesse and narrative instinct.
A major turning point came through Hiro Murai, whom Hagy met on their first day of college. One of their early collaborations was a Bloc Party music video made for around $1,000.
The idea and execution punched far above the budget and helped open the door to work with artists including Bon Iver, Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt, Bruno Mars and, most significantly for Hagy’s career, Childish Gambino.
Those collaborations eventually led to FX’s Atlanta.
It was Hagy’s first television series and became the project that fundamentally changed the trajectory of his career.
“Atlanta completely blew the doors open for me career-wise,” says Hagy. “But it also reaffirmed that I was capable and skilled enough to edit at the highest level.”
For Hagy, part of what made Atlanta special was precisely the absence of convention. Many of the team were working in television for the first time and, rather than approaching the show with an established set of rules, they followed instinct.
“None of us knew what we didn’t know and what we were not supposed to do,” says Hagy. “We operated solely from instinct and what we thought was cool. I think that is partly what still resonates about the show. When you trust your gut and make something that feels honest to yourself, other people will often feel the same way.”
That lesson continues to shape Hagy’s work today.
At the heart of his editing philosophy is a simple question: what should the audience think or feel? Performance, pacing, writing, music, sound and structure all become tools for getting there.
Hagy describes himself, somewhat jokingly, as a “footage whisperer,” someone tasked with discovering what the material wants to become once it reaches the edit. Once production is complete, he rarely feels beholden to the script or storyboards. Instead, he focuses on the footage in front of him and searches for the strongest version of the story hidden inside it.
“I think the most misinformed idea is that you take footage, chop out all the bad stuff and put it together according to the script,” says Hagy. “Editing is so much more about world-building for me. Once a project has been shot, it’s all about how to tell the best story with both the footage and all the tools I bring to it.”
One of those tools is sound.
Hagy admits to obsessing over sound design more than most editors might. He sees it as fundamental not simply to pace, but to tone and emotion, particularly when sound moves into a subjective space and begins doing the kind of emotional work usually associated with music.
That sensitivity to tone has been central to projects such as Atlanta and, more recently, Widow’s Bay.
The latter presented a particularly complex editorial challenge, moving between comedy, horror, thriller and drama without fitting neatly into any one genre. For Hagy, what kept the series grounded was its commitment to believable human characters.
“Stories don’t have to neatly fit into a box as long as the heart of the story is honest,” he says.
That freedom to move between tones is also what Hagy hopes to bring into advertising.
He believes audiences have become increasingly sophisticated at recognising when they are being marketed to and increasingly willing to tune out conventional advertising. For brands, the answer is not necessarily louder messaging, but better storytelling: character, emotion, pathos and an original point of view.
“The most important skill is gaining the audience’s attention,” says Hagy. “There are so many forms of media competing for awareness now. Pieces that have an original voice and an honest message are the most valuable.”
It is an idea that aligns directly with No Sushi’s belief that film and television craft has an increasingly important role to play in advertising. Whether the material is a television series, music video, documentary or commercial, Hagy sees the job as finding the emotional truth of the footage and using every available filmmaking tool to communicate it clearly.
He is particularly drawn to human stories that can be funny, heartbreaking, cinematic, strange or even deliberately ordinary, provided they approach those emotions honestly.
“Brands have the challenge of operating in a media landscape where viewers are very savvy and very critical of anything that feels too much like it is selling something,” says Hagy. “The trick is creating content whose value extends beyond marketing, making something that makes the viewer think, gets them excited and ultimately makes them feel.”
Hagy joins a No Sushi roster that includes editors behind The Bear, Severance, Shōgun, The Studio, Past Lives, The White Lotus, The Last Dance, Hacks and Industry.
His signing follows No Sushi’s recent announcements of Keith Fraase and Eric Kissack as the company continues to spotlight not simply the credits behind its editorial roster, but the individual craft, philosophy and experience each editor can bring to commercial storytelling.
AloJapan.com