The website of Ed Kipp

 

I have continued to write since college, and have completed three feature length screenplays and seven short films (one of which we are producing in the upcoming weeks).  I have also collaborated with other writers in both an episodic sitcom geared for web distribution (webisodes) and a feature length screenplay.  I have assisted in the editing of both screenplays and an eBook, and have done several personal video editing projects (mostly taking video footage and syncing it to music).  


While I have no compositing experience, I am close to several people that have been credited with feature film compositing and would be comfortable learning on the job.  

In 2003, my wife and I decided to produce a short that I had written called Technology vs. Humanity: A Case Study.  Along with a few friends we built a missile silo set in our garage and cast a few friends that we had worked with before and filmed over a weekend.  We had purchased a microphone adapter for our Sony DCR-VX2000 (A Beahctek DXA-4) and had tested with five minutes of footage and saw no issues.  Three days after filming, the house we were renting had a slab leak, and we were forced to strike the set.  The following weekend when I went to edit the footage, the sound faded out after eleven minutes and came back and faded out periodically.  (We later found that although the box and adapter both were labeled as the DXA-4, the model was actually the DXA-4P (for the Canon GL1).  The footage sat for several years before it was dug up and a second camera with onboard audio was used to sync the sound and come up with a rough cut, and after several passes at editing, we finally came up with a final version (the sound is not great and the lighting was not ideal, but it is a final payoff for the all the hard work that was put in).

In 2002 I worked with a friend on a few short film projects, some in front of the camera and some behind.  The one consistent theme through the projects was that they were stronger when I was behind the camera.  In 2005, my co-workers and I stayed late after work on a Thursday night and filmed a music video for a holiday party, we finished up on Friday afternoon and I edited it over a weekend and we played the video at the party.  The reactions ranged from stunned to impressed.  On the left is a portion of the video that I operated the camera for.  We used an A/V cart as a dolly and didn't have to worry about sound since it was a video.  The song is the Guns 'N Roses rendition of 'White Christmas'

I was a Theatre major in college and was more interested in writing screenplays than anything else, but I have been realistic with how difficult it is to see one's work on the big screen.  My fist screenplay was 110 pages about a college student, written more to be cathartic than anything.  It dealt with loss and uncertainty, but the story while important to me really wasn't strong, and although looking at it with nearly twenty years of perspective I am still proud of some of the dialogue.

While attending college at U.C. San Diego, I realized that I not only enjoyed writing and producing film and video projects, but I had an affinity for it as well.  I was always taking a video camera (a VHS at the time) and making videos with friends - the Kung Fu movie with closeups of actors punching themselves but by using camera tricks, it looked like they were being punched by someone else.  The video where someone was supposedly hanging me off the third story of a parking structure - actually holding my shoes over the edge, then showing a shot of me against a stucco wall with the camera turned upside down.  The continuing shot when the shoes were dropped echoed, and the next shot was me laying on the pavement three stories down.  Really simple camera tricks, but they worked.  Sadly that footage has been lost to time, but the spirit has carried on in other project that I have been involved in.