Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Hepburn.
Hi Chris, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I graduated from the College of Creative Studies at UCSB in 1991 with a BA in Literature. This program requires a separate application process from the University at large and classes are run more like graduate school, no tests, no grades, no deadlines… all discussion-based classes. A great way to appreciate all USCB had to offer. I discovered the program through a friend who had been admitted. As I struggled with traditional lecture hall classes and mass tests, seeing him reading interesting books and writing at his leisure, it became apparent that this program was the place I desired to be.
That was how I eventually ended up in graduate school in Boston at Emerson College working on a MA in Writing. In 1993, I attended an art opening showcasing the work of “video poets”. I left there thinking that I was a better writer than any of those people and could probably make a better video on my Pentium 486 PC at home. Six months later, I entered my first exhibition for “video poetry” and my work was shown at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco alongside some of the work I had seen at the exhibition in Boston. Making “video poems” on my computer proved to be much more enjoyable than attending traditional grad school. Looking back, it strikes me as odd that I couldn’t find a means to pursue this passion at Emerson despite their classes focused on teaching broadcast production techniques.
I dropped out of Emerson at the end of my first year and moved back to the Bay Area to pursue video poetry. Miraculously, I was able to convince the graduate interdisciplinary arts program at San Francisco State that this melding of computer graphics and poetry was something I should have a master’s in. I continued to teach myself about video formats, the basics of nonlinear editing, video capture, and music sampling, all while helping raise a 2-year-old with another child on the way.
The first piece I produced at SF State successfully earned a spot in the largest film festival in San Francisco, featured in one of their after-hours programs dedicated to what was then termed New Media. I’d also been offered a job at the biggest post-production house in San Francisco in a department they were building to adopt non-linear editing.
Things were going smoothly until the person leading the new group suddenly left the company for another job, resulting in the decision not to proceed with forming the group. I suddenly found myself without a job that I hadn’t even begun. Having been in grad school and moved cross country twice with a small child, I had really been counting on that job to have a steady income to support my family. A friend of mine told me about a job he’d heard about in LA at Activision, but he didn’t apply because he didn’t want to move to LA. Having grown up in Southern California, I didn’t have the same NorCal bias as my friend, so I applied for the job. Activision flew me down for an interview, a first-time experience for me. I leveraged my self-taught expertise in computer-based video to secure the position as an editor in the department they were establishing for post-production work on their CD-ROM Full Motion Video games. I started in September of 1995, the same month my daughter was born. Skip ahead 28 years and here I am still in the video game space, having made a career out of my self-taught hobby.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Is life ever smooth? During the early stages of my career, working through crunch mode on multiple video game titles taught me invaluable lessons about my capabilities and resilience. The next challenges, though no less painful, only made the future “crunch” times seem less daunting than the previous. I see each obstacle as a stepping stone and once I overcome it, encountering similar challenges never feels as overwhelming. It’s the challenge of these obstacles that allows for a sense of reward, satisfaction, and relief upon conquering them. It’s only later in life that I came to understand this.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’ve specialized in working with video for video games for the last 28 years. Over the years, the nature of my work has evolved significantly, spanning across various roles and responsibilities. From editing cutscenes shot on film and trailers to game capture, producing, creative directing, and leading teams, to starting agencies, selling agencies, leaving failing agencies, and even leaving successful agencies.
Staying on top of video formats from 640×480 SD interlaced video that you needed a $50,000 dollar VCR to HD and a $100,000 VCR to 4K that gets record and edited on $3,000 laptop, Console generations from PlayStation one to five, I’ve seen a lot over the years. That said, my favorite project maybe ever was editing the in-game videos for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. I was working out of my house at the time while I was looking for office space and had saved up enough money to buy all my own gear rather than working out of a facility. For those unfamiliar, in the Tony Hawk series, you can play as professional skateboarders like Chad Muska, Jamie Thomas, and of course Tony Hawk. When you completed the game as that character your “reward” was a skate video of their actual footage cut to one of the songs from the game. One of my jobs for that game was to edit those videos. Growing up as a skater kid in Orange County in the 80’s, this was pretty much a dream come true.
At some point in this process, the producer of the game called me and said there’s some feedback on some of the edits from Rodney Mullen and he’d like to give it to you in person. I’ll never forget Rodney Mullen coming to my own house in Venice and watching the skate videos I had edited. Rodney generously provided super constructive feedback not only on his own videos but also on those of other skaters. He shared valuable tips on why one of the pros may like a certain landing over another and suggested when to cut shots earlier or hold them longer, making the entire session an enlightening and rewarding experience. It was amazing to work with one of the guys that invented a lot of the tricks in the actual game. It was something I won’t ever forget.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Let me tell you a story about luck. In 1994ish, I’d had my own business for a few years and I was noticing larger agencies circling around my clients like Activison and had been shopping my company around to those same agencies. One day in the Hollywood Reporter, there was an ad for Trailer Park with their iconic trailer mascot with guns and missiles on it saying, “We’re getting into the game” and to contact Chris Mollo for more information. I had worked with Chris Mollo before at Vivendi Universal Games and figured he’d started working there. So the next day, I called Trailer Park and asked to speak to Chris Mollo. Reception put me through and Chris answered. I said, “Hey Chris, it’s Chris Hepburn. How’s it going” He said “Fine, can I help or something”. I said, “It’s Hepburn, we worked together when you were at Vivendi” He replied, “I think you might be mistaken I never worked at Vivendi” It turns out there’s more than one Chris Mollo in LA. I was able to keep this new Chris Mollo on the phone and we got to talking about working in the video game space, what they did, what I did, and ultimately how we could work together. I was looking for a new client but a few months later, I sold my company to Trailer Park and joined them to help run their new video game division. That turned out to be my entry to the larger entertainment marketing agency world and now almost 20 years later, having worked at some of the biggest shops in town like mOcean, Ignition, and Create, that whole run was started with what a call to the wrong Chris Mollo.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @h3pburn
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-hepburn18
