Studio Kippenberger isn't just where Chris Kippenberger makes his videos, it's where he and his team build their aerial camera rigs, develop their carbon fiber gimbals, and, uh, park their Ferraris.
I've seen a few video editing setups, and I've been to some nice production studios, but nothing is quite like what Chris Kippenberger has set up in a leafy neighborhood in Berlin.
I'm just going to salivate over a few of these pictures for a minute here, because it's a lot to take in.
This is the car elevator
which leads out into the balcony...
...complete with a preview camera, so to speak.
Kippenberger lives and works here, so I guess that makes me double jealous of him.
The kitchen,
the main working area,
and the middle-of-the-room bathtub.
There is class, and then there's having a bathtub in the middle of your room.
As I said, Studio Kippenberger (their website is here) works on their own tech here as well, developing new octocopters and carbon fiber stabilizing gimbals.
Kippenberger is keen not to sound like a guy building drones. He's been making some of the best car films I've seen in the past few years almost on his own. The Drone's Eye View of the Nurburgring and 'Kart Kids' spring to mind. What he's trying to do now is get together a team of the best car shooters he can, working in a small team and making films directly for manufacturers. Daniel Siegler, who you've seen put together a lot of big American Apparel campaigns, is managing director, "completing the mutual DNA profile: hot chicks and cars," Kippenberger says.
The next step is basically filling the gap for the stuff I'm not good at — interpersonal communication at a very basic level. It's something which took me a while to admit to but once I did it enabled me to act. That's what the studio and cars+ is about. Lets me work on my vision and remain profitable without pissing off the entire world at once.
The quality of video he makes for as lean a crew he has is incredible. Here's a film he worked on with Mercedes for the current E-Class wagon that's completely gorgeous. And there are little things that are hard to notice as well. Nobody else could ever sneak in Neck Face in any other car vid.
So the point of this office, Chris explained to me, is to tie everyone together, to have a place where he can get his new team talking to carmakers while he works on putting films together. It's a spot to let clients meet the more 'balanced' people in his team. "I'm good at den Hosen öfner (you kids can look that up -ed.) but after that its better to have people with 'people skills' to take over," Chris explains.
And this is where it all happens. Not bad digs, right?
Photo Credits: Moritz Bremer/LuxurySpottings