Phillip Epps

International-Creative's founding producer, Phillip Epps, has spent over a decade perfecting the art of cross-cultural communication, including extensive engagement in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

He opened the doors to International-Creative in Taipei, Taiwan in early 2005, at a time when events in the region have hardly been more significant.

With a colorful background in journalism, public relations and production, Phillip has brought together a mix of skills and insights to create a potent yet personal communications firm.

Phillip Epps, International-Creative's founding producer, has spent over a decade perfecting the art of cross-cultural communication, including extensive engagement in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Launching International-Creative in Taipei, Taiwan, in early 2005, Epps brought together a potent mix of skills and insights to create an outstanding new media communications firm.

Please contact us -- perhaps you'll agree we're on to something.

Phillip Epps, briefing the press at the opening of the first western-style Internet cafe in China in Beijing, 1995.

Read "Production Perfectionist: Philip Lee" by Joi Chan & Phillip Epps

Phillip Epps is an American producer who began his own video and film production company, international-creative.com, in 2005. In the past, he has worked on political campaigns in America, helped set up the first Internet cafe chain in China and was senior editor of 'Travel in Taiwan.' Some of his recent clients in Taiwan's creative industry include the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet and Microsoft.

He divides his projects into three types: one is in the area of corporate and community video where he acts as producer. 'The second is more creative projects that I'm self financing, such as a work in progress I'm calling 'Beautiful Island,' he said by telephone interview Friday with the China Post. Right now he's taking 'beauty shots' around the island and is making a casting call. 'I expect if it's just me doing it, it will take a year in total,' he estimated.

'The third type is not for money or pet projects,' he continued, 'but to enhance the film and TV industry in Taiwan, or I should say 'attempt to.'

'There is opportunity here because there really isn't a film industry currently in Taiwan. There's low production quality in terms of writers and directors mostly because there's so little return on time and investment.' He described it as a self-defeating cycle: on the one hand, nobody gets paid well for production, and on the other nobody wants to be involved in filmmaking in Taiwan because it doesn't pay much.
...
Epps urged Taiwan's government to 'get focused and admit' Taiwan has got an identity problem.'The best rebuttal in favor of the current conventional wisdom is that now everyone watches Korean soap operas and dramas. South Korea's film industry has turned itself around. It's very creative and they win international awards.'

'The local industry has got lots of talent' he insists, 'it's just totally underfunded. They've got this struggling artist mentality and only a few people can break out of it,' he said, citing director Hou Hsiao-hsien (of 'City of Sadness' fame among others) of the old school, and more recently Wei Te-sheng, director of the hit 'Cape No. 7.'
...
Epps suggested Taiwan's leaders look at the feasibility of injecting some serious cash into its creative industry.

'Taiwan is not a poor country; there's cash here. There is also a great need to get beyond the corruption,' he posited, and enhancing national identity, but apolitically. 'And also enable an institutionalized legal apparatus where if you default on a contract, you should face real legal constraints.
...
Podcast by Phillip Epps

phillip@international-creative.com