My Film-Making Journey

As an undergraduate student majoring in film-making at Shanghai University, I have made several short films, including feature films, documentaries, animations, etc. I have served as director, producer, editor, sound designer, production designer and other positions in different films.

First, I want to show the trailers for two short films. 

"Ali" is a 20-minute short film that was my graduation project, completed with my group members, in which I served as Producer. The film tells the story of Ali's growth through family and love experiences during her adolescence.

"Echoes of the Past" is another 20-minute short film in which I worked as Sound Director.

Stone Carving

As for 'Shanghai Crazy', after discussion in our group, we decided to record an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage. I once learned about a craftsman who makes stone carvings. He throws his whole life into this craftsmanship and holds his passion on it, which attracts us most. We would like to learn how he could stick to doing stone carving and what it means to him. As a younger generation, we should learn more about the meaning of intangible cultural heritage, and this is why we want to understand this craftsman more.

As the producer of this documentary, I got in touch with the stone carving craftsman through Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage Department. I communicated with the old man about the shooting content, location and time, and he gladly agreed. In addition, I made some research of related materials of the craftsman, and I assisted in the design of interview outline and shooting script. On the day of shooting, I was responsible for communicating with the craftsman, asking some questions and guiding him to tell his stories and experiences about stone carving.

We presented several appealing points in this documentary: 

1) The artistry of stone carving; 

2) The exquisite workmanship of the craftsman; 

3) The inheritance of Intangible cultural heritage from generation to generation; 

4) The personality of the craftsman, and his pure love for art. For me, this documentary production is a great experience.

Our documentary was praised and affirmed by Malcolm Clarke, a two-time Academy Award-winning British documentary film director. And through this work, I got a letter of recommendation from him!

Heartbeat

I'm director of the short film Heartbeat. I created an ambiguous moment between a man and a woman in my film. It took me a lot of time to write the script and modify it constantly. Actually, I like Wong Kar-Wai's movies. So I tried to learn and imitate the tones and shooting methods in his films. And this was my first time to find several actors and build a whole new scene, which was so interesting. To be honest, it took me most time to edit and add some sound effects. Even though there were lots of flaws in my film, I think it was a bold try and I really put my effort into it.

It was an amazing experience and I enjoyed cooperating with others. As a director, I actively communicated with different departments. In this group work, actually, I once had some disagreements with my DP. We had different opinions about the script but finally we reached agreement. It was in the collision of ideas again and again that we modified the script better. Though we had difficulty in shooting and editing, we overcame it and worked together to complete an excellent movie.

Legal Practice

I'm director of Legal Practice. It is my second short feature film. It follows the relationship between two lawyers, who have been working too close and nearly "cross the line" in daily life.

The tone of the whole film is a little bit tense. I wanted to make audience feel nervous. To create this atmosphere, I chose a corner of the office to shoot and made the light dim. All items in the scene were mainly gray and brown. And the color system of the two lawyers' clothes were mainly black and white. This would increase the sense of repression.

Actually in this film, the rhythm is slow and smooth at first. And then with the development of the plot, the tension intensifies. I wanted to use the change of action range and voice tone to express the progress of emotions. For example,when Greg hears that Cheryl is going to get married, he throws the folder on the table heavily and raises his voice.

As for the style of the frame, I wanted it to be like in Hong Kong in the 1990s. I like Wong Kar-Wai's films very much, especially for his style, so I wanted to take his movies as my reference. I tried to set the lens in soft focus mode by applying vaseline to the lens and reduce the sharpness of the image in the post-editing stage.

In post-production, I found that there were some problems with the lighting. The light on the characters' faces was not very nice and did not achieve the desired effect. In addition, the choice and application of background music can also be further improved. All these were my gains from this practice, and I will pay more attention to these aspects in the future.

Interview with Future You

I think this is the hardest movie I've made. I started writing the script early, and then thought about the props and scenes. During that time, I nearly couldn't fall asleep because I was thinking about how to shoot it better day and night. When I started to shoot, there were so many problems, such as casting and time conflict. Even though it was very difficult, I really enjoyed the process. And I think I did a good job.

Surprise on Birthday

At first, we would like to shoot in the supermarket. However, the staff didn't allow us to shoot in it. As a result, we could only be careful of shooting in order not to let them see us. I was in the sound department, responsible for collecting and monitoring the on-site sound (including dialogue and environment sound), and adjusting the sound volume. I also did sound mixing work in post-production. It was a crazy and bold attempt!