Today we’d like to introduce you to Xiaodan Li.
Xiaodan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am working as a sound editor now and sometimes I am working on set as a production sound mixer. My career didn’t start as a sound person working for films. I studied television-related technology when I was in my undergraduate years. I took an internship as a PA engineer and spent around half a year in the Advanced Communication Equipment Company. During this time, a good friend of mine, who was a film director, found me and he would like me to work on his latest short film. I said, sure. And that was how I got my first job as a sound editor. I think I am so lucky because he, as a director, has a very good vision and understanding of how sound can help tell the story. In this project, I found my deep interests and lifelong passion in working as a sound editor as my career. I came to Los Angeles, where most of the film productions happen and obtained my MFA degree in Chapman University in film production with sound emphasis.
After graduation, I spent most of my time working on set as a production sound mixer. The most impressive project I was working on was called “Out of Spotlight”, produced by J. Wu Entertainment. It is a show that interviews people working on different jobs in the film industry. I am very honored to listen to those extraordinary people, such as Sid Ganis, James Gunn, Joe Roth, Mark Johnson, etc. sharing their own story. It is instructive to see how they succeed in this industry.
For the past three years, I shifted my focus from production sound recording to sound editorial. This was a tough decision for me in the beginning, but I enjoy the whole process of selecting or creating the perfect sound to finalizing the whole movie.
Over the years, I have finished around 80 feature films, short films, commercials and documentaries. Lots of projects that I have worked on have won awards and nominations everywhere around the world. The feature film “The Summer Is Gone” has won the FIPRESCI Prize, the Golden Horse Film Festival for the best feature film and I was nominated for the Best Sound Effects Award. The short film “Jerry” was nominated by the Motion Picture Sound Editors for the Verna Fields Award. The project “Delusion: Lies Within” has been released on the Samsung VR.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I would say it’s a tough but smooth road. After the orientation in Chapman, I found most of my classmates have a very strong background in film production, while I didn’t have any idea on that. I still remembered how bad I felt after we had our first screening of the short film that we had to take care of the whole post process by ourselves, including the dialogue editing, sound effects and ambience editing and mixing. But luckily, during my three years in the school, my mentor Michael Kowalski (“The Bad Kids”, “He Dreams of Giants”, “Lost in La Mancha”, etc.) and my friend Sam Fan (“An Elephant Sitting Still”, “Zombieland: Double Tap”, “Hustlers”, etc.) showed me a lot of support by helping me recording foley and showing me the mixing technique. We’ve been working together since then. In the beginning of this year, three of us just finished a documentary, “Brewmance”, in which I was working as a sound effects editor, Michael as the re-recording mixer and Sam as the supervising sound editor.
Another thing that I feel the most is the working efficiency, which means how well I can finish the job in a shorter amount of time. Back to the school time, I had around six weeks for a 20-min short film, which gave me tons of time trying different things, but obviously it doesn’t work for me anymore as an independent sound editor now. But the good thing in a film school is you are given plenty of time watching and analyzing films and study their craft. I think it was the third year at school when I was working on my thesis film “Jerry”, the availability of the editing suite and mixing stage was very limited due to lots of projects. With all the skills I practiced during the past three years, I not only finished the project well within the limited time but got nominated for the Verna Fields Award by MPSE.
From the beginning of this year, I’ve started working as a supervising sound editor for several projects. I am used to work alone and communicate with my supervisor only, but now, plus the editing work, I will set up several meetings with the director and producer about the schedule, the budget and creative ideas about the story. I actually like the way as it is. Because I always think that the production sound mixers should have more conversation with the sound editors than it is now. With the development of new technology, such as iZotope RX, lots of problems can be solved in seconds in post but may take hours to be solved on set. And there are a couple of times that I hope the mixer had recorded some sound for this or that when I am doing the editing. So as a supervisor, if I can get on a project from a very early stage in the pre-production, I’d love to share my idea with the production.
I have two projects, one short film, one documentary, which just finished shooting. And I am brought into both productions from a very early stage. For the short film, I had had a meeting with the producer and the director several weeks before the production started. During the meeting, we went over the script and we talked about the style of the film and his ideas on sound. The director told me they were about to use long takes for the whole film, which was basically one shot for each scene. In the end, we made a very detailed list of the additional sound effects we’d love to record on set. Several days later, we had another meeting with the production sound mixer and we discussed about the list and made sure we had all the equipment to record everything on the list.
For the documentary, I worked with the producer, Rongdanyang“Sunny” Xiang from Fusionart Pictures. It is a documentary, so we can’t control everything on set, such as the crowd, environment, noise, etc. In the beginning, we had meetings weekly to go over the treatment. Because the film was shot during this pandemic, things changed day by day. In a later meeting, we focused on all the changes on the treatment and I shared my concern about the sound we might not be able to use because of the copyright or other issues.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am working as a sound editor now. And I am registering my own company, but it hasn’t been set up yet. It’s called BoomSonic Sound Inc.
My job is sound editing, including dialogue editing, sound effects editing, and supervising. And I specialize in sound effects editing. I’ve been working on different platforms, including theatrical, online videos and VR platform.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
There are two plans for me now. First of all, I’m looking forward to working for a bigger companies for a couple of years instead of working as an independent sound editor. I’d love to see what their workflow is and improve my skills in both technique and communication.
Secondly, I plan to work on projects on those new platforms and try to explore on game audio. When the new Unreal Engine 5 revealed a couple of months ago, I was so surprised to see how technology can change the vision so drastically. I want to explore what possibilities the new technology can bring into the sound world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6423741/
- Phone: 7147659397
- Email: [email protected]
Image Credit:
Zeron Zhao; Yunkai Shan; Chen Xu; Sam Fan
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