Life & Work with Arabella Bai

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arabella Bai.

Hi Arabella, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers. 
I was born in Shanghai, China. Every now and then, I would stop for a while, thinking about why I have come this far, committing myself towards what I like, despite having a family that in no means seems to be related to cinematic arts. When I am dragged deep into my memories, I realized that all the artistic journey begins with a phone call in the dry, hot, and late September when I was eleven. When the phone rang, my mom anxiously answered the phone, bearing no words. But I could see light faint of red slowly filling her eyes. That day, my grandpa passed away. 

My mom took a few days off took me to the funeral to say the final goodbye. She was crying, but I could not find the words to comfort her. That moment, I felt a sense of powerlessness. And that feeling keeps haunting me down-that blank or that gap is why I started writing. And I felt something had changed. The notebook I took up recorded me growing up from a 12-year-old child who just suffered the loss of her grandfather to an 18-ready-old grown-up facing the first important life choice. Artistic expression changes from a resort to let out unspeakable emotions to a container and stimulator of the girl’s everyday reflection on life. It is a reminder of living. When I am writing, I feel alive and strong. Then, writing stories and being able to present them onto the big screen, letting all be able to walk through some person’s life and share that emotional journey to heal, was how I got started on directing. During the years of learning film and television production in USC, I was able to develop many shorts that concerned the relationship between people, meanings of death, and sensitive exploration of the characters’ internal worlds, especially those within the female characters. 

Other than writing my own scripts and directing, I also had experience with making production sound and post-sound design. I discovered the beauty of sound during my years in USC and have been working on different feature sets and student film sets as production sound and sound designer. I believe that sound design to me is an essential way of recreating reality to establish emotional truth and deliver both the physical and emotional vibrations to the audiences through emotional sonic authenticity. 

I carry a recorder with me all the time. Doing production sound on set helped me learn how to record and listen to the sounds with ears and the right perspective. Later on, I was able to create my own sound library. From the stream, water drops in Manhattan Central Park to the birds chirping outside my window back home in Shanghai. I am a good listener also in a sense that I hear emotions. The combination of specific sounds allow me to then create that emotional truth with sounds I captured in life. 

After transitioning to post-sound design, I have worked on several short projects. One of them is to create a 1970s prison in Greece when the Junta fell. It was a challenge creating that environment. On the final day of mixing, when I panned the chorus and the crowd chanting, we recorded each to the front and to the surround, I felt myself in the middle of the crowds in 1974, witnessing freedom and democracy being earned back to the people in the place where such things were born. That brings me back to the moment when I was sitting in the movie theater- I felt the physical and emotional vibrations. And that I believe is the beauty of sound design, and the sole reason that I am determined to continue doing sound design in the future. The truth that I had felt was not that moment of truth-it is a cloud of emotional truth. 

That was a summary of my artistic journey and emotional journey. 

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?
I believe that every art journey has been interfered with huge struggles. It is something both internal and external. I think the reason that being able to write, direct, or sound design a film is so important to me is because it is a way of self-healing. We have all been dealing with childhood traumas, and stories relate to us. Whenever I feel powerless inside to create, it is always other stories that fills in my energy to push me to go on forward. External struggles that I have encountered is that I am an introvert-and it was hard achieving the equilibrium of your outer self and your inner self. But I believe that making great stories that you truly believe in are always the way to tackle any kind of outside or inside obstacles. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a screenwriter, director, and a sound designer. I think that having different experiences on different essential departments upon filmmaking allows me to write comprehensively, direct comprehensively, and sound design comprehensively. You write thinking about sound and characters, you direct thinking about characters and emotions, and you sound design into characters and emotions. That, to me, is truly what I am proud of myself. I always believe that artforms are interconnected, and I am still on the way of exploring more artforms-singing, designing, and dancing. I was very fortunate to have written and directed films that concern the relationship between people, meanings of death, and sensitive exploration of the characters’ internal worlds, especially those within the female characters. I was also fortunate as a sound designer who has had experiences from production sound field recording to mixing. I have worked on projects from feature films to short film projects and have been gradually building my own sound library. I believe that sound design to me is an essential way of recreating reality to establish emotional truth and deliver both the physical and emotional vibrations to the audiences through emotional sonic authenticity, and this is true to all the other artforms. 

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I think that vulnerability, passion, perseverance, curiosity, execution, and action are the most important throughout my journey. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jiaqibai7.wixsite.com/my-site
• Email: Arabellabai101@gmail.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arabella-bai-828503257/