Today we’d like to introduce you to Aria Li.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ve always been a very spiritual and creative child. One funny memory is that when I was in middle school, I felt a connection to Picasso after my family vacationed in Spain. The autumn following that trip, I decided to draw one new drawing a day, just like him. It was a burst of creativity, a small renaissance in my life- I drew birds, dancing people, new locations and environments. My mom was delighted and would often post photos of the pictures to social media.
So, I’ve always known I wanted to do something artistic, but it wasn’t till high school that I really found what I wanted to focus on.
In the summer of 2016, I was at Harvard Summer School shopping for classes when I decided to step into a course called Advanced Screenwriting. I actually at the time had very little idea what screenwriting was. But as the lecture started, I just felt this deeply nourishing and stimulating connection to the material that was being taught at a level which I’ve never felt before. I always tell people it was like being hit by a truck, a very good truck. A less humorous way to express that is that it felt like falling in love. The ideas of constant struggle and transformation on the part of the main characters as being key tenants of screenwriting was something that I related to and that deeply fascinated me.
After announcing to my parents that I wanted to do film, my mom took me to LA to see the best film school in the world. Nestled amongst the palm trees, the place was like a shining cream-colored beacon of possibility but also an inaccessible one. It was near impossible to get in, I learned; but I had the great idea of asking the tour guide if there was a summer program.
That summer, I attended USC Summer School. The professors there intimidated me, and I turned that around and made a short film called “Critique,” about an art student who flourishes despite her professor’s harsh feedback. I was roommates with a driven girl named Ishaq, who is now directing wonderful short films in the Bollywood Scene. She also had a close and complicated relationship with a mom who deeply supported all her artistic endeavors. Funny how life works out like that.
Before I jump to the part where I was lucky enough to be admitted to USC, I wanna talk about the grassroots process of making my USC application film. My mom and I co-wrote my application film, my dad and I starred in it, and my mom and I shot it. It was a wholesome little family endeavor, but it did the job and catapulted me to a whole new platform.
I was then of course lucky enough to be admitted to USC Film School, where I spent four years learning the crafts of screenwriting (my best subject), cinematography (my worst subject), directing, and virtual production, the latter including VR and XR technologies. I both made friends with and dated talented and artsy people, which was not always drama-free but was sincerely the most memorable part of the whole thing.
It’s very serendipitous looking back now because when I discovered the film was also when my parents started to consider filmmaking as a possibility for their company. Five years later, when I graduated the company was at a place where it was ready for me to join and continue developing film and entertainment-related divisions, which I had inspired my parents to get into years prior.
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?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. Specifically, I went through quite a difficult time my junior year of college. Being away from my family (I was by myself in the US), doing the toughest class in my program (the infamous junior thesis project class), feeling isolated because of the pandemic, and going through a tough breakup caused me to struggle with my mental health. My family and I collectively decided that it would be good for me to go home and rest for a year. I felt a lot of shame about this at the time, but ultimately this season of my life taught me the importance of rest and taking care of myself. After my family banded together to help me out of the tough spot, I am also now closer to them than ever. We are a tight unit, and they matter more to me than anything.
Another thing I wanted to bring up is that I always struggle with comparing myself to others– it’s gotten a lot better recently with the help of my therapist, but going to a great school like USC inevitably means being surrounded by people whom I admire but can compare myself to. I wanted to bring this up because people always think everyone else is doing better than them, but I want to say that while I may seem like I have my stuff together, I often struggle with my self-image and feel like I’m doing enough.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I never envisioned this for myself growing up, but right after graduating, I joined my parents’ company’s new Los Angeles branch, where I do some truly exciting work. L&A Group, founded in 1999, is a publicly traded leading design firm in China which operates in landscape design, architecture, urban planning, theme park design and operation, and cultural tourism planning, among others. At the LA branch (called Millennium L&A), I split my time between four divisions involving the company’s new expansions.
Firstly, L&A Group has this really cool project called “The Silos,” a 6000 square-foot Silo factory in Shenzhen that is renovated to be an immersive museum experience. When it opened around a year and a half ago, it was a great success, with many visitors and government officials coming to check it out. For the second year’s grand reopening, we are developing an immersive theater play to put on, collaborating with the wonderful Normal Studios from Montreal to create interactive projection-mapping backgrounds to go with the play. My job is the head writer as well as the creative director, which is a bit intimidating. However, this is such a thrilling job for me because I get to use my previous writer’s room experience and also because writing is just something I love to do. I also love the immersive medium, so getting to play with that has been a joy.
Secondly, I’m the head of the U.S Intellectual Property division, where we develop moving characters and stories which appeal to children and use low-budget methods to popularize them, such as short animated clips for tiktok and sticker packets for WeChat. Once the characters are popular, we hope to license them for merchandising. I’m fortunate to work with very talented illustrators and animators who teach me new things every day and always delight me with their creations.
Thirdly, we have a burgeoning VR film division, where we are developing a small slate of VR projects. I am personally quite passionate about the capabilities of VR, especially its ability to create empathy in people. We are currently developing a China Urban Village VR Project, which is about the intersecting stories within the vanishing urban villages of Shenzhen. We are attempting to capture the scope of urban villages both as a cultural and economic hub, as well as a richly layered historic artifact. Our writers in China are currently venturing into the villages every week to get first-hand interviews, off of which we will build our narrative story.
Fourthly, I’m the host and creative director of Aria’s Lens, a docu-series for social media featuring artists in the creative industry. So far, we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing people such as a non-binary clown performer who works at one of the biggest shows in Vegas, a decorated Taiwanese violinist that played on the sidewalk during the pandemic, and the seasoned production designer of Fight Club and the Minority Report. We post our content both in China and the U.S. A central passion of mine is radical empathy and curiosity that transcends borders, and with this social media channel, I get to practice that every day.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
To support me, please follow my personal journey at @aria_Sijia_li and my social media channel @arias.lens!
I’m always open to grabbing coffee with a fellow creative or discussing possible collaborations. You can reach me at @[email protected].
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.millennium-la.com/video-production
- Instagram: @aria_Sijia_li
- Other: @arias.lens
