Today we’d like to introduce you to Zhe Song.
Zhe, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in Xi’an, China, a city with over 5600 years of history. This city was the capital of 13 dynasties in China history, and the famous Terracotta Army is in Xi’an as well. I enjoy staying in there with not too fast life pacing.
My parents are always being supportive of what I like and what I want to do. I started to learn playing the piano when I was seven, which is the first seed about art planted in my heart. After two and a half years’ learning, by listening to the music in the radio or tape, I can play the main theme out on my own without checking the music sheet. Sometimes I tried to create and play out the melody in my head. Music becomes more and more important in my life, so does create, I began to enjoy the feeling of making something on my own.
When I was in primary school, with limited VCDs, I didn’t watch many films, but I watched some of the good ones a lot of times at home. One of my favorites during that age is Harry Potter 1&2, I watched them again and again almost every month for over a year. Plus, some other films that get my attention are from Warner Bros. Pictures, there was a strange little idea popped up in my head: this is my favorite studio, and I’m going to work at this place. However, it’s just a thought which vanished very soon. I’m obsessed with science and wanted to become a scientist or engineer like everybody else.
At the fourth year of primary school, I started learning flash, which for most of its purpose, it is a kind of media that allows people to interact with. For me, it is more a tool that allows me to create something visually on my own. I love doing it a lot, I spent almost all of my spare time learning and creating flash animation. The ones I did are simple and rough, but I had a lot of joy making them back then.
As my schoolwork got heavier and heavier, most of my time after school was put into studying, I barely have time to watch films except during some not very busy weekends or winter & summer holiday. Also, making flash animation gradually faded out in my life. I never thought to become an artist, but keep them only as my hobby.
At the end of Junior high school, I watched Schindler’s List. It shocked me that a film can bring the audience such a great emotional impact. This is the second time films get my heart.
The same summer holiday, I went to Beijing and got lucky to know IMAX before I went there. I watched IMAX 70mm of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince on a giant screen. The image quality totally blew my mind. Also, that is the year a lot of digital cinemas are opened. I paid more and more attention to cinema technology and the experience to watch a film.
At the same time, I began to learn some basic video making software and tried to do some simple videos.
During high school, I love physics very much, so I attend the physics training class after regular school time. After nearly three years of training, I won first prize (multiple people) in Shaanxi (Province) region Chinese Physics Olympiad. With the Physics Olympiad prize in hand, I took the early college entrance exam and got a direct ticket to Zhejiang University which is the top 5 university in China. (I no longer needed to take the regular college entrance exam in June)
Because I had the recommendation to university half-year earlier than most of students, I picked up playing piano during that time (because of the heavy school work, I was not able to play it often for years before) and improved my skill to a higher level. I began to learn those more difficult pieces of music I like, and explore what I could do with them. At the same time, I started to make a series of DVDs for my classmates with all the photos and videos collected as a graduation souvenir.
Also, I began to watch films much more frequently, almost one film a day. My parents supported me a home surround sound system with a good TV, I studied both software and hardware to make it work professionally. Watching films with high quality gradually playback environments became a necessity in my life. Those image processing technical things went into my eyes for the first time. I started from a teenager who knows nothing to a “home theater engineer”. Dealing with codec, player filters, computer setups, and everything related to make film-watching experience better. I also became a person pursuing ultimate film experience.
When I got into college, studying those classes is not the only thing I wanted to focus on, making videos is certainly another goal for me. I got into the most professional production and post-production video group at school. In there, I worked with over ten students who are interested in making videos or short films for over 20 videos in the first year using our spare time. I got a huge improvement in both artistic and technical areas.
The second-year in college, I need to choose my major (we only choose a direction in the first year), without a question, I chose Electronic Information Technology and Instrument where my tutor’s lab is focusing on image processing. At that time, I planned my career is to work in a tech company in the film industry and doing creative jobs besides the regular 8×5 work.
The same year, I became the leader of that student group. So I have a chance to run through everything about making a short film.
Based on the experience of watching documentaries and a feature film (Harry Potter 6 I mentioned before) with IMAX film a few times before, I think it is the best experience a cinema could give. In 2014, Interstellar could be one of the last films released with IMAX film copy (it was said back then). I decided to watch the IMAX film version of this movie. The nearest IMAX film I could go to is in Taipei. After the approval of my parents, I started a ten days’ journey in Taiwan to watch a film and travel around the whole island. It was a great experience that I did it on my own.
At the end of my third year in college, I started to think is it truly possible to do both engineer and a filmmaker at the same time? With the experience I’ve been through during the past two years, I felt it’s not very possible, at least it won’t be a long last status. I began to question myself which one do I like better, it just came to a decision so fast that I could not remember struggling in between. I want to be a filmmaker.
After having conversations with my parents and my friends, here I am. Just finished three years MFA film production program. Here at Chapman University Dodge College, everything about film making gathers together for me. I finally have chances to make films with professionals and to be in the film industry. I never regret that I gave up the chance of being an engineer could give me a more stable life. I’m always chasing the life I want. I like music, so I play music. I write and make my own music pieces; I travel and took photos of where I like. I like science, physics, so I advance my knowledge in that area. I love making films, so I took my chance to make my career in the film industry.
Now I created my own film projects, working with other people on several shorts that some of them got into film festivals’ final list or award winner. Now I’m ready trying to go further in the narrative film storytelling path.
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 think most of my path to the decision of film making as my career is smooth because my parents are always supportive, my friends are too. So emotionally and financially, I think I get the best I can get. However, when I finally get here learning and making films, I found challenges are everywhere.
The biggest issue for me is how to deal with people. I feel working in the industry is not only about a person’s ability to tell a story or ability to solve a technical problem, but also how a person talks and acts with other people. I’m a person with my own personality, it was not a problem at all when I was back in college studying engineer because most of the stuff I need to work with depends on myself, there is no as much collaboration as making a film, most of the job we have to get it done on our own, also, if a person is with strong ability to solve a problem, then he or she can get the position of doing it mostly.
Changing my major to film production, it becomes different. A film is a group working result, it requires people to work together to make one thing happen. So how to get people’s trust and how to get the job is more of dealing with people things. I began to adjust myself to how to talk with people, how to express my ideas but also keep myself doing the best I can to make the film better. The politics of talking to people is also a helpful lesson I’ve taken away from film school.
After I truly started making films and know more about the industry, I found there are a very limited amount of theatrical released feature films in a year, which makes it really difficult for me to do one of them. Needless to say work for a studio film as a key crew (the thoughts from childhood). It’s still a big challenge for me to continue work on in the future.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m currently working as a freelance film editor and colorist. I’m also specialized in DIT, post-production supervision, QC technician. I’m good at both narrative storytelling skills and technical specs.
I built up my own workstation, home studio for work, and my DIY NAS (network-attached storage) as my personal and business cloud service. All my clients can enjoy the convenience and reliability of them.
A lot of people would only focus on their own specialized area because they could push everything in that direction and go as far as they can at full speed. I personally like to put myself to everything I like, so I never just leave some of my interests aside at the beginning, with the exploration of everything, for example, editing, sound design, color grading, music, and technical solutions, I found a lot of things are connecting with each other, my inspiration comes up easier if I know more in the related area, and I can deal with things those people only know one thing couldn’t figure out, for example, the turnover process between the dailies to editor, editor to sound designer and colorist sometimes can go wrong if the person is not very clear about what should do. Also, the ability to do things in more areas usually would help me to get a better sense of being creative. For example, playing music helps me to get a better sense of editing the comfortable pacing.
I believe films should be windows for people to completely dive into someone else’s life which they could but mostly couldn’t experience in their world. That’s the power of cinema and the fun of film making, emotion is what people could feel without boundaries, and that’s why I enjoy artistic creation more than being a technical engineer.
I’ve edited over ten short narrative films, two short documentaries, about ten commercial shorts, collaborate with other people to edit one live concert; color graded about 20 short films, over ten commercial short videos in the during the past three years in the US. The experience of doing this amount of work made me grow very fast.
The films I edited has been selected to multiple film festivals during the past three years. I personally won editing awards in LA shorts Awards, Global Film Festival Awards, and Los Angeles Film Awards. I’ve been to Austin Film Festival to watch screenings and meet the other filmmakers while the short film Qafas I edited was in the final selection last year.
Cinema art is subjective, people could get different feelings and comments on the same work. As an audience, I’m pretty open to all kinds of films, as far as it would work for me. It could be about characters, stories, themes, emotions, or even just for entertaining. As a filmmaker, my goal is to create something that will get the audience emotionally involved, to get people connected with the character or another living person on this planet. I’ve been always working in this direction, using the unique advantage to visually and orally express scenes to touch people, which already had some achievements, and I’m going to work it further.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck is definitely going to affect my business a lot. Art is a very subjective form of works, people’s understanding and willingness to watch the project I’ve done is already considered lucky for me. There are so many people working in this film industry, and so many contents fulfill our life all the time, with good skills is a base, to work with other talented people and get people to see the work is also important. This sometimes also needs luck.
In my life, luck is a bonus, but not a necessity I guess.
Contact Info:
- Website: zsong.works
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zhe.song.165
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10762004/
Image Credit:
Yucheng Jin, Yifu Li, David Lary
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