Rising Stars: Meet “Lance” Haoyuan Li

Today we’d like to introduce you to “Lance” Haoyuan Li.

Hi “Lance” Haoyuan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hello, thanks for inviting me for this interview. My name is Haoyuan Li; usually I go by “Lance”. I’m currently a full-time freelancing cinematographer. My connection with filmmaking started when I was an undergrad in UCSD. I was originally Chemistry major but worked in the media department for a Chinese student organization. I shot both photos and videos for this student org and gradually found my interest towards narrative video content making. The first video I DP-ed was a video demonstrating an airport pickup service through the perspective of a fictional college freshman. Later, I switched my major to Visual Arts-Media, which is more towards experimental art than narrative filmmaking.

During my time studying media major, I met a group of friends who were also passionate with filmmaking, so we started making narrative content for class assignments as well as on our own. In early 2018, we made a short film in the first year of 48-Hour film festival hosted by UCSD Triton TV and won five awards including best picture, which greatly encouraged us. Some of these friends went straight to work in the film industry after college, while I further pursued cinematography MFA program at Chapman University. I’m proud of what I have learned in the past few years and I’m ready to tell more fantastic stories through moving images.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Overall, I think I’m lucky to find my focus relatively early in my life. My only big struggle was the decision to switch my major from Chemistry to Visual Arts in undergrad. I’m very grateful that my parents were supportive of my decision at the end. I did not have a solid foundation when I got started, so I studied thousands of hours of online tutorials in addition to film school classes and later applied all these knowledges through various film sets.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Today I’m a freelancing cinematographer based in LA, and I also take gaffing and coloring works. I have color graded all of my films so far.

As the end of 2022, I have worked on over 100 film productions of various sizes in the cine department, DP-ed over 15 short films and one feature film. I do not specialize in one cinematography style; my priority focus is always the story. My cine work contains all kinds of genres: science fiction, thriller, drama, romance, comedy… My goal is to always provide a unique look to suit each project.

What makes you happy?
The process of prepping and making a movie gives me a great sense of achievement, which makes me happy. I feel excited whenever I see a great story or visualize a great one. To tell a story well, you have to fully understand the characters and their backgrounds; each film is a completely new journey into somebody else’s life. These experiences also end up helping me understand more about my place in this world. Video games, especially those single-player RPGs, are another major source of my daily entertainment. Other than the love of stories, I also play badminton and enjoy all kinds of great food.

Contact Info:

• Website: lancelhy.com
• Instagram: @lancelhy
• Other: https://space.bilibili.com/4804408/

Image Credits
Bingcheng Pan Carol Xie Olivia Wang