CAS Quarterly

Spring 2017

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/830490

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 44 of 59

C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 45 Talk to me about what your life has been like since you graduated. Okay, after my graduation—actually, I started working/ interning and learning from the 424 team last year. The per- son I'm working for with the company, the dialogue supervi- sor—her name is Erin—and she came from Chapman about 20 years ago. She's like the top notch of the industry. Supervising sound editor for Pitch Perfect, Ride Along 2, and all the big shows. Oh, wow! That sounds like the perfect place for you to land. Tell me more about your experiences at 424. 424 Post is a facility in Culver City next to Sony. Oscar- nominated for sound supervising and sound editing, they have some great supervising sound editors like Sean McCormack and Ben Cook—he's the winner of this year's Emmy for Black Sails. They were supervising sound editors for Apocalypto, for all of Mel Gibson's movies. They have some collaboration with one of the post facilities in Shanghai, so I know the post managers in Shanghai and they said, "If you want to study anything or get training, you definitely want to hang out with those people." So I go there, and I hang out with them. I learn a lot from them. They are super nice to me. That's basically a year and, also, I have some other freelance jobs like I'm mostly doing the post and sound design and editing and mixing for short films. I also have some gigs from China, like these kind of overseas kind of things, but not a lot because of the time zone difference. At 424, they let you leave work in the middle of the day to meet me for this interview?! Yeah, it's great! They treat me so well. So how has your life changed since winning the Cinema Audio Society Student Recognition Award? Yeah, I would say the awards show was very important to me— even at the award ceremony because, as you say, I'm an interna- tional student, I've never been to this kind of awards show, and a lot of people that I know or I read about back in China. Now today, suddenly they show up in front of me and we were shak- ing hands and saying "Hello" to each other—this is really amazing, you know? It's really great, and I contacted some of the mixers like Stephen Tibbo CAS—he gave me his card and I just emailed him and he emailed me back, he's like, "We will meet up after shooting, and we will figure it out later." These are all good resources and good contacts for me. He's a great guy and it's good for you to know him. I'm sure you know he does production sound on Modern Family, and he does post-production sound for many other projects, and then sometimes for Modern Family, as well. He responded to me very quick and he was really polite and interesting. After he finishes all these shows, he may have some work for me, so this is all great for me. We were conversing a little bit about what you admire about California and why you came here to begin with. Hollywood film has been around for so many years, so the whole industry from my point of view is very mature. People know what they are doing because the standard is so high and their skill is so high. Also, with all the protections like the unions and labor and the rules of how many hours you have to shoot for a day and what's your break during the night and you have your own life and all that. I think it's really what I want to experience. I also want to learn because we don't have that in China. That's all the reasons that make the Hollywood film industry the strongest and the best all in the world. I want to experience, I want to learn, and I also want to some- time later, go back [to Beijing]. I can let them know or I can teach them about all of this. Wenrui Fan and Devendra Cleary CAS Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything that you want to talk about in winning your Student Award this year? Any last words for the CAS or anything that you want to express about your award in closing? First, I have to say thank you, CAS, for the award, for even letting me have this chance to be in the room, to be that close with all the famous re-recording mixers and production sound mixers, the sound workers. I mean, when I first got into the hall and I saw La La Land, the whole crew was sitting next to me. Because I really liked the film and I like the direc- tor, he's really young and Whiplash was one of my favorites, and I saw him, I saw the director sitting, like, two steps away from me! I'm like, "This is a dream come true!" And thank you for every professor that I've ever had—like Michael Kowalski, he's my mentor at Chapman University, and thank you to all my friends back at Beijing Film Academy. They support me so much and thanks to my family, my girlfriend, all my friends who are supporting me here. As an interna- tional student, we don't get too many chances to get into the core center of the industry, but I'm lucky and I know all these people and, hopefully in the future, I can bring more value communication-wise. It's a little tough for me when I first came here with all the language and cultural differences, but I'm a fortunate guy to have all my friends and all the people, all the mentors who have guided me through, working through all that and I really appreciate everything so very much.

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of CAS Quarterly - Spring 2017