Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Violet Wu. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Violet, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The project that means a lot to me is my thesis project that I’m currently working on. The name of this project is “once”. The reason this film means a lot to me is because it’s my first film as a director.

I have been obsessed with movies since I was a child. My father knows my hobby, so he took me to the movies from time to time. We’d watch two movies at once, sometimes three. If there were some good movies in the theater, we would choose to go to the theater. But if not, we’ll watch the films at home. I especially like being in the cinema, when everything gets dark, I can leave the real world and enter inside the light and shadow. The story happens anywhere, anytime. There are good stories and bad stories, and I will be sad or happy with the characters.

I also have movie directors that I particularly like. Such as Stanley Kubrick, Kon Satoshi, and Akira Kurosawa. My love for movies has also influenced my illustrations. Compared with painting an extremely beautiful picture, I think more about the story of the illustration. I always hope to convey a certain message from my artwork. Later I was admitted to a university in China. But instead of making it to the film department, I became an illustration undergrad. I comfort myself in my heart. I can join the film industry as a pre-production artist, I can draw character designs and backgrounds for animated films, and I can design posters for live-action films. But even if I try my best to comfort myself, I feel pity in my heart. Because I thought at the time that movies (including live-action movies and animated movies) were still very far away from me. Then I came to America. I also went on to become an illustration graduate student. If nothing else, I’ll be an illustrator.

Spring 2020. I didn’t choose the course I was supposed to take because the illustration course was full. Professor Lovell (Rick Lovell) recommended me to take a course in the animation department. That course was called Animation Aesthetics and Practice. It was because of this course that I became firm in what I wanted. Animation students are required to complete a film of their own upon graduation. I immediately started to deal with the matter of changing my major when I found it was possible. I successfully entered the animation department. That’s why I finally got the chance to direct a film of my own.

I became a director. But to be honest, it didn’t feel great. It is different from illustration creation with a high degree of freedom, the work after becoming a director, and the many exchanges and negotiations, made me exhausted. From time to time, I think of the sentence that my friend from the film department said to me: “Only the part inside the camera frame is beautiful, and everything else outside the frame is crazy.”. But if I had to choose again, I would still go to where I am today. I think after this time, I will get used to this busyness and pain. This is the only way to break out of the cocoon and become a butterfly. I look forward to the day when this film is finished. And I also plan to participate in the film festival. For the final sweetness, I can bear all pain.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a very quiet person most of the time. I like reading literature, painting, watching movies. Through these I can indulge in my own imaginary world. Whether it is literature or film, I am partial to those dark stories. In fact, I very much agree with and thank those creators who are willing to convey warmth and positive emotions to everyone. I also wanted to tell some positive stories, but no matter whether I was writing novels or drawing comics, the people in my works seemed to inevitably go to the dark.

My creation contains quiet death, black humor, and enigma. The characters are always melancholy and preoccupied. I will add various metaphors in the shot, some information is very clear, some is very cryptic. I think it is a game between creators and audiences to discover metaphors and find the answers which are hidden inside the pictures. But I am not very interested in creating a sad ending. My creations tend to be a little absurd. The ending is often not sorrowful, but a feeling of loss.

I tried to write some comedies, which were entertaining and light-hearted. For a while, I tried to escape this pattern. I even decided that I needed to make a happy story in my thesis project. Then I found out, it might not be me. For my first movie, I decided to make it fully represent my creative tendencies and current style, which makes this movie becoming a certain commemorative significance for me. So, I stopped struggling with myself and used a script that I planned to draw as a comic five years ago. And the movie became what it is today.

I will never make a film like this again. I hope that in the future, I will create different works and avoid repetition of themes. I hope my movies can have different styles and take place in different time periods and area. And I’m not a person who is particularly willing to express my heart. Even in the project “Once”, I just put a part of myself in it. I don’t want to be a creator who is “honest” to the audience. I don’t think it matters what “I” is. It’s the people in the story that matter. Each of them is alive. I just intercept a section of their life from my creative world and show it to the audience. And those characters and stories don’t need to represent me.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I grew up in a small city in China, it’s not as developed as Beijing or Shanghai. When I used to draw, I always used the traditional way, drawing by hand. The same goes for my peers. When I was in junior high school, I saw digital painting on the Internet. I liked it very much, but I didn’t know how to create it and what tools were needed. If possible, I hope to be able to use the tablet to create digital painting sooner.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I really like a book by Milan Kundera called “Immortality”. There is a concept mentioned in it: God is a sophisticated computer. I think maybe because of this, I don’t think expressing myself is very important. What I need to convey is my thoughts at this stage, so that my creation can become a small code in the vast human civilization. Rather than purely describing and showing my life. My life is just a drop in the ocean inside of the masterplan which created by this “computer”, but creation actually contains infinite possibilities.     cx 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://violetwu.carbonmade.com/about
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/limotic.v?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/violet-wu-a9042a282

Image Credits
Violet Wu