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

Hi Xuechen, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I was a journalism major student back to my college, at my third year of college, I got a chance to exchange to Taiwan, I went to the No.1 film school in Taiwan and studied film. That experience was the first trigger for me to pursue my editing path professionally. I enrolled an editing class at that school, the professor of that class was graduated from a US film school, he told us many technical of film editing at that time, I don’t know there are rules of editing and how editing can enhance a film. Final of that class was we need to edit a trailer, using all films released at that year. I took about half a month to finish that final, I tried all the ways to test how music and image can combine together better, and how to make a video express my idea on one hand, make audience feel interesting as well. That is the first time I really get into something, I can put all my effort into it to get a work done, I can find interest from every try. From that final, I learned a lot, but what I find is I really like editing, I want to be an editor. Also I got an A plus for editing class, it encouraged me a lot.

When I finished that exchange program and went back to my college, I decided to pursue my career as an editor, since I was a journalism student in college, I decided to go by a traditional way, go to graduate school and go to a film school to start my path professionally.

It is really a small thing and small class in my whole life, that it totally changed my life. From I took that editing class, I know there is a thing I can put all my effort and I won’t care about gains or losses. I just enjoy it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi, I’m Xuechen Zhu, who graduated from Chapman, dodge college. I’m an LA based film editor. Most of my work are narrative, including short films, feature films, but also documentaries, advertisements. I worked for big clients like Universal, NIO car etc before. I’ve edited advertisements for Beijing Universal for its opening in Beijing in 2021. NIO is one of the biggest new energy car companies in China, I made short videos for them to promote their car, activities and company culture for them.

Expect my editing work, I worked in editorial department for one of the famous TV show in China, called ‘Toast’, that show have over 100 million play volume for each episode. I also worked in Discovery documentaries editorial team before.The whole last year I worked in an Emmy award winning company and worked on the shows for NBC, BBC, ABC E/I program.

I’m good at editing comedy, horror, suspense genres. I like using editing to re-structure and build more tense and interest for a film. I want to use my editing to bring audiences to each stories and experience different life in different stories. Usually people can just have their life and only one story of their life, but by watching a film, they can go into the story that film create and experience the story with characters. I wish I can be the people who can take the audience to an different world.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

That must be the first time I went to a Tv series set. That was the summer before I went to Chapman. I got an intern job on a big Tv series set in China, that is a romance tv series made by Tencent, which is one of the biggest entertainment companies in China. Since that was the first time I went to set, I set up my goal to learn how to do script supervisor professionally, I want to learn that in the real industry and I performed professionally at future.

But a film set was definitely different from what I imagined before. First was the weather, that was a winter and the location was at a cold town in China, at night the weather is only 25F, I could not take my hands out my clothes at night. Second was overtime issue, since the schedule was very tight, if something happened, we need to overtime and there is no overtime pay in China, the last three weeks, we wrapped at 2 am in the morning and call time for next day is 9 am, we basically only have 7 hours to have rest, that include commute time. That is really a big challenge for my body, but in order to make the film finish by time, we must take the challenge.
Third was to accomplish my goal I set at the beginning. I want to learn how to be script supervisor professionally. Since I was an intern, director only asked me to do easiest job, I even can’t touch the scripty notes. I just did that she asked me to do, but at the mean time I talked to the girl how is the script supervisor at that set a lot, she was willing to share with me, but I know, I need practice, I need to really do that job. So one day, when they were catching up the schedule, they need to separate the camera team to two teams, they need a script supervisor for the new team, I know that is the time, I said I can do that, from the long time work together, director and other crew, they know I am a responsible person, they said yes and let me be the script supervisor for the new team.
I know all the things are hard on the way I grow up, but I think I made it.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I want to share a story about this, I remembered the first time my first feature film screening on the theatre. When I saw people walk into the theatre, the theatre started from empty to almost full, when the film started, I observed the audience, I can see their emotional on their face, I can feel they are into the story and spent their time with the characters. That definitely the most rewarding aspect part of being a filmmaker, I know people will effect by the work they watched, read, listened. Even though they won’t change a lot after that, but I know they at least will be touched at some part, that is what I pursue. I don’t want to effect people a lot, but I want to use film as an intermediary to bring something different to people. Different emotion, stories, feeling, anything can touch people. That is enough.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://xuzhu6.wixsite.com/my-site-4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolezhuxuechen/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xuechen-zhu-99a58a190/
• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11420817/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1