We were lucky to catch up with Yuelin Zhao recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Yuelin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

It is a short film called “Summer Knows” shot and produced in a small city called Wanzhou in China. Last year was the worst year for me – I got severe depression during COVID and I stopped working on any film set for almost a year. I seriously doubted my talent as a designer – as someone who does not have an art background, I compare myself with other designers all the time and I was overwhelmed by toxic thoughts.

Then my friend Hongshi reached out to me and asked if I want to work on a short film that she has developed for quite a while. The key crews of the production are all my really good friends. To be honest, I was very hesitant because I was not in a good mental state, and I was not confident that I could do my job well. I still decided to work on it because it was a reunion with everyone after two years of quarantine, and it was also the first project that I would do in my home country.

It turned out to be the best choice I made – I had the opportunity to try using Unreal Engine 5 in the pre-production to pre-visualize my design. I also pulled ideas out from my childhood memories and brought in a lot of my personal items from the 90s to make the film more authentic. The story is very touching and moving and I had truly enjoyed bringing the backstory of the characters to life with my design. Most importantly, I was surrounded by love and encouragement from my friends and the crew. Everyone on the team was acknowledging my work and complimenting my design after the production. I have not felt such fulfillment for a long time and this project really boosted my confidence – it made me realize that I do still love designing, and making my vision come true could really make me genuinely happy. It was really a life saver that dragged me out from the dark hole of depression. Whenever I think about the time I spent in Wanzhou, it would still bring me joy. It is definitely the most precious part of my memory.

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

My name is Jolene and I am a freelancing production designer currently working in the Los Angeles area. When I first entered the film industry, I actually wanted to become a sound designer. But after I worked on my first project as a designer in 2018, I realized that I enjoyed playing with the visual elements of the film more than anything else. I started learning about the craft by mostly gaining experiences on non-union sets and taking some production design classes. I am open to work in every role in the art department as I believe that each role would give me a new perspective and challenges. However, the more I work on set, the more I started to realize that there are still so many things to learn and improve. I do not have a solid art background and I have never learned drawing professionally, so I took a break from film production in 2022 and focused on learning software like Blender, Unreal Engine and Sketch Up. Now, I’d be able to present my designs to the director with more tools in my tool kit. I enjoy creating a world out of nothing, especially a sci-fi or dystopia story. It gives me so much freedom when designing and it feels like writing out the story with visual cues. Watching the outcome on screen just gave me satisfaction.

What I am most proud of is that I am bold with my color choices when putting together a color palette. Besides doing detailed research on the story, I also want to create a striking visual by using contrast and unique colors. Sometimes directors would love my crazy ideas and sometimes they don’t, but I always try pitching it to them first. I am also very organized when it comes to breaking down the script, putting together a budget and creating a calendar for the team. I am a team player and aim to keep an effective communication between the crew. I try to be as clear as possible in my instructions when I am leading a team and make sure everyone in the art department knows the direction they are going.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I don’t really have a specific mission – I don’t really have an ego of becoming a top-class production designer or working on big-name films. And my goal is never about the money. My mission is to stay sane and happy, and to always work on good stories that touch people. I understand that the mainstream film productions will generate professional workflow – Hollywood becomes a huge machine and it is very hard to be 100% creative all the time. I am not against it – but I do feel like I need to always find an outlet for my creative ideas. I want to keep creating, learning and improving myself – I wish that I would still keep the passion of learning new things when I turn 40 or 50.

This was actually a conversation that I kept discussing with friends and family. Some of them worried that I won’t be able to go anywhere if I don’t set up a clear goal for my career. If it was me from two years ago, I would also have the same worry – I really wanted to “go somewhere higher” as a designer and I was hustling to get on jobs almost every single day, but I would still not be satisfied after every job. Eventually I even got myself into the ER because I literally was working for 30 consecutive days without resting. So I stopped running and asked myself what I was really looking for in my career – instead of trying to achieve certain results, I tried to enjoy the process more and not thinking about the outcome too much. What really satisfies me during a production is to witness my own growth – it is never about the scope of the production or how famous I would become after that. I don’t set up “clear goals” for myself ever since then. The goal is to enjoy the process of learning, and I want to keep it that simple for the rest of my life.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I am never a technical person, and I always refused to learn any new software because I assumed that I would be horrible at it. But the more I work on projects, the more I realized that I need to have this skill to create better craft. Although COVID quarantine was a rough time, it was also that time I discovered some great online classes and free resources that I did not know about. For example, Sketch Up provides free basic modeling and rendering tutorials that are very easy to follow and understand. And YouTube has free Blender tutorials taught by BlenderGuru that are very fun to follow along with. These tutorials are not boring at all and surprisingly, it turns out that I reallly enjoyed learning new software and I was totally not bad at them.

Another resource that I wish I knew sooner is the Production Design Initiative program – it is an opportunity for the production designers who are interested in learning more about the union productions. I did not know about the program until two years ago and I wanted to give it a try. Although everything is currently on strike and we don’t really have any job opportunities as we get in, but there are tons of free classes taught by the guild members. These are some great classes that you won’t be able to find outside the union without paying expensive fees. I wish I knew about this resource sooner so that I could hop on right after I graduate.

Contact Info:

• Website: joleneyuelinzhao.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joleneyuelinzhao/

Image Credits
Luk, Cecilia Hua