Yulin Kuang (director), Charlene Wang (camera operator)

Yulin Kuang (director), Charlene Wang (cam op), Zack Wallnau (DP), Travis Shannon (1st AC), Jennifer Hwang (production designer)

Kimberly Hwang (producer)

Charlene Wang (camera operator), Zack Wallnau (DP)

Krista Jee Baxter (hair / makeup artist)

Kyla Plewes (editor)

Christiana Morgenroth (1st AD)

Caitlin Magarity (2nd AD)

Yulin Kuang (director), Whitney Milam (producer)

Jennifer Hwang (production designer), Nicolette Daskalakis (set dresser), Danielle Aziz (set decorator)

yulinisworking:

So this is a fun post for me.

We recently wrapped production on We’ve Met Before, a short film I directed that’s set in the Twilight Saga Universe and sponsored by Lionsgate and Women in Film. I’m going to make another photo post later with more behind-the-scenes, but this one is a bit specific – this one is a spotlight on all the incredible, hard-working women on our crew.

I’ve said this before – there have been a lot of times when I’ve felt self-conscious about calling myself a director. For a long while, I didn’t match the mental picture I had of a director – some grizzled, coffee-in-hand, headset-wearing cool guy who had inside jokes with all the bros in the camera department. Eventually I realized this was dumb, and the only way to become less self-conscious about the word was to keep directing, and earn the badge of calling myself a “director” through the work I was making.

To be honest, I’m not even sure where that mental picture came from. That image I had of the all-dudebro camera department? That’s so much less common on the indie film sets I’ve worked on than my imagination had led me to believe. I’ve worked on sets that are almost entirely male, but I’ve also worked on sets that are almost entirely female. My favorite sets are the ones which are far more balanced and the crew is made up almost entirely of my friends and I don’t have to waste time thinking about gender politics when I should be focusing on directing the actors and watching the shot.

While every new article on women in film boasts depressing new statistics, I feel there’s a need to also remind people that there are a lot of women working in film right now. Now more than ever. I think those articles are geared towards changing the minds of higher-level gatekeepers who may be less inclined to hire women, due to whatever unconscious biases they may hold. And that’s a good thing, it’s something that should be done, and Hollywood shouldn’t get a pass on the appalling numbers of women in this industry.

But as a young woman coming up in film inundated by these articles on a daily basis, am I meant to feel emboldened and forge on to spite those odds or would I feel disheartened and somewhat intimidated by them? I can only speak for myself, but it’s a mixture of both, depending upon my mood.

My point, I suppose, is that there should be a lot more visibility of the talented young women who are currently working in film and coming up through the ranks. Look at these photos. We aren’t ‘the future of film’, we’re the present day of film. Young girls who are considering a potential career in film should know that they aren’t arriving to a padlocked boys club where they’ll have to prove themselves constantly as ‘one of the guys’ to get taken seriously. That probably was a reality some years ago, but I’ve had the luxury of benefitting from the work of several decades of women who came before me. (Sidebar, this is a thought expressed much more eloquently and beautifully by Shonda Rhimes in her Glass Ceilings speech at The Hollywood Reporter, and I highly recommend watching it in full.)

So yeah. Take these photos as my pebble thrown at an outdated idea of the ‘all male film crew’. Shoutout to WIF/Lionsgate/Stephenie Meyer for giving us this incredible opportunity, and shoutout to all my ladies in film. We work hard, we love the work, and when we’re on set, we don’t have time to deal with the infinite odds they’re saying are stacked against us.

Photo credit: Valerie Chiang (@ninebagatelles)

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1FHhQgT.

yulinkuang:

I received some pretty amazing news yesterday, I’ve been selected as one of six female filmmakers to direct a short film set in the official Twilight Universe for Lionsgate and Stephanie Meyer.

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who voted for me and supported me, I love and love and love you! I can’t wait to get to work and I’m going to do everything I can to tell this story in a way that fans of Alice and Jasper will be happy with. 

I was going to write a lengthier post meditating on the nature of being a fandom participant and a creator but then I just got stuck on HOW COOL IT IS that I get to contribute to the canonical universe of a story as huge as Twilight. I mean, can we just take a moment to recognize how freaking cool that is? As a fangirl filmmaker who got her start as a 12-year-old writing fanfiction, I just want to say a giant massive thank you to Stephanie Meyer for being so generous with her story universe and for also really supporting emerging female filmmakers in this way. 

As a female POC director, you start to hear so many disheartening statistics that they really don’t mean anything to you anymore, and so often the response in Hollywood is a giant isn’t this terrible isn’t this awful but there really isn’t much more we can do, is there? shrug. It’s so much easier to say “It’s a terrible shame there aren’t more female directors” and do nothing, but Stephanie Meyer and her team actually really did something about it. I have infinite respect for her for that, and I really profoundly hope that if I’m ever in a position of influence on even a fraction of her level, I can do the same for the next young girl.

Anyway. Twilight! It has brought me happiness beyond what I could ever rationally have expected. The only other book series that I’ve felt this indebted to is Harry Potter, which first inspired me to start writing and dreaming and scheming of worlds beyond my own. All of this makes me feel sparkly and excited to begin.

Much love,

Yulin Kuang
writer | director | fangirl filmmaker
http://ift.tt/1aMnLyM

Reposted from http://ift.tt/19MIOXD.

The Making of SPORE – Part One: Pre-Production – Behind the Scenes Vlog

This was my favorite part of the video. Not so much because of what she’s saying; she’s talking about how she’s back at The Americana looking for costume options for Spore, and how the shooting schedule has been pushed back. And she’s very much caught up in the details.

But she’s walking past that big poster for the last Hobbit movie. And it’s such a cool moment. Because more than a decade ago, growing up in Fayetteville, it was seeing Fellowship for the first time that started her on this journey. And now the Rings franchise is ending, and for a fan it’s sad, but look: There’s a new beginning. The road goes ever on.

Because she’s doing it. Not just acting, but creating. Bringing together people like Taylor, Whitney, Miles, Zack, and Ashley, inspiring them, getting lost in the details, the thousand decisions, pushing past setbacks and doubt and exhaustion, all to take this completely insubstantial thing, this tiny little idea, this dream, and turn it into something real.

And it’s badass. But if you look past the badassery you can still see the little girl from Fayetteville, and the determination that carried her from that moment to this. And I don’t know. I just thought it was cool.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1ahweAw.

“It was Gina Bythewood who told me, ‘If someone is just a pig to you on set, don’t deal with it behind closed doors, because you have to show the whole crew that you will deal with it and you will not have it.’”

– Ava DuVernay, from http://ift.tt/1BFubkK

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1GTmP0f.