Jin Di, also known as Dean, or by the nickname Hanzi, is one of the most in-demand editors in the advertising industry in China. Perhaps you’ve seen his works nominated for awards under one of these names, not knowing it’s the same person. Dean works with top creatively driven production companies, contributing to many visually diverse commercial films. SHP met with Dean to talk about commercial film editing, his approach to conscious filmmaking and his ‘ dream’.
Jin Di (英文名Dean, 也被叫做“Hanzi”)是中国广告业内最受欢迎的剪辑师之一。也许你在诸多提名奖项的作品中听过上面的名字，却没有意识到他们其实是同一个人。Dean和很多顶级的创意广告制作公司合作，他的广告作品视觉风格多样。这次，SHP和Dean聊了聊广告剪辑，其有意识的影片制作方法，以及他的梦想
Sitting down with Dean, who has been a commercial film editor for over 14 years, you instantly get the feeling his wealth of knowledge comes with a kinetic energy. This feeling doesn’t come from the hectic, ‘all over the place’ way of expression often characteristic to creatives, but from the many well thought-through ideas that he talks about.
我们和Dean坐下来聊天，这位业界人士已经在广告剪辑领域工作了14年，我们立刻感受到他渊博的知识来源于他的活力和能量。但并非是创意人士常有的那种忙乱，“眉毛胡子一把抓”的表现，而是条理异常清晰的叙述和想法。
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“Habit prevents you from doing creative things”, says Dean. Dean is very aware of his need to continue experimenting with various ways of expression in order to avoid the pitfall of repetition. Between the client’s brief and other people’s jobs, there are things an editor can’t change, but Dean says it’s important for him to always do something different. “Nowadays some commercials all look alike in some ways — take vehicle commercials for example—the similar style in directing, similar lighting, editing, no matter who directed it”. So Dean’s conscious approach is ensuring he is contributing to different visual storytelling, manipulating the plot to assemble footage into an end product that, if doesn’t break the boundaries of commercial films, at least pushes them a little further. “The Director is like a God of a production. I wish when a film is released people talk about it because of the aesthetics which the director has lead us to accomplish as a collective, rather than breaking it down into individual cinematography work, editing work, production design work, etc.. Being creative is hard, and we inevitably repeat ourselves sometimes. But films can only get better when you realize that. When I was young, I refused a lot of ideas, but being my age now, I accept a lot of different views and people. I accept the truth that we’re all different. It’s the diversity in people that helps me craft my work, polish every second in every single film I do” Dean added.
“习惯常常让你墨守陈规，”Dean表述道。他非常清楚只有不断地探索多种多样的表现手法，才能避免陷入一再重复的陷阱。很多事情，比如客户的需求，与他人的协作，剪辑师是没有办法掌控的。但是Dean表示，对自己而言，做出改变是非常重要的。“现如今，很多广告看起来都很相似—拿汽车广告打个比方吧—不管导演是谁，都是相似的摄影，灯光，剪辑风格。”所以Dean的有意识的剪辑方法，比如不同的视觉叙述方式，故事情节的素材整理，使得最后的产品广告，在不冲破商业广告界限的同时，至少希望能走得更远一点。“导演之于作品就像是上帝之手。我希望广告成品出来的时候，人们谈到的是导演希望引导观众看到的美学，而不是单纯的摄影艺术，剪辑作品，制作设计等…时刻创意十足是一件艰难的事，我们有时候会不可避免地重复自己。但是只有当我们意识到这点时，作品才会变得更好。我年轻的时候，曾经拒绝接受很多东西，但是到了我现在的年纪，我接受很多的事物和人，接受每个人都是不一样的这个事实，正是人的如此不同在帮助我做我的工作，是他们在帮我做每一帧每一秒的决定”Dean补充道。
“The job still has a lot to offer—every 5-7 days you ‘have a new life’, he says, “working with different directors and constantly learning”. It is demanding work too, when focusing on one commercial film, he works 12 intense hours a day before showing it to director, facing deadlines that seem impossible. But he makes it work, taking on responsibility when a crisis emerges, even if sometimes it means testing personal limits and finishing the cut on a train or in a taxi, with no time to rethink or redo while still trying to push the envelope.
“这份工作能够提供很多新的体验，甚至每5-7天，你就能够‘重生’”，他说道，“通过和不同的导演合作，可以持续不断地学到新事物。”这份工作要求很高，当他需要专心制作一部广告片时，面对看起来似乎是不可能的截止日期，常常需要每天连续工作12小时，最终才把成品给到导演。这就意味着要突破个人极限，有时要在火车或者出租车上完成最后的剪辑。根本没有时间反思或者返工，但是他依然想要尝试突破极限。
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Doing 30-40 commercials per year, Dean seems well in his element and restless at the same time. When discussing his dream list, he said it varies and changes in time. Some long time goals have disappeared, while new goals often arise. So now he keeps these goals to himself as he quietly pursues the ones that keep him inspired. But there is one he hesitantly told us about, which is to make his own feature film before he dies. “One film is enough” for him, he said. There’s no Chinese movie he really takes as a reference but admires works of Krzysztof Kieślowski and even took three weeks to travel to Poland, visiting the acclaimed director’s grave, as well as film sets and film schools where Kieslowski, Polanski, and Wajda studied.
每年完成30-40部广告片，“Dean看起来平静不安.” 当谈到他想做的一些事情时， 他说那些东西会经常随着时间变化，在一些渴求已久的东西消失的同时一些新的会填充进来，他没有过于在意这些事情并且讳莫如深。但他告诉过我们一个谨慎的愿望，就是死前完成一个自己的电影，一个就够了。
他没有提及中国影片，但是表示非常欣赏基耶斯洛夫斯基的作品，他甚至花了3周的时间去波兰，只为去看一看挚爱导演的墓地，基耶斯洛夫斯基，波兰斯基，瓦伊达学习电影的学校以及他们影片中的场景.
Kieslowski’s Cemetery
Dean is aware that dreams only come true from hard work. He has been working on his script for quite some time and still has a long way to go. But he feels hopeful about the project, as he has recently been selected as one of the six students of Krzysztof Piesiewicz film writing workshop 2018. At first, he just applied to meet his idol. But after a few of the writing assignments, something triggered and inspired inside him when he realized he can really write. Learning scriptwriting was the result of a search for new meaning, a quest to widen his views and look at the familiar industry from a different perspective. You can recognize this approach as being similar to how Dean edits, and see it in his dynamic, visually bold works.
Dean深知只有努力工作才能实现梦想。他对自己的项目充满了希望和激情，他被选为皮耶谢维茨电影编剧工作坊的六个学生之一。当时申请只是为了见见偶像，可是经过几轮作业写作后内心里一些东西被触动了，发现自己也可以写作。。剧本写作能够帮助探索新的意义，拓宽视野和学习从另一个视角看待熟悉的事物。你能从Dean的剪辑手法和其视觉大胆和充满活力的作品中，看到潜移默化的影响，
This kind of thorough approach to everything he does, balanced with the fast-paced result-driven style of work is not something you come across every day in the industry, and that feature film might become reality sooner than expected.
这种全面的方法贯穿于他对任何事情的处理中，同时还能在快节奏，以结果为导向的作品风格中找到平衡，这在目前的行业中并不常见，希望Dean的影片计划早日实施。
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