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Female Perspectives: DIRECTOR Zhao Dan’s Power From Within

Director-editor ZhaoDan 导演兼剪辑 赵丹

On many of her films Zhao Dan multitasks as a director and editor. Not surprisingly, as before having moved behind the camera in 2017, she’s started her career as an editor. At the time, freshly graduated from filmmaking department of East China Normal University, Zhao Dan’s ambition was to direct a feature film. Ten years ago, however, the movie space was even more difficult to penetrate compare to today. So, she applied for an editor assistant position in a post-house and entered a period of her career where she literally was living in the office at times. Yet with all the work, not a single film from that period in which she expressed herself.

在项目中赵丹常常同时担任导演与剪辑。当然，这没什么好意外的，赵丹本就有剪辑背景，早在2017年成为导演掌镜之前，二十多岁的她就已经是一名剪辑了。那一年，她还是华东师范大学（编导专业）的应届毕业生，她的野心是拍故事片。与今天的毕业生不同，十年前的毕业生不容易进入影视行业。因此，“曲线救国”的赵丹申请了一家后期工作室的剪辑助理职位，在这一段职业生涯中，她有时真的得住在办公室。然而，虽然经过了这么多的努力，赵丹却认为那个时期的作品都没有自己的表达。

Neiwai 内外

Around seven years ago, when Chinese publishing giant Modern Media Group established iFashion, Zhao Dan left the post house taking the chance for a clean break from traditional advertising into the nascent world of fashion films. This way, she witnessed how in the early days, magazine editors  started to shape a new genre of fashion films, solely relying on their aesthetics and sense of what’s visually interesting. With a lot of space for creativity, Zhao Dan’s job was to edit all this strong visual material into short films. But more importantly, short films “with meaning”. Then somewhere between New Media Group buying Nowness Global followed by iFashion team transferring to NOWNESS China, and with big encouragement of editor-in-chief, Zhao Dan finally started to direct some of her own films.

大约七年多前，中国出版巨头现代传播集团创立iFashion，赵丹离开了后期工作室，抓住机会与传统广告一别两宽，迈入了时尚广告的新世界。这段转折让她亲眼目睹了那些杂志编辑们，是如何凭借着优秀的审美与感觉，摸索在视觉上呈现有趣的内容方式，开始塑造时尚电影新类型的。赵丹的工作就是把这些精彩强烈的视觉素材剪辑成短片，公司也给了她很大的创作空间。重点是，这些短片必须有“有意义”。后来，在现代传播集团收购了Nowness国际、当初的iFashion团队成为了Nowness中国后，在主编的鼓励下，赵丹终于开始执导一些自己的电影。

The first of her work that she likes, despite describing it as “raw”, is a short film, featuring Japanese dancer Bambi Naka, made for the NOWNESS series “Power and Performance”. Zhao Dan shares, that unlike editorials with dancers, she wanted to get a bit more than just a pretty picture. The voice over comes from the interview she did with Bambi, trying to immerse herself into the dancer’s mind. “I can’t really dance, I’m not a well-coordinated person, but I’m sensitive to music and movement. I just express it not through my own body, but through my films with dancers. When I’m directing, I don’t think about how the dancer should be, according to my vision. I hope to catch on camera what’s special about the person, and let it guide the shot”. Another work she considers representative, is the highly conceptual “Acting Class” series for acting school The Dome Studio established by celebrity director Chen Guofu, actors Zhou Xun, and Chen Kun. Zhao Dan comments: “I wanted to show the relationship between the actors themselves and with their audience, from a different perspective. I think the film with Bambi helped me find my directing style. And this series of work is a continuation of that exploration, that’s why both are very important to me”.

在自己的作品中，第一部赵丹喜欢的短片，由日本舞者Bambi Naka主演，是一部为NOWNESS打造的系列：《表演力》(Power and Performance)。赵丹分享道，她不想拍出一部只呈现跳舞画面的editorial，她想要的不仅仅是漂亮的画面。这里的VO源于她在采访Bambi时的素材，她试图沉浸在这位舞蹈家的思想中。“我自己不太会跳舞，我自己本人是肢体不太协调的一个人。我觉得我对身体和音乐是有感受力的，只是我的表达不是通过我自己的身体，而是通过我的片子。当我拍一个人的时候，我觉得要把他本人的特点拍出来，而不是我想象中我想拍一个什么样的舞蹈。” 她认为另一件具有代表性的作品是由著名导演陈国富、演员周迅和陈坤创立的表演学校山下学堂的颇具概念性的“表演课”系列短片。赵丹评论道: “我想从一个不同的角度去展现演员本身与观众之间的关系。我认为Bambi影片帮助我找到自己的导演风格。而这一系列的工作是探索的延续，这就是为什么这两部影片对我来说都非常重要。”

Bambi Naka 感官世界

Zhao Dan became and grew as a director in NOWNESS, an environment where creative freedom is valued and nourished. Liberation of creative nature is at core of this type of editorial platforms, while in traditional advertising directors might have bigger budgets, but their creative freedom is often restrained or compromised. Nevertheless, Zhao Dan doesn’t seem to worry. She has reasons to firmly believe that there is a place for her in the traditional advertising scene. She believes, there’s a new wave of local brands like Neiwai, or even financially-successful no-names, that approach advertising, valuing creative freedom. She even predicts, in the near future, the percentage of companies like this will rise up to 30%. In Zhao Dan’s mind, the future is all about diversity, where traditional and “individuality-oriented” advertising can coexist.

赵丹是在NOWNESS这个重视和滋养创作自由的环境中成长为一名导演的。这种editorial拍摄为主的平台很注重创意能量的释放，跟传统广告不同，在传统广告项目中导演也许有更大的预算可以使用，但创作自由经常受到限制和妥协。但赵丹似乎并不担心，并相信在传统广告圈也有她这样的导演生存之道。她相信，像内外这样的本土品牌，或者甚至是财务上相当成功的非知名品牌，将会选择与众不同的方式进行广告宣传，同时他们还将继续看重创作的自由。她甚至预测，在不久的将来，这类公司的比例将会上升到30%左右，而不是通过代理机构和繁琐的流程进行传统的广告宣传。在赵丹看来，未来是多元化的，传统广告与有创意，有个性广告可以共存。

Women on film sets across the country certainly contribute to this “all-embracing” version of the future. When we ask about her experience being a female filmmaker in China, Zhao Dan says she is rather fortunate. “I’ve started directing in fashion, where women are not a vulnerable group. Plus, I feel in the industry in Shanghai, gender discrimination is not as strong, as elsewhere in China”, says Zhao Dan.  Of course, she has experienced the lack of respect on sets, but Zhao Dan associates the gender prejudice with generational gap more than with anything else. In her experience, only an older, conservative filmmaker can wonder, why women choose to be directors, when the best in profession globally are still men. To this, she answers, that women only started getting opportunities. Just wait and you’ll see what they are capable of.

毫无疑问，全国各地拍摄现场的女性影片制作人，为这个包罗万象的未来都做出了自己贡献。对于在中国的女性导演来说，赵丹的经历是幸运的。“在我入行做导演的时尚圈，女性可不是弱势群体。”赵丹表示:“此外，我觉得上海的影视行业，性别歧视不像中国其他地方那么严重。” 当然，她在片也有过不被人尊重的经历，但赵丹认为性别偏见与代沟相关，而非其他原因。在她的经历中，只有非常传统和保守的电影人会想不通，当全球电影界顶流仍是男性时，为什么女性会选择当导演。对此，她回答说，女性目前只是刚刚开始得到机会，她们的潜力与天赋您请拭目以待。

山下学堂 Zhou Xun 周迅

Like many new generation female filmmakers, Zhao Dan wants to move past gender, and be seen as a neutral director. Perhaps, her idealistic views are shaped by the bubble of fashion environment. Perhaps the insatiable desire of brands to keep it cool and appeal to the young Chinese audience in turn also gives the new generation of filmmakers the power to transform the industry. Zhao Dan concludes: “I don’t like shooting “sweet, soft, gentle” stuff, which a lot of people still think is by default the style of any female director. I hope my work have a feeling, an expressed temperament, some power to it. For me, it’s not an external, expressive power some associate with fast cuts and dynamism. It’s the power of expression from within. I hope people won’t judge if a film has been shot by a man or woman, and don’t judge a director’s range just by looking at their previous work. I hope people look past the superficial, and see every director’s core, potential”.

和许多新一代女性导演一样，赵丹希望超越性别框架，成为一个中立的导演。也许，她的理想主义是时尚界的小环境造就的。也许品牌想要长久保持酷炫，吸引中国年轻消费者的欲望，反过来也给了新一代电影制作人真正改变行业的力量。赵丹总结道: “我不喜欢拍一些糖水的东西，虽然很多人认为我是一个女导演，我拍的东西一定是细腻柔软的。我希望我的东西要有表达，对这个表达不一定是要是一个观点，也是可以是一种感觉，一种气质。对我来说，虽然有些人喜欢把这种力量与快剪和活力联系在一起，但它其实不是一种外部的、表达的力量，而是一种内在的力量。我是一个中性的导演，我希望大家能更多的看到每个导演真正内核的东西，而不只是一个表面的东西，我希望人们不要以男性或女性的作品来判断影片，也不要以导演的以前作品来判断导演的拍摄范围。我希望大家能更多的看到每个导演真正内核的东西，而不只是一个表面”。