Los Angeles,
Di Hang is passionate about his work. In addition to numerous awards, Di was named winner of Best Editing at the Top Shorts 2018, best Sci-fi at LA Film Awards 2018, Independent Shorts Awards 2018, “Global Film Festival Awards 2018” “European Cinematography Awards” and received the prestigious honor of this film being named an Official Selection of the 71st Festival De Cannes Short Film Corner, etc. It’s hard to fathom the concept that a factor which led to such international notoriety was conducted in a small editing room.
This is the role and life of an editor however and Di seems more than comfortable with it. When speaking about his work on “Whisper” , it is obvious that his ideas and the images on the screen transport him to another place, just as they do for the audience and even the characters on screen. As an editor, he is passionate about filmmaking in general but he makes no qualms about his love of Sci-Fi . To be clear, it’s the difficulty of it that calls to him and is so attractive. Di contends that for an editor, Sci-Fi films are more difficult and require more of him than any other genre. There are multiple reasons for his opinion but it’s clear that the affinity between this editor and the genre is mutual. His work on the film “Whisper” is evidence that Di Hang feels called to dig deep and bring brilliance, and the accolades which the film has received have vetted him as one of the premier professionals of the day.
Di is boisterous in his proclamation that editing Sci-fi films is an art form, perhaps even a calling for him. One thing is for sure, when a professional feels as inspired and assured as this, you are certain to get an incredible film. “Whisper” is a pseudo-documentary sci-fi film. The interesting things is he also edit news and interviews for Phoenix TV station which based in Hong Kong. I think it’s not difficult to to know why he is use a pseudo-documentary way for this movie. The script and fictional elements are used to tell the story but are presented in a style that mirrors the documentary format, through an interview giving an implied sense of reality to it. The story is about After Diana ‘s husband dead, a scientist preserved his brain. With the help from a world renowned neurologist who is also her ex-boyfriend from college, she dedicated her whole life invented a machine called “Whisper”, in order to stay connected with her husband. While many people operate under the presumption that an editor simply connects and dissects different scenes, the role is actually one of the most vital in creating a film’s story. Working closely with the director, Di commonly finds himself in deep discussion about what tone to take in placing the scenes together. As with any creative endeavor, if you aren’t noticing the difficulty that it takes to create the work, it means that a highly skilled artist has manifested it. Di explains, “Once filming is wrapped, there is still so much work to do before the film takes shape.
Every editor has a process and Di’s is very specific when it comes to Sci-Fi films like “Whisper.” Di says, once the story is given to the film editor, the editor have the responsible to understand the director’s interpretation and ideas of the story. Also, the editor should also really deep understand the director’s style because every director has a unique voice which will naturally lead to different film styles. After the synthesis of these, the editor will successively present the story’s narrative methods using editing software. It’s paramount to understand the screenplay and temperaments of all these professionals in order to be an effective film editor (the ability to understanding what the writer, director, and actors are doing). When it is most creative and enjoyable is during the post-production, the director and the film editor will communicate and discuss at great length. Di contends that , in his film “Whisper”, he was trying to let audience understand and really feel the core concept of the story – Past and future already exist. And Di was trying to create somethings new structure of story telling we never seen before. From his work, we could see Di have deep understanding of montage . In the story , it looks like Diana and Cooper’s brain could communicate by making phone calls, but they’re really far away, because they are in different time line and space. In the movie, Di took long shot in Coma, and cut back to real world, Diana’s age changed, thus, the two worlds successfully separated. And in the end, Di cut it quicker and cross their dialogue, to make the audience understand, in the real world, Cooper’s dialogue is a little bit different from the cut where we can see Cooper in a coma.
The challenge for Di when editing a Sci-fi film comes not only from the technical aspect of what he is doing but the content which he is given. The footage for a Sci-Fi film has such a diverse number of factors that affect its delivery. VFX, Dolly shots, fighting or chasing scenes, and other methods are essentially requirements of the genre. While many types of films include some of these, only the rarest contained what is almost always contained in a Sci-Fi film. Of course, no Sci-fi movie is complete without those new ideals which open audience’s mind. This is another reason that Di Hang loves this type of work; it allows him to use the very best he can muster to draw such a wide range of emotional responses from audiences across the planet. (By Di Hang )
