1.Tell us a little bit about yourself!
My name is Na Li. I was born in Hunan, China. I achieved my undergraduate degree in Animation and after that I lived and worked in Beijing a few years in film industry, producing animation films for a theatre studio and an animation studio. Then I went to Royal College of Art to major in Experimental Animation. I graduated last year in June, and now I am preparing for a new project, and continuing to develop the project I worked on during my postgraduate studies, which involves a combination of sound art and animation. I focus on the art of multi-sensory creation of animated films, combining the senses of tactile and auditory to construct a more inclusive visual art.
2.What inspired you first to get started in filmmaking?
I loved watching cartoons when I was a kid. For example, Chinese animation play, Rubik's Cube Building (1990), and animated film, The Legend of Sealed Book (1983), The Monkey King (1961), and some excellent Chinese classic animation short films. When I was in high school, I began to like Japanese animation films, such as Hayao Miyazaki, "My Neighbor Totoro", "Spirited Away", Satoshi Kon, "Paprika". Later, I loved another Japanese director, Masaaki Yuasa, especially his "Cat Soup", an animated short film, had a great influence on me. It's very dreamy, magical, bizarre. I found that animated short films can express a lot and have a lot of depth. After that, I go to the Internet to look for animation short films, and I have discovered many incredible animation directors. Such as Jan Svankmajer, Brothers Quay, Norman McLaren, ect.
When I started making films, I think it was from that time, GIF's spread a lot of animated clips, and then I download them to learn how to make moving images on my own. I started out using Photoshop to create very short moving images, and later, with paper and pen, to draw those simple hand-flipped book animations. I chose animation as my major during my undergraduate studies and started making films formally. I learned how to make professional animation, learned about the history of film, and made my first short animation film, "Old Chen and Little Ghost " as my graduation film. This animation is very sincere, very young, I like this work very much. This animation gave me a lot of encouragement and let me continue to make animations. Now it can be viewed on my Vimeo channel.
3.How have you continued to pursue your career/journey in filmmaking?
I think the preparation before creation, the process of making a film, and the constant exposure after the production is completed, these processes are all driving my career. For instant, before creating a film, I need to read, research, write, and paint, including exploring and experimenting with many materials. In the process of making a film, there will be many experiments and adjustments, as well as explorations in different fields, and sometimes some unfamiliar parts will be involved. This will expand my creativity. After the film was finished, I took it to suitable film festivals and different venues for exhibition, so that more people could see my creation, and I got some positive feedback. For example, winning, being interviewed or being selected; I came into contact with other excellent directors and saw richer and fresher works, which greatly promoted my journey in filmmaking.
In addition, I think that in addition to making movies and exposing them, we should maintain a keen and fresh sense of life, dig out our own creative motivations, sincerely listen to our own voices as creators, and then find a suitable way to express them. This is what I think is the most fundamental thing that can promote my journey in filmmaking, career in art.
4.Tell us about your film! What is it about?
"The Moon Rise During the Day: Sound Sculpture" is simply about my intuitive visual expression of a sound and music. The image text of this film comes from my impromptu drawing while listening to an experimental music piece by musician Liang Yiyuan. Through the image text of this music, I created an animation in a semi-conscious state, trying to re-understand this intuitive primitive response from another perspective.
I call this movie: Sound Sculpture because I think that when sound and music are produced, it stimulates the subconscious mind of the audience, constructing a multi-dimensional conscious space or spatial experience. The pictorial text and moving graphics of this work are the sculptural reflection of sound on the level of my consciousness. It was projected onto a flat paper, and then I tried to restore the soundtrack and feeling at that time through animation. It becomes a conscious sound sculpture, and it is fluid, ever-changing and indeterminate for different audiences.
5. What is its message to the audience?
I hope that the audience watching my works, like "breathing", just receive the vision and hearing in front of them, watch the changes in its lines and listen to the changes in the sound, and then let their thoughts wander, and be in harmony with the content of this work The sound and picture energy resonates, hearing the inner sound, and triggering their inner feelings covered under life.
