Meet Yuan Hong | Film Editor & Assistant Editor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Yuan Hong and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Yuan, what are you inspired by?
As an editor, I get inspired from other people’s work. There are numerous great examples in this industry: before I get into a film school, the editing of The Social Network (2010) and Requiem for a Dream (2000) hooked me. Also, music gives me inspiration too as evrything is about beats and rhythms. I do think there is similarity between rap music and editing – we all looking for a good flow.

As a creative person in general, my inspiration always comes from my daily life, my real life expierence. To me, anything happens in my life could be a ball of yarn to a cat. Especially when I feel how subtle and complex people’s feelings can be, I just spend a lot of time observing people around me consiously and unconsciously. My curiosity of humanity is a strong motivation for creating.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
After being both editor and assistant editor, I became more thoughtful for others. I mean, I was already a person who thinking for other people all the time, but right now I’m more open-minded and patient when there is problem needs to be solved. Being easy to communicate with is also an essential and my friends and everyone I’ve worked with can confirm that I am a capable person.

Frankly speaking, I don’t know what sets me apart from others, and I don’t like to be apart from others. For sure, everyone is unique and has their own value to this society, but what I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe in elitism. What I’m most proud of or excited about thing is that I know how to respect every single person and treat them equally with kindness and patience. And this quality helps me gain trust from people and get me information from different perspectives and being less judgmental. Of course it helps me get here professionally, too. As working in a team, we want our work goes far and goes well, and we should trust each other for doing our best to make things happen, which is not easy especially in modern times people are all insecure and hard to be honest with themselves and other peoples. But we grow from overcoming challenges together.

I learned my lesson that people’s connections are like action and reaction law – how we treat others will finally reflects to how we get treated. I’m lucky enough to meet and learn from these brilliant people, and I have no reason not to do that as a return.

My work and the way I work will always focuse on the connection we have with other people and with this universe. I’m still curious and will never stop exploring how we react to social dilemmas. Wish me luck.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Well, actually, I’m more like a person who follows my friend’s plan when we are going to a group trip. But, for this question I’m really prepared as I have been waiting for my friend visiting me for-ever.

First thing first, she gonna live with me fasho, where near sawtelle. So, we are going to have tsukemen from Tsujita and Crepes from Millet Crepes 100%. After settle down if we are not very tired, we can go to Century City mall shopping and watching movies at AMC.

Then, the tourist places: Hollywood Blvd, Universal Studios Hollywood, Disney Park, LACMA, MOCA, the Getty, the Academy Museum… we cannot fit in all these in one day, and everyone knows how’s that will be. However, I hope we will have sometime for these places below, basically where I spent most time in LA:

1. My work place where near Culver Steps, we can have a little tour and I can share my daily routine with her, which will be fun I think. We can grab food and drinks at Jameson’s pub or we can go to Ugo to get some pizza. After that, we can go to Santa Monica, walk on the beach and just rest up from those theme parks tours.

2. Echo Park, I used to live somewhere near Echo Park, and I think it’s a good place for relaxation, the birds are funny and people just enjoying peaceful moments. The book stores and thrift stores near there are also fun places to hang out. Plus, I would really love to take her to Grá – their mushroom pizza is bomb. If the time is right, I believe we can also have fun at Silverlake Flea; actually, I think if we have time I would love to go to Rosebowl too.

3. Chapman University, I mean after graduation I haven’t been back for a while, and I also want to go back and have a look hang out at orange circle. Just throw me back to those days studying in Chapman and living in Anaheim.

Ah! I’m getting excited even just think about it.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
OMG I appreciate this question a lot as I can never get where I am without these people’s help:

Jingxi, and my friend group represented by her are my main supporters in LA. I am from China and it’s hard to live in a foreign country alone, but I’m lucky to have Jingxi and other friends who always get my back, who sent me the list of Trailer Houses based in LA when I was looking for a job, which is literally the beginning of my full-time assistant editing journey at GrandSon Creative, the company that I have to shoutout to.

The reason I can still be in the U.S. and get interviewed is mainly because I got my working visa from GrandSon Creative. You never know how excited I was when I got the lottery last year. Till now, I have worked at GrandSon almost for a year and a half and during this time, I made lots of friends here – shoutout to our leads and friends who trained me well: Michael, Logan, and Koki, plus our wonderful AE team Melissa, Clarissa, Mikayla and Jonathan! Also, the editors here are all happily to share their experiences and tips for editing, which makes us close to each other and creates a nice vibe in the office. What I feel grateful about GrandSon Creative are not only these compassionate and cool people but also fantastic projects we can work on like Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021), Titane (2021), The Whale (2022) etc. This is amazing that I can work here with good people and good films.

Last but not least, I also want to shout out to these editors and directors who I worked with before I got into a company: Cynthia Chen, Dora Wu, Matt Colston, Joy “Yihang” Tan and Joshua Snyder. Cynthia and Dora are brilliant editors based in LA who helped me get a basic sense of being an assistant editor right after my graduation. Without them, I probably need more time to figure out where my future will be. And thank you Matt, Joy and Josh for supporting me being your editor, and I appreciate every discussion we had which was inspirational and open-minded.

Gah, I definitely missed someone but I truly love and feel grateful for everybody who is or was there for me. And thank you, The ShoutOut! Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to send my love to these friends and groups!

Website: www.yuanhongpost.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuan-hong-53161721a

Image Credits
Jingxi Zhu, Liang-Chun Lin, Yihang Tan