Meet Yifan Xiang | Director & Cinematographer

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

Hi Yifan, other than deciding to work for yourself, what was the single most important decision you made that contributed to your success?
The most important decision I made towards my success was to relocate to Southern California, the city of Los Angeles. This city taught me so many things — the working environment and the film industry here are just unparalleled. We have so many resources here in the town, you have the best stages and you have the best sceneries within a couple hundred miles. Most importantly, the film heritage here in this city is abundant, people love films, and people visit here to immerse themselves in film. It’s fantastic working in Los Angeles as a filmmaker.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, the hometown of the giant pandas. I was a rebellious kid who skipped classes back in middle school to watch films, very good films, made by some best directors in the world, like Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, and François Truffaut. I did not enjoy many subjects back then, chemistry, physics, and maths, but I focused a lot on literature, photography, and poetry. This eventually led me towards the realm of filmmaking. At the age of 16, during the summer break, I started an internship at a local television station, where I started off working as a camera assistant, building the ENG cameras. Later, I moved to 2nd unit and started capturing B-rolls for documentaries. These opportunities gave me confidence, then I started making independent short films. After moving to the United States for college, I attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where I was immersed in fine arts and new genres. Later, I moved down to Southern California, relearned everything about filmmaking, and started a career focusing on Cinematography, while holding on to my dream of being a writer-director.

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?
There are a lot of great spots to enjoy the city, one of my favorite has to be The Deukmejian Park right off La Cresenta, Montrose. It is about a couple of miles from Glendale, and it is such a peaceful place to relax, it has different sceneries throughout the year as the season changes. I enjoyed hiking there a lot, with my family.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I wanted to put my Shifu in Cinematography, Vince E Toto here as my special thanks. He is a fantastic cinematographer and stereographer. He taught me so many things, not only about cinematography but also about surviving in the entertainment business. Most importantly, Vince always advocates shooting on film, which seems unnecessary in this era, however, once I started to shoot more on film, the better grip I have on the knowledge of cinematography.

Website: https://eurekafilmlab.com

Instagram: mynameisyifan

Image Credits
Yiqing Wei
Yucong Li
Scott Lewis