Being admitted to an ideal university is what every high school student dreams of. However, for Jin Chengkuang, a high school senior at Shenzhen Experimental Chenghan School, his long-standing dream has been to be a film director shooting blockbusters. He has received offers from four top art schools in the United States, including California Institute of the Arts, which means he has embarked on the journey of realizing his movie-shooting dream.

Although Jin is only 18 years old, he is no directorial green hand. Throughout his three years in high school, Jin produced six short films, in which he was the director, filmographer and editor. For Jin, the first two movies were just experiments which honed his filming skills and the last two called “Choose” and “Out of Control” were much more mature pieces.

According to Jin, “Choose,” which he shot with an Argentinian student when he was at a summer school program in New York, is a stream-of-consciousness short film about freedom. The movie was produced in a classroom with only a fish tank as the main prop. To express the opposite of freedom, the tank started out empty, but all of a sudden, a fish appeared and swam freely in the tank; at the end, the scene was reversed and the fish disappeared. It took Jin and his partner one month to finish the six-minute short.

Jin said that the two movies had open endings, resembling the style seen in stream-of-consciousness films that he liked. “I like U.S. film director and producer Paul Anderson’s works including ‘There Will Be Blood,’ ‘Magnolia’ and ‘Inherent Vice.’ Domestically, I like Jia Zhangke and Karwai Wong’s works,” he said, adding that “Karwai Wong’s films are very novel and poetic. He is very sensitive to colors. I like the language and expressions used in ‘Happy Together’ and ‘As Tears Go By’.”

As a beginner, Jin has gotten quite lucky so far. Last winter, he got a chance to join the crew of renowned film director Chen Kaige when they traveled to Northern China to film “Legend of the Demon Cat.”

“Although the conditions on set were pretty tough, it was all worth it because I learned a lot. The whole crew was so dedicated that they paid attention to every detail. A great movie takes everyone’s efforts. Director Chen is doing something really meaningful and far-reaching for audiences and even for the whole of society,” said Jin, adding that “the director was so nice and the crew told me everything about the set and the props and I learned a lot from them.”

Jin will go to the United States to start university this September. He said:“What I really want to do is shoot feature films. When I am in college, I want to make an hour-long film and submit it to film festivals.”

(Yang Mei)