In an industry obsessed with celebrity, video editor Tian Xu has built her career in the shadows—helping free wrongfully detained prisoners, crafting viral content for millions, and proving that sometimes the most powerful voices are the ones we never see.
You’ve spent your career deliberately staying behind the camera. In a city built on visibility, what drew you to the invisible art of editing?
I think my attraction to editing comes from the same place as my early response to cinema. When I was three years old, watching Ghost on HBO in Beijing, I wasn’t thinking about Patrick Swayze’s performance or the cinematography—I was completely absorbed in the emotional journey. That’s what editing is: you’re responsible for the audience’s emotional experience, but they should never notice your hand in it. The best editing is invisible.
Your mother was a television news producer in China. How did that shape your understanding of media and storytelling?
My mother taught me that every story has multiple versions, and your job as an editor is to find the truth within the material you’re given. In news, you’re dealing with reality, but you’re still making choices about what to emphasize, what to include, what to leave out. Those early lessons about editorial responsibility have stayed with me, whether I’m working on a documentary about wrongful imprisonment or a viral mini-drama about billionaire romance.
The journey from Beijing to Chapman University represents more than geographic distance. Can you talk about the cultural and artistic translation you had to navigate?
The transition was seismic. In China, there’s tremendous respect for collective harmony, for not standing out too much. American film school culture is almost the opposite—you’re encouraged to have a strong voice, to fight for your vision. I had to learn how to be assertive about my artistic choices while staying true to my instinct for collaboration. Running that movie appreciation club in high school helped prepare me, but nothing really prepares you for the intensity of American film education.
Your thesis film, Drifting Boat, seems deeply personal. How do you balance autobiographical elements with universal storytelling?
Drifting Boat is about the space between cultures, the way immigrant families can lose pieces of themselves across generations. But Sarah Gu, our lead actress, brought her own history—she’s a retired actress who left mainland China during political upheaval. The film became a conversation between my personal experience and her lived history. That’s when personal storytelling becomes universal: when you create space for other people’s truths to emerge.
The film had an impressive festival run—six wins, three nominations. What did that success teach you about the business of filmmaking?
It taught me that quality work finds its audience, but it also taught me about the machinery of success. Festivals like Dance With Films have launched careers for Bryan Cranston, Gina Rodriguez, Jesse Eisenberg. But getting into those festivals requires understanding their programming, their audiences, and their politics. Drifting Boat succeeded because it was a good film, but also because we understood how to position it within the festival ecosystem.
Let’s talk about Did You Forget Mr. Fogel? This seems like a project where your technical skills intersect with profound social impact.
When Seth Karall approached me to color-grade the documentary, I didn’t fully grasp what we were undertaking. Marc Fogel was an American English teacher detained in Russia, and his case had received almost no media attention. My job was ostensibly technical—ensuring visual consistency, making the film look professional. But color grading is about creating emotional resonance. Every decision about contrast, saturation, temperature becomes a decision about how the audience will connect with the subject.
The film launched the #FreeMarcFogel campaign, and he was eventually released after five years in a Siberian labor camp. How do you process the knowledge that your work contributed to someone’s freedom?
It’s humbling and somewhat overwhelming. You don’t sit down at the color console thinking, “I’m going to help free a prisoner today.” You’re thinking about skin tones and shadow detail and visual continuity. But those technical decisions accumulate into something larger—they shape how an audience feels about a person, whether they see him as human or as an abstraction. In Marc’s case, our work helped people see him as a fellow human being deserving of freedom.
The success of that documentary led you into commercial work with Crazy Maple Studio, which TIME named one of the most influential companies of 2024. That’s quite a pivot from documentary to viral content.
The skills are more transferable than you might think. Whether you’re editing a documentary about wrongful detention or a mini-drama called “Snatched a Billionaire to Be My Husband,” you’re still looking for the emotional truth in the material. Crazy Maple creates content for mobile consumption—vertical videos, shorter attention spans, different pacing—but the fundamental job remains the same: make the audience care about the characters.
Your work on “Snatched a Billionaire” earned a 7.6 rating on IMDb from nearly 700 reviews. How do you approach editing for viral, commercial content differently than documentary work?
Commercial content requires different pacing strategies, different visual languages. You’re competing with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube—platforms that have trained audiences to expect immediate gratification. But you can’t sacrifice emotional depth for speed. The werewolf series “True Luna” that I worked on earned a 7.0 rating because we found ways to create genuine character development within the constraints of viral formatting.
You’ve also worked on IMAX films like Cities of The Future. How does editing for that immersive format differ from your other work?
IMAX is about scale and spectacle, but it’s also about intimacy within that scale. Working with Greg MacGillivray, who’s been nominated for two Oscars, I learned that even when you’re filling a massive screen, you’re still trying to create personal connection. John Krasinski’s narration had to feel conversational despite being heard in a theater with a seven-story screen. The technical requirements are completely different, but the emotional requirements remain constant.
You’ve mentioned mentors like Oscar-nominated director Matia Karrell and Avatar colorist Tashi Trieu. What did you learn from working with people at that level?
Matia taught me that independent filmmaking doesn’t mean compromising on quality or ambition. She showed me that you can make intimate, personal films that compete at the highest levels of recognition. Tashi demonstrated how technical mastery serves storytelling—his color work on Avatar and Star Wars isn’t just about making things look pretty; it’s about creating worlds that audiences believe in. Between them, they represent the full spectrum of what’s possible in this industry.
The pandemic forced a lot of changes in film education and production. How did completing your degree during COVID-19 affect your approach to filmmaking?
Graduating during lockdown was surreal. I was taking online classes in an apartment where my downstairs neighbor was having daily breakdowns from isolation—screaming, banging on the ceiling. It wasn’t exactly the collaborative environment film school is supposed to provide. But it taught me resilience and self-reliance. When you can maintain focus under those conditions, you can handle the pressure of professional deadlines.
After graduation, you took time to travel solo through remote regions. How did that experience influence your artistic perspective?
I needed to step away from the constant pressure of the next project, the next deadline. Traveling alone through places where I barely speak the language, where I had to rely on instinct, taught me about storytelling without words. It’s made me more attentive to visual storytelling, to the emotional information that exists in a glance or a gesture or the way light hits someone’s face.
You’ve described yourself as impulsive, but also as someone who’s very particular about work. How do you balance those seemingly contradictory traits?
I think the impulsiveness comes from my willingness to take creative risks, to follow projects that excite me even if they don’t make obvious career sense. But once I commit to something, I become obsessively focused on getting it right. My colleagues would probably say I’m careless about everything except the work itself. I am serious about work. That’s where I become very demanding of myself and the material.
Your latest project, The Cloud, recently premiered to positive feedback. What are you hoping for with the festival circuit?
The Cloud represents everything I’ve learned about balancing personal storytelling with professional technique. We’ve submitted to Cannes and other major festivals, and the early response has been encouraging. But I’ve learned not to pin all my hopes on festival outcomes. The work has to stand on its own merits, regardless of external validation.
Looking ahead, you’ve mentioned wanting to work for major post-production houses like Harbor Picture Company. What draws you to that level of Hollywood filmmaking?
I want to work on films that reach the widest possible audiences, that become part of the cultural conversation. There’s something powerful about editing a movie that millions of people will see, that will become part of their shared experience. But I don’t want to abandon documentary work or smaller projects. I think the ideal career includes both—blockbusters that reach everyone and documentaries that change individual lives.
The industry is undergoing massive changes—streaming platforms, vertical video, AI tools. How do you see editing evolving?
The tools will continue to evolve, but the fundamental skill—understanding how images and sounds combine to create emotional meaning—that’s timeless. AI might be able to make technical cuts, but it can’t make the subtle decisions about pacing and rhythm that determine whether an audience cares about a character. The more automated the technology becomes, the more valuable human emotional intelligence becomes.
What’s the worst professional advice you’ve ever received?
“Fix it in post.” It’s become a joke, but it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what post-production can and cannot do. You can’t shoot poorly and expect editing to solve your problems. You can’t write a bad script and expect post to make it compelling. The best editing enhances good material; it doesn’t rescue bad material.
What advice would you give to young editors trying to break into the industry?
Learn the technical skills, obviously, but focus equally on developing your emotional intelligence. Watch everything—not just films, but observe how people interact, how they communicate non-verbally, how they reveal themselves in unguarded moments. And be willing to start anywhere. I worked on thesis films, documentaries, viral content, IMAX projects. Each experience taught me something different about the craft.
You’ve worked across documentaries, commercial content, and narrative films. Is there a through-line that connects all your work?
I think I’m drawn to stories about connection—how people find each other across cultural barriers, language barriers, even prison walls. Whether it’s an immigrant grandmother and her granddaughter, or an American teacher trapped in a Russian prison, or even characters in a werewolf romance, I’m always looking for the human truth that makes audiences care. That’s what editing really is: creating empathy through technique.
In an industry obsessed with celebrity and visibility, you’ve built your career in service of other people’s stories. How do you define success?
Success for me is when the work disappears and only the story remains. When audiences are so absorbed in what they’re watching that they forget they’re watching something constructed, something edited. The highest compliment I can receive is when someone says they forgot they were watching a movie. That means I did my job right.
What story do you most want to tell that you haven’t yet had the chance to tell?
I want to make a film about the experience of cultural translation—not just language, but the way entire worldviews have to be translated when people move between countries, between generations. My own experience, my mother’s experience, Sarah Gu’s experience in Drifting Boat—there’s a larger story there about what we lose and gain when we cross borders, literal and metaphorical. That’s the film I’m building toward.
Tian Xu’s work can be seen in the documentary “Did You Forget Mr. Fogel?” and various projects streaming on Drama Box. Her latest film, “The Cloud,” is currently making the festival circuit. She is based in Los Angeles and is currently developing several documentary projects.