Vincent Du and the Golden Horse Trophy

Those years provided exposure to the international film industry itself plus connected him to those working in it. He attended numerous documentary film festivals learning the ins and outs of pitching projects. His final master degree project was about "Nine Beats", which is the largest rock school in China. Their world headquarters is located in Tianjin’s Nankai district. The school teaches children how to play rock music. It has hundreds of branches across China. In 2012 alone, approximately 30,000 students studied at "Nine Beats" through China. Vincent produced a documentary entitled "China's Little Rock Star". The piece received great reviews and international acclaim. It was aired in 2013 by Al Jazeera English. It is still available online.

2013 had Vincent producing more documentaries. A UK director hired him to work on "China for My Blue Brothers". He also worked with CCTV to cover the earthquake in Ya'an, Sichuan. Plus he made a short documentary for Beijing Sports Film Festival in 2014. That same year he decided to collaborate with three other directors. The team of four each came from a different country (China, Japan, Singapore and Thailand). They individually produced 20 minutes of content. These segments were spliced together to create a 90-minute feature length fiction film called "Five to Nine". It was released in 2015 and screened at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and the Singapore International Film Festival, then again in 2016 at the Osaka Asian Film Festival. Another 2015 project was "African Business in China". Vincent was the cinematographer for this documentary about the many Africans living and working in Guangzhou. 2016 marked the beginning of production on Vincent’s latest work currently known as "China's Forgotten Daughters". In 2017 he has been involved in documenting China’s different NGOs and working on the CCTV Documentary Series – "China's Mega Project Season Three".

Vincent has come a long way since studying tourism in 2000. He decided to become a director because of his interest in the social landscape of China and wanting to play a part in documenting its change. For him videography is an ideal medium for doing so. He has been working freelance for years and has established himself a respected cinematographer and director. He has yet to setup his own production company; but sees this as a natural next step since having a legal entity is mandatory when entering into production contracts with other companies.

Despite all his success, Vincent candidly admits making a living as a freelance director isn't the easiest of roads to travel. Especially early on, it is very challenging. He too started out virtually unknown. Another huge barrier for many Chinese directors is language. He highly recommends anyone serious about making a career as a director to master English and go abroad. Vincent isn't keeping his secrets to success to himself though. Instead he has a part-time teaching position on the weekend at Tianjin Normal University. He revealed that 60-70 percent of funding for documentaries comes from television stations. Therefore freelance producers need to be skilled at pitching commission editors on ideas. He shared that currently there aren't many foreign directors in China. However some are finding a niche in producing films for online content providers like iQiyi and Youku. For now, Vincent is going to concentrate his efforts on producing compelling documentaries. At the same time he is thinking about his next great fiction film. He also has hopes of pursuing a PhD in documentary and continues to be very interested in the "short video" market. Last but not least, he related that Chinese content is very popular right now overseas. So it is a fantastic time for experienced and entrepreneurial freelancers.

JIN thanks Vincent for sharing his story.