Natural storytelling: The lens of reaction

Faces of Wuxi Series, vol. 2 – Lao Mai

Wuxi resident Bradley Johnson here.

I love exploring and getting to know all kinds of wonderful people in this city.

Let me tell you about Mai Yongcan, aka "Lao Mai."

Mai Yongcan. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

I am happy to share that I've discovered a quick way to build a strong rapport with another human:

Have him stick a camera in your face for two days.

Director and videographer Mai Yongcan （麦永灿）, or "Lao (old) Mai", and I connected thusly a couple months ago while filming volume four of the Liangxi District 48 Hours video project.

The basic idea for the video was to have me walking around the downtown district of Jiangsu's Wuxi city, with my own voiceover waxing poetic about what I saw and experienced. It was a new experience for me, for sure, and a little embarrassing, but it was awesome to get to know Lao Mai and see how he worked. He and his team did an amazing job.

As natural as he is giving directions behind a camera, his journey into the creative field took a few years.

A year younger than myself, "Lao" Mai started life as "Xiao" (little) Mai, growing up in Rudong, Nantong, Jiangsu. He went on to study and work in computer hardware and even found himself working in an optical instrument factory at one point, before teaching himself how to use a camera and gradually making his way into videography. He has since lived and traveled extensively throughout China and Asia doing what he loves.

Lao Mai out on a shoot back in the day. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

Wanting to learn more about him, I met up with Lao Mai over a bowl of guogai mian, a simple and tasty type of noodles from Zhenjiang, Jiangsu which we both grew to love from separate times living in that great little city.

In the days and even minutes leading up to our chat—as in, literally right after we'd ordered our noodles, Lao Mai kept telling me he didn't really dig the idea of doing an interview. "I'm not great at expressing myself" he said. "I have never been interviewed because I am usually behind the scenes."

Lao Mai on the left, me on the right, guogai mian noodles in the middle. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

Hearing him say that, however, only made me more determined to write about him, because I could not get over the irony. It was my experience that this guy who insists he struggles to express himself with words is nevertheless an excellent communicator. Lao Mai is a master at directing and capturing moving images to express the essence of people, places and things. Communication and storytelling is about so much more than words.

So, the topic and purpose of this second volume of Faces of Wuxi became clear to me over the course of those two days and during later discussion with him: I knew I wanted to pass on what I learned about Lao Mai's approach to visual storytelling:

It's about reacting to your subject.

"I rarely go into a shoot with a fixed plan. It's about observing and reacting to what unfolds," Lao Mai shared. "Plans can be beautifully written, but in the end, you have to look at the context, in the moment, and get things done through experience and feeling."

Lao Mai giving me the real deal on storytelling. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

The two-day filming process for the 48 Hours video was indeed a blend of Lao Mai's organic, experience-driven direction and our spontaneous interactions. When necessary, he gave me carefully limited instructions like "walk over to this plant", or "look off contemplatively that way after turning the corner"—which, for someone who struggles to take themselves seriously in front of a camera, can be immensely difficult to do with a straight face.

Most of the time, however, I was free to just be myself. Lao Mai had a way of letting me do my thing and explore in a way that felt absolutely natural to me. It was fun. It didn't feel like work, and certainly wasn't forced.

There is no better proof that Lao Mai let me do what I wanted than this screenshot from the Liangxi District 48 Hours video (full video below the article). [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

"Creating a comfortable space for your subject is crucial for authentic storytelling," he later told me, after we'd switched venues from the noodle shop to a café below a design studio he used to work at.

The video was themed around the colors of Liangxi, and we had a blast bouncing ideas off each other and looking for unique hues worthy of highlighting. I have extremely limited experience as a visual storyteller, yet somehow Lao Mai made me feel like I knew exactly what I was doing.

Lao Mai is one of those artists that makes one feel like a creative storyteller just by being around him. He was the director, but he made me feel like I was telling my own story, and he simply did his job of capturing my interactions with the environment.

He says that he's "not really a highly qualified or particularly impressive director, videographer, or editor." Perhaps a "jack of all trades, master of none," as they say?

No, I call that a strength. I think it's his flexibility and adaptability and his focus on his subject, and his ability to react to that subject and context and the situation and events and what is said and done that defines his true skill.

Lao Mai at work, a little bit closer to "Xiao" Mai than he is today. [Photo provided to wuxi.gov.cn]

When I asked him what he thinks is his strongest technical skill, and what kind of shot he loves nailing more than any other, he said he's at his best when the camera is as far from being the star of the show as possible. "The most genuine expressions come out when the camera is least intrusive," Lao Mai explained. He loves close-up and stable shots of a subject, in which something else in its environment is moving or happening, and all he's doing is catching the reaction.

Lao Mai told me he almost never feels confident going into a project. But that, somehow, the result "pretty much always turns out great." Bringing out the best and most authentic side of any subject—whether geographic, human, or otherwise—is the real strength of this Wuxi face.

It is striking to me that as I set out to develop a series about special "faces" in Wuxi, by doing nothing more than opening my eyes and ears, the first two people I have ended up featuring share different versions of essentially the same strength: acting as an unbiased window into the truest versions of other people, places and things.

If you haven't yet had the chance, I invite you to check out volume one of this series, titled As long as I am here, about Cheer Laoshi. Whereas Cheer Laoshi has learned to turn her job as international student counselor at Wuxi University into a life of understanding and strengthening individuals as they are, without labels, Lao Mai spends his days with camera in hand, reacting and allowing the strengths and intrigue of his subjects speak for themselves.

Check out Lao Mai's amazing work on volume four of the Liangxi District 48 Hours series, titled Colors of Liangxi.

Wuxi friends! Is there someone you think readers would like to see featured in the Faces of Wuxi series? Hit me up! facesofwuxi@outlook.com