Justin Lin

Justin Lin Film Style

Born in Taipei, Justin Lin moved with his family to Orange County, California when he was nine. He earned a BA and MFA in film direction at UCLA’s School of Film and Television. While in the graduate program, he met fellow student Quentin Lee, and the two first worked together on Quentin’s film Flow (1996), with Lee directing and writing, and Lin working as thecinematographer. They subsequently wrote the screenplay for their next film, shopping for Fangs (1997), sharing directorial duties. The film screened internationally at numerous festivals, including the Palm Springs International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.
Lin went on to write and direct his own screenplay, Better Luck Tomorrow (2003), about a group of Asian-American high schoolstudents who, despite excellent grades and wealthy backgrounds, turn to crime for entertainment. Lin financed the movie using his life savings, 10 credit cards, help from family and friends and M.C. Hammer. He met the rapper at a Las Vegas convention while he was trying to raise funds to make the film, and Hammer asked Lin to send a script. After reading it over, Hammer decided to contribute tothe film’s funding. Lin received a 2002 Visionary Award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival for his work.
Since then, he has helmed major motion pictures such as Annapolis (2006) and The Fast and the Furious movies. Lin resides in the Los Angeles area and he won the John Cassavetes Award in the Independent Spirit Awards for the movie Better Luck Tomorrow which can be considered as one of hismost important movies.

Justin Lin is principally known for his action movies in where he shows a society which has different people and different actions are happening in the moment in were everything has a negative view and he shows many things that are not well accepted in the world like illegal things.
His most representative movies are the series of Fast and Furious in where his films show ahuge impact on society, lots of physical stunts and activity, races or persecutions, rescues, battles, martial arts, many destruction by part of this genres, fights, escapes and adventurous heroes which are the involved in everything that occurs during the sequence.
He always shows powerful heroes that struggle against big groups of villains in where they are always shown in a danger situationwith an evil villain controlling everything and where he emphasizes in various chases where their ability of handling cars is shown and is where the movie gains its name and at the end victory after different complications to solve the problem they’ve seen.
In his movies he uses types of shots and camera angles like aerial shots where you get an establishing shot and you get an overall idea of theubication where he uses helicopters for it, he uses many cross-cutting so you get different points of view of what is happening and have a sense of shock by these rapid cuts, in land scenes he uses a dolly in where he shows a continuous scene to show something in movement and he uses it in the car chases to show their superiority. During the films he also shows many flashbacks to make sure theaudience gets a better idea of what happened and to make people be sure of the actions. Many points of view shots are shown where you have the opportunity to see what the character sees and show superiority sometimes and so it has more impact. And tracking’s are used many times also to show the movements by the cars chased and where you can feel the motion they have and the velocity. And he usesmedium shots and close ups during the transition of his movies, they are mostly seen in the cross cutting and show fast motion.
His lighting is mostly natural because the most part of the scenes are in open places where there is no need to add more light, and he shows some lighting in the closed spaces, but it depends on the situation that is happening, if its something were something that is wrong...