Ahlam Alzahrani
LA26 Maflam Fellow
When’s the last time you got chills? Not the shivering kind. I’m talking about hair-standing, spine-twitching chills. The kind you get when you witness your first wedding. Or when, after opening hundreds of rejection letters, you finally get a job offer. Or when a loved one welcomes a baby into the world. The example looks different for each of us, but the feeling – the emotion attached to the moment – is something we’ve all experienced. It’s a feeling we share. Saudi-based film editor and sound designer Ahlam Alzahrani knows what it’s like to chase that soul sensation and to listen to its call. She strives to draw that feeling out in others through her work.
Technically, she studied event management, but her education expanded far beyond her major. Ahlam loves “experiencing new things,” she explains, “I don’t say no to any opportunity.” Following that philosophy, she wound up working as a sound recordist on film sets between her classes. You could say it was love at first set, because her curiosity about the film industry was instant. Soon enough, she was promoted to assistant director.
Ahlam was drawn to the work. The filmmaking process – seeing a project through from start to finish – was fulfilling for her. But her degree was pulling her in a different direction. “Fast forward to graduation,” Ahlam says, “I started working corporate jobs, which I absolutely hated. I explored different roles within [the industry]. Project manager, sponsorship sales…tourism developer.” In each position, she was missing that spark. That is, until her company started a marketing campaign. All of a sudden, her spark was reignited.
As this marketing campaign began, the resources were limited. Ahlam had the idea to dig through archival B-roll footage from previous projects and splice clips together to fit the campaign. As the only employee with video production experience, Ahlam spearheaded the project. Her film knowledge, though apparent, was still limited. “At that time, I had never touched any editing software,” Ahlam recalls. “I started from scratch. I [looked] for tutorials on YouTube of how to edit on DaVinci. I found myself not feeling the time. I was sitting there for hours.” The chills set in. All that was left to do was chase them: “I think this is what I’m meant to do.”
“I would wake up early [in the] morning, open my laptop and start watching YouTube tutorials,” Ahlam says. As the months passed, she enrolled in online courses, found mentors, and enlisted friends in the industry to teach her. The “more I progressed, the more I invested in learning.” Soon enough, she felt ready to bid the corporate world adieu and venture out as a freelance video editor.
“You’re not going to be able to succeed if you do this,” is what she was told over and over by those around her, and it scared her: “I remember, of course, I panicked. I was starting again from scratch in my career.” She would be jolted awake at night from anxiety, asking herself, “Did I do the right thing? Did I make a huge mistake?” But how could it be a mistake when she could edit for hours upon hours without feeling a single minute pass? In her gut, she knew this was her path.
Today, Ahlam is a successful full-time video editor. The connection Ahlam has to her craft, the gratification that washes over her when she creates art – the chills – are the feelings she strives to convey in her work. “My style in editing is all based on sound design and music. I like it to remain realistic and serve the story I’m trying to tell. Music…drives emotion. And to layer that with a couple of sound effects, it makes editing so powerful.” Sometimes, she even finds herself implementing her sales and project management background. That experience aids her understanding of her clients and her audience and how to communicate with them.
In a full-circle type of way, Ahlam now teaches other aspiring editors, giving them tutorials on various techniques that she’s mastered along the way. How fitting it is that she will be coming to the United States for the Sunflower Seed Foundation’s LA26 Animation Intensive, where she will be able to share her perspective with other fellows while expanding upon her own skills – fine-tuning her ability to send chills down the spines of her audience.
Written by Sydney Leclerc
