Last Time Again
- Venice Biennale College CinemaSelected
About
Thomas Tang was born on 28 December 1999 in rural Guizhou, China, and now lives in Beijing.
A graduate of Beijing Film Academy and Peking University, he is currently pursuing a doctorate.
He has won awards in every category of the Xianli Awards, the highest student honours of Beijing Film Academy’s Cinematography Department, and was named an Outstanding Graduate of Peking University. Films he has helped create as a key crew member have been selected for programmes at the Venice Biennale, Sundance, the Student Academy Awards, the Shanghai International Film Festival, the Golden Rooster Film Festival, the Beijing International Film Festival and FIRST, among other leading festivals. He has also received more than twenty individual honours.
During his postgraduate studies, he turned his attention to AI-generated content and cross-media practice, exploring how emerging technologies might shape the future of filmmaking. He has served as a video-model training expert and product advisor for companies including ByteDance, Alibaba and SenseTime.
As product lead, he is now working with his team on an AI agent for professional filmmakers. The product has become an industry benchmark in video understanding and the evaluation of cinematic generation. The company has secured an eight-figure seed round, and multiple research outputs have been adopted by more than 100 AI labs, including Google DeepMind, ByteDance and xAI.
Film & productMaking a film and designing a creative tool both begin with understanding intent. I translate filmmaking experience into practical products that help creators retain their judgment, control and voice when working with generative AI.
01 / Product & Practice
From film sets to products
Translating the practical demands of filmmaking into product decisions, creative workflows and model evaluation standards.
02 / Photography
Staying in the light
Everyday observations in street, portrait and landscape, on film and digital, arranged by mood.
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03 / Festivals & Awards
Selections & Awards
Festival selections, project programmes and awards for films I helped create.
04 / Filmography
Observations in motion
Directing, cinematography and editing across AI films, documentaries, experimental work, VR and theatrical features.
AD ASTRA
The Recording Politics of Southwest China’s Ethnic Folk Songs
Thomas Fantasy
Highway Prose
东极岛
睡梦里奔波
一切坚固的都烟消云散
遇见边城
你的夏天还好吗
惊悚的诞生
Ghost Fire
A Lost Mission
Brickleberry’s Blonde
Ring
The Captured
Lost In Count
Wild Seed
Last Piece of the Puzzle
Be Worth
A Promising Summer
Explore China
Face the Sun
Hi Malili
锦鲤锦鲤
Item 3
Jägermeister | Let’s Go Wild
A Tale Too Faint To Be
05 / Research
From cinematic language to model evaluation
Research on bringing professional filmmaking knowledge into the evaluation of generative AI.
/ arXiv preprint
FilmBench: A Film-Grade Benchmark for Cinematic Video Generation
Co-author · Mingshuang Tang (Thomas Tang)
A film-grade benchmark for text-to-video and reference-to-video generation grounded in professional cinematic language. It combines multi-shot prompts derived from real films, a hierarchical evaluation framework and automated evaluation tools to assess cinematic craft.
06 / Software
Turning ideas into tools
Programs, scripts and small apps I wrote to solve concrete problems in creative work.
07 / Hobbies
Outside work
The things I keep doing outside work; each one opens to its own page.
08 / Writing
Thoughts, written down
Articles and interviews on film, product and technology.