Stand Up is the 2015 film by Jinming Zhao about a young girl who is pushed too far. The film was recognized in 2016 by the Hollywood International Moving Pictures Film Festival and won the Audience Choice Award at the Top Shorts Film Festival in 2016. Stand Up is the story of Emma, who must deal with her estranged and derelict father who returns to collect money from the will of Emma’s grandfather who raised her. This situation results in Emma, formerly mute, speaking up for the first time to challenge her father and his devious plan. Binbin states that she typically likes to work with different directors due to the influx of new ideas and approaches. Ma enjoyed the experience working with Jinming whom she describes as particularly creative; an ideal collaborator for someone who enjoys new ideas. Zhao declares, “Stand Up has been one of the most successful endeavors of my career. Thanks to the incredible film that we were able to produce as a direct result of Binbin’s prominent influence, we have been vastly awarded and exhibited. The incalculable success that our film received is doubtlessly due to the high quality of film that we were able to produce – a feat I attribute wholly to the leading role of Ms. Ma as our storyboard artist and graphic designer.”
Her work on numerous productions has left her with an affinity for each of them. She will admit to one welcome surprise that has made her especially proud of and fond of her work on Happy Tree. While the crew of the films which Binbin has worked on are well aware of her consummate talent as an artist, the general public often is robbed of direct viewing of Ma’s considerable artistic abilities; not so with Happy Tree. Binbin reveals that she was prompted by Yunyi to create the film’s poster. Zeng was such a fan of the visual style of Ma’s storyboard creations that she felt they were intrinsic to the mood of the film and should be a part of its identity to the general public. Yunyi states, “Ms. Ma designed the poster for the film, which embodies its theme and provides the audience with an intuitive sense towards the tone of the film. She designed a poster that resembled a chalk drawing, using a tree as the background, with a boy cowering on the ground before it. The infantile look of the boy, paired with the protective and nurturing connotations of a tree allowed the poster to encompass the overall theme of the film in a way that I could not have envisioned better if I had told her myself.” This statement alone gives proof that Binbin Ma is exactly the kind of storyboard artist and graphic designer that filmmakers yearn for; someone who can understand exactly what they need and even sometimes anticipate this.