We were lucky to catch up with Huiyu Zhou recently and have shared our conversation below.
Huiyu, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Creativity is a tricky thing. It is hard to give a definition or concept because it would change its own shape because people from different culture background would use a different perspective to see through the world and get in touch with the outside.
As an international student who came from China and spent six years in the US, I have experienced two different kinds of culture and social structures since I was 18 years old. It’s a journey in which you have to always change perspectives to see through things in two different kinds of ways. As I grew up and studied in these years after I was in the US, I think I heard a lot of different kinds of voices about the world and how people decide to live. Some of my friends decide to devote themselves to a life that can give them more honor and titles so that they can get involved in a better social class. Some of my friends decided to move to a quiet place where they could have a private life with the one whom they love. Some people decide to go back to their hometown because they feel like they don’t have a sense of belonging in a foreign place and nostalgia is the disease that makes them delicate inside. Some people, such as me who don’t have ideas about what will happen in the future and still hoping there could be a chance for me to expand more vision to see through the world, decide to keep observing and learning modestly.
I am a filmmaker, an editor, a storyteller, and a girl who keeps searching for a way to survive in this world, always hearing people talk about their own lives and opinions about the world. The world has a lot of diversity. In my perspective, the world has its generosity. This generosity gives a space for people who come from different places to speak their stories to the public and let the public get more visions of a different culture. In the process of seeing and listening to different people’s lives and voices, I generally discover that life is not easy for all people no matter how much property they have or how much experience they gain in the secular way. The different voices and the vision that I gain through the process of listening to the public, in my opinion, create creativity because it is not a thing that always black and white. It has a grey area for people to see and to understand the complication of humanity. Therefore, listening to others probably is the best way for me to keep my creativity alive.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
During my undergraduate time, I created a film that revealed several childhood traumas that I had when I was very young. The reason why I created this film is not to criticize my parents but to have doubts about several negative phenomena that Asia societies sometimes have. I am the only daughter in my family and I begin to become the goal that my family members used to compare. They hope I can become a better person. They hope I can do better than other children in my generation. It’s not a rare phenomenon in Asia. Moreover, the old family members such as my grandma or grandpa, sometimes hope to have a boy, not a girl. Therefore, I was raised in a restricted family which have expectations for me but they also hoped that sometimes I could be a man, not a girl.
In that film, I criticized about female gaze and the things that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. In that film, I decided to analyze myself and tried to escape those phenomena, though they still exist in the world.
Link for my work: https://youtu.be/k1jm9QkpQrs?feature=shared
When I became one of the graduate students at Dodge Film School, I realized that I still needed to improve my skill in editing and focus more on the storytelling pacing. The pacing is one of the important elements that create the tone of the storytelling. For example, In the cycle one project which I edited during the first year of study, the story is about a single mother who has a very huge stress on the living needs to balance her job and her family well so that her daughter can have a good life to live. My job is to let the audience feel the hesitation and the depression that this single mother felt.
Link for my Cycle One:
https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ff.io%2FzJjkfVf3&data=05%7C01%7Chuzhou%40chapman.edu%7C9177232721fb49eda6a008db7ff4e960%7C809929af2d2545bf9837089eb9cfbd01%7C1%7C0%7C638244462123900380%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=F1P2HlpTYX4t7P02gtZuvGI%2Ftdtu%2BjdfABf4NOGoGms%3D&reserved=0
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I treat myself as a stubborn person.
If there are three qualities that I can suggest to young filmmakers, I would say keep modest, never stop trying to grab new chances, and never stop loving film,
Back in 2022, I was in the fourth year of my undergraduate time and my mental status was not stable because of COVID-19. I feel depressed by the mode which people have to live in during that time. I feel like there is no tomorrow for me to live. I have been separated from my family for about three years during that time. The nostalgia makes me wonder about my future. I have no idea what would happen to me.
During that time, the film was the only thing that I could do to build an emotional connection and get my numb heart back. I didn’t treat myself as a filmmaker during that time since I knew I didn’t have backup knowledge about the production and the set. However, I still want to give it a try because I don’t know what could happen in the future and there is nothing else that can make me feel better except film.
At the beginning of this creative journey, I just wanted to find a place to escape and hide so that I could find stable mental health and security because the depressed atmosphere of covid 19 makes me crazy.
I applied to 11 film schools. The time for me is not enough because I need to prepare my portfolio and also take my regular lessons for the fourth grade at the same time. I remember the whole time of March was suffering to me because the other 10 film schools gave me rejections. Only Dodge Film School gave me the offer. Back to now, the whole process seems like a gamble for me but it still gives me a lot of inspiration in my life to persist in my creative journey.
Being a filmmaker definitely is one of the boldest choices that I ever made in my life. It is a job that you need to quickly catch the audience’s various tastes and you need to follow the trend of the era ( such as vertical ) so that you would not lack the source of the information of the inner changing of the film industry. Being a filmmaker means you will not have a stable income source because it depends on the social network which you build on in the film industry. It is a job that usually needs to take a gamble on balancing your personal life and discovering more of your potential.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
The inner peace inside of my heart.
As a person who starts a journey that goes to a foreign country and studies a different language to get involve into a different culture. I am not quite sure I have a sense of belonging. Most of the reason why I lack this sense of belonging is because of my personality since I am super introverted and always feel insecure if there has some unstable situations appear in my life.
The most difficult and the biggest challenge for me is finding a peaceful space inside of my heart.
Back in the quarantine area, people begin all the things on the Internet. Schools and companies used Zoom to negotiate and cooperate. Even the film industry needs to make their speed slower so that they won’t face crazy situations in the future. I was also alone in Davis and barely had the chance to get in touch with real people. The time is frozen around me. Even though the knowledge from the class and professors would not stop going into your brain. However, I still lack the chance to practice. Practicing is one of the most important skills I need to have since I lack the confidence to get into the film industry.
When the quarantine ends and all things and events are back to normal, I realize the time doesn’t wait for me to become a professional filmmaker. It asks you to become mature as soon as possible. The beginning of my graduate school life was chaotic because I was still finding a way to gain more chances to practice and still figuring out a way to deal with the shadow that quarantine left me since I got seriously depressed mood because of it.
The changing point in my life actually appeared last year, I joined the vertical filmmaking team to get more experience on set so that I could get a chance to see how the film sets are outside the school work. I, as a person who doesn’t know how to deal with people on set, was criticized by the producers because of lacking the experience. It was at that moment, I started a journey of quick learning and quickly got used to the set surrounding me. When the risk of surviving keeps surrounding you, you will become courageous enough to face it because you don’t have other choices that can choose since you are alone in this place.
As the chance of going to the set got more, I became a little bit more confident. I sometimes would question myself about my inner peace because it usually is similar to the numb because I need to quickly catch up the speed of different sets. However, as long as I keep myself listening to others and being modest, the creativity which I discover behind will not make me numb forever. It will transfer as inner peace because you see more and hear more in your life.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jade.h.zhou?igsh=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-zYHdSsaBxEE0fMjFQ0u5Q
Image Credits
Chapman University
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
