We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Runze Qiu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Runze below.
Runze, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Finding my purpose in being a filmmaker is both about naturally following my passion and about trial and error.
I grew up in Beijing and went to a regular high school. I was a science track student preparing for Gaokao (Chinese SAT), and like a majority of other fellow students, I didn’t really have a clear vision of my future. Despite the pressure of Gaokao back then, it was impossible for anyone to bury themselves studying all day long; therefore, in my spare time, I find myself either on the soccer field hanging out with my friends, or going to the theatre club, rehearsing for a stage play. At the moment, I only did those things for fun, but in hindsight, I realize that the moment I walked into the club, I was already secretly preparing myself for a life of storytelling.
I enjoyed the theatre club so much that not only I participated in two big end-of-the-school-year plays as the leading actor, but I also directed and acted in the senior year’s coming-of-age ceremony in front of over a thousand audience members, consisting of the entire graduating class, the families and the faculty. During that play, something peculiar happened to me. I still remember that our supervisor nitpicked the script so much that huge changes were made even the day before the performance. By the time I went on stage, I wasn’t even sure if I could fully memorize that long monologue for the highlight part; however, when that actress delivered the last line before the monologue and the spotlight was on me, I looked ahead into the audience and had the strangest feeling: even though there were over a thousand people in the stadium, it was so quiet; literally, I could see nothing, but pure light; and the time seems to have stopped. Was I stunned? The next thing I knew: I was surprised to hear my own voice speaking out the lines, full of emotions, without any mistake. It was as if I was watching myself performing! It was almost an epiphany moment in my life that I never quite understood why I was in that kind of condition and acted like that, but I realized suddenly that storytelling could instigate a feeling in me like no other thing in life.
It’d be ridiculous to put it so simply that what was initially a leisure activity turned into an epiphany moment that propelled me to change the entire course of my life immediately – it also took the failure of my Gaokao, therefore forcing me to take the SAT and apply to the American schools, landing into the Econ major of NYU, realizing that NYU also has a great film school, gathering my courage to change major… It took a trial-and-error of more than ten years, as well as fate, to eventually find my purpose in filmmaking, but it all started with that one moment when I recognized the force of passion.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Runze Qiu and I’m an independent filmmaker and film producer based in Los Angeles. I graduated magna cum laude from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, focusing on film directing and producing.
Before relocating to Los Angeles, I worked for 2 years in Beijing in commercial production houses as an in-house director and marketing creative. I have directed TV commercials and event videos for brands such as Haier and ROSEONLY. I have also worked closely with the executive producers as a production coordinator to coordinate commercial video production (1-3 min in length and with a budget over $150k) between established commercial directors, well-known agencies such as Ogilvy and BlueFocus, and big corporate clients such as Alibaba and Xiaomi, from the development of ideas to the final delivery of the film.
To date, as an independent producer, I have also produced over ten short films, and developed over five short film scripts with fellow filmmakers. ‘Crimson is the Night’, the passion short film project I produced and directed in Beijing, with a budget of $25k, won the Gold Remi Award at 56th WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, a Canadian Screen Award-qualifying film festival. ‘Your Room Is Ready’, the most recent short film I produced, about an eerie twilight-zoneish hotel check-in, was officially selected by the LA Shorts International Film Festival, an Oscar and BAFTA-qualifying film festival.
Currently, I focus myself on feature film development, mainly in the genre space of sci-fi, thriller, and action. I’m driven to develop director-driven films that have rich world-building and answer life’s biggest questions, such as Cloud Atlas, Bladerunner, and Black Swan.
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?
The three qualities that are most impactful in my journey are a clear vision of life, perseverance, and kindness. I firmly believe in the 10,000-hour rule – when you work on something long enough, you will eventually get good at it. Therefore, the question isn’t really whether or not you will eventually get to your destination, but rather, whether or not you can stay in the game no matter what.
And to stay in the game, one has to have faith – that’s why a clear vision of the future is so important. As I have mentioned before, every step of the way, I’ve been guided by my passion and love of storytelling to stay on track and work on the craft I need to work on. As time went by and experience accumulated, I found my confidence naturally increased and I slowly started to get good at it. It is true that, with faith, anything can work out.
Also, a clear vision of the future is the key to perseverance: when you know where you are going, it’s easier to tell yourself when things are hard that you are not going to give up. And it makes all the difference when other people are giving up, you tell yourself: No, not today.
I have always been a believer in the law of attraction. If you know where you are going, then you can get there; if you believe in the destination, then you can persevere. The same goes for the third impactful quality: kindness – when you are kind to people, you attract kind people. My best friends today are the ones that I gave all of myself when I produced their projects. Filmmaking is so had by itself: when things get difficult, you need kind people around to get you through, as much as they need a kind you to get them through.
Therefore, for anyone starting this journey, I know that filmmaking, because of its glory as a show business, has a halo by itself, but sometimes, really it’s just works; therefore, don’t be a filmmaker simply because you think it is cool – you need more than “cool” to keep you through the hard times. So, really ask yourself “why it might be a purpose of your life”. When you can answer that, then just work hard and be kind to your fellow dreamers around you, and things will happen naturally.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Cloud Atlas, both the book and the movie, played an important role in my development.
I first watched the film during high school. Before that, I could say that I wasn’t fully aware of the power of cinema. The film tells six stories seemingly unrelated; however, by shuttling back and forth in six different times and space, from the past to the future, it miraculously formed a whole picture that expresses the mysterious notion of Afterlife in Buddhism.
The moment I finished the film, my eyes were welled up in tears. I felt a strange feeling that I became a part of the universe: I felt myself only a negligible point in the coordinate of time, and I could see people from the past to the future passing by me. For the first time, I was aware of how infinitesimal I am. Walking out of the theatre, I felt nothing but great awe for life. I felt that the power of the story could penetrate through the limit of time and space and stretch the storyteller beyond his or her own life. From that moment, my dream was to become a storyteller.
It strikes me that one can weave a larger idea through individual stories, and can paint a feeling indescribable through the art of storytelling. It also makes me realize the impact of storytelling is real, real enough to change someone’s course of life – my story is a perfect example.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: runzeqiu
