@)!%

2015 was good bro.

What astounds me most is how many people noticed I was happier. I knew I was happier, there was no way I couldn't be, but I didn't know that it was so noticeable. I knew I was a sad kid in 2014, I realised when I couldn't get up from my bedroom floor this one morning but I had no idea it showed? I always put effort into being happy around company and being okay with my situation but I guess that didn't work.

Anyways, I'm glad I ended up going to AFTRS. I've basically spent the year trying to be more artistic and well-read. I started painting and taking film photos (basically maria's hobbies lol) and I made my first short film. I've read 11 and a half books. It's not a lot but I'm a damn slow reader lol and my attention span is shit as, I have to be stuck on a train to read (which is usually when I do read). My romantic life is in the shits still but maybe that's what 2016 will be about. Who knows. 

2016's also placement year. I hope things go well. I'm thinking of taking a trip to the states and doing an internship there. But that takes a lot of planning and idk if 2016 me can handle that lol. I've still got lots on my mind but at least this year I figured out I that as long as I'm in the arts, I'll be happy. Maybe editing? Art direction? Art direction would be mad. So would making my own original films. Writing's still my passion and my main girl, but idk how to be a writer lol Idk how to write for the general public or rather for people other than myself. But I guess that's just something I gotta learn. 

Do you guys get those days where you notice you're growing up? Like you haven't seen certain friends in a while because you're both so busy and you're sad about it but you notice you're both just growing up and it's nice. It's nice to know that you're just growing. You're on the up and up and it's liberating. Stressful and scary but freeing and all that other shit. And you slowly let go of your inner child and it's okay. Basically, you're not as inexperience and dumb as you thought you were. I mean, I still lack a shitload of lifeskills that I should have at leasted started learning by now but all in good time lol.

Fuck, I forgot about Nature Boy.

Bye.

Roll #3, Mates and Dates

In the land of gods and monsters, I was an angel looking to get fucked hard.

Roll #1, Lou's Roll

I need it more than you believe.

Movie post post movies

Harold & Maude (1971, dir. Hal Ashby):

The characters in this film were amazingly written and just gorgeously whimsical. And they were so, btw, in such messed-up ways but honestly the most loveably dysfunctional characters I've seen on the big screen. We watched the film in a lecture as part of the New Hollywood topic which I still don't get but it was raaaad. Anyways, well worth watching even though it's a bit old.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015, dir. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon):

Watch this film, the payoff is worth it. Such a great ending, a bit teensy and fault in our stars but only because of the cancer topic within a highschooler world thing. I absolutely adored it and thought the ending was just perfect. Also, the first time I cried whilst watching a movie. Like legit, I was sobbing like a bad bitch in the middle of the movie theatre.

The Great Beauty (2013, dir. Paulo Sorrentino):

Beautiful cinematography of Rome. Also great dialogue at most parts, I enjoyed it even though it dragged on just a bit. I still thought it was great.Although, I didn't get the story until the end but that's probably because I tend to zone out every now and then lol

Somersault (2004, dir. Cate Shortland):

An aussie film with Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington before they were big stars and it was nice. Very pretty and just allover nice. Like in a good way, not nice as in it's like... nice.... relative to other films.... It was just very pretty and the colours were saturated af which was so nice on screen. It's also by Cate Shortland and it's her debut film which is great.

Lore (2012, dir. Cate Shortland):

This one is also by Cate Shortland and it is great. Like good good. It's about a bunch of kids who have to flee their home all by themselves because their parents were nazis and this was right after WWII ended (I think, my history knowledge is atrocious). Anyways, it's so Cate and it's so beautiful. I absolutely adored it.

Spring Breakers (2012, dir. Harmony Korine):

Pretty bad but not thaaaat awful. It was okay. I loved the style with the neon lights and colours, that was great. Costuming was pretty g too. However, they were the most two dimensional characters in the world. With the girls, their actions painted a little bit of personality but it wasn't enough to whoever wrote these could-have-been great female characters. The person with the most character was James Franco's and he was god-awful. Really bad. Like so bad.

Do the Right Thing (1989, dir. Spike Lee):

Spike Lee did an amazing job highlighting a culture, a time and such a still-relevant social issue. The colours, the costuming and the camerawork were ace too. It was just such a great film. So many gorgeously written characters with great lines and even monologues and such beautiful scenes. I absolutely adored it and you could tell it was definitely a crowd favourite.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, dir. Benh Zeitlin):

This was damn emotional and powerful shit. It was great!! It was awe-inspiring and so damn good. Quvenzhane Wallis absolutely killed it. Such an amazing child actress, she really tugged at the heart strings. The dad was great too, he was tough but he managed to make us love him so much??? Ugh, good film. It's set in a somewhat fantastical world and it's simply but so intricately wonderful.

Dear White People (2014, dir. Justin Simien):

Dear White People is about several black students in a dominantly white college and it is damn interesting. It not only highlights the many issues that black students have to face but it gives us several perspectives from characters with their own unique and specific adversities - a girl who doesn't want to be black, a dude who has to be someone he's not for reputation and politics, a gay guy who finds trouble in fitting in with a homophobic black community and a dominantly white gay community and then there's the main chick who is very intriguing. Basically, she's a powerful black voice who demands to be heard but as the movie progresses, things get a little out of hand and we question how right she really is??? ANYWAYS, I was engaged throughout most of the movie and I enjoyed it a lot.

What's in a name?

We had an exercise in a tute where we just wrote as truthfully as we could about either who we were or the customs of either a name, clothing, thumbs and something I can't remember. Anyways, I wrote about my name.

The name I was born with was William Cong Hien Tran. When I was almost eighteen, I legally changed my name to simply William Tran because that was the name most of my documents had but my birth certificate included my other names and the lady at the RTA wouldn't give me my license and I really wanted ID so I could go gay clubbing for the first time and have my first drink and all that other geeky coming-of-age nonsense.

Anyways, that's why my name is William Tran now and to be honest, nowadays I'm just trying to hang onto that Tran part. I'm hanging on to it because in this industry, in the credits at the end of a film, that's where it ends up. In the industry we want to work in, I feel as if there's so much importance in representing my Vietnamese culture because really, where are we? Where am I?

When I was in high school, I had this little thing where I somewhat believed that the man I'd marry, the love of my life, would have the last name, 'Meadows', and that I would take it. I wanted it because it just felt like whatever it was attached to, that full name would sound like a happy place. "WILLIAM MEADOWS", flowers to the days. I also thought it'd be cute to call our home "The Meadows". That's passed now lol.

I low-key miss my middle names but really, knowing myself, they were always going to go. I went to Vietnam in February with my old uni mates and at one point, we all asked this one taxi driver what our Vietnamese names meant. Bao Lam Dao meant 'Golden Forest' and it had a warrior's reputation. Nhu Ngoc meant Peaceful Pearl and it was the name of a princess once. My name Cong Hien meant concentration*. Since then I've wondered why my parents chose that name for me. Did they really just want me to focus super hard all the time? That'd be funny because I have a really short attention span so whoops. I should probably ask them.

Growing up in the South West and in a school dominated by Vietnamese kids, Tran was a pretty boring name to have. It was common, not very pretty and there weren't many puns you could get out of it for your year 12 jersey. Transformers? Transcendent? No thank you. But now, it's all I have. And yes, I'm representing my family line through Tran and my individuality through William but it feels like so much more than that. I feel like I have to represent a whole country and I'll probably never become big and famous enough to actually have to but I often wonder what it'd be like to be white. Would I be just as sick to death to see a white lead on the big screen? Or would it be just straight people that I'd shun? Would history bother me so much? Would my last name be so heavy? Just to clarify, I don't think my last name is a burden and I'm not ashamed of my heritage. And I don't believe white people or rather all white people are guilty of anything mentioned above.

I just wonder what it'd be like to not feel so small.

*I got confused again, my name means determination, not concentration LOL But oh well, we move on... I'm p sure nobody in my tute knew that anyways...

I wrote that and read it out loud in class because idk, I felt like the thing needed to be addressed. The whole issue of cultural representation in the film industry and whatnot. We had to make a short doco once based on the statement 'film education is only for the privileged' and this other group interviewed me about racial privilege and basically they ended up editing it so that their doco started with me saying aftrs was so white and so is history blah blah blah and then I wrote this in my tute and then I might have commented "#aftrssowhite" when yet another white male became admin of our BA's fb group which might have been pushing it but come on, it's a facebook group, ofc I didn't mean it, it was a JOKE. Anyways, as passionate as I am about these issues, I'm trying so hard to not get my BA to hate me because in reality, aftrs is so fucking white.

21/pilots

 Every time I see this video it makes me so happy.

And this song reminds me of a long time ago. It's nostalgic, that's what I'm trying to say.

The End, The Colour, The Making lmao jokes

White is the Colour of the End from William Tran on Vimeo.

Here it is, my first film. I'm proud. I'm happy with it. I'm happy that I thought of something at the start of the semester and stuck to it. That alone was rewarding enough. First off, thank you so much to my wonderful actors, Maria Chan, Emily Tea, Trinh Ruth Duong and Louise Dietz-Henderson. Thanks for waking up early and helping me carry shit. By the way, my history lecturer Matty C said the performances were great so congrats lol Thanks to Michail Mathioudakis for being a rad cine even tho I moved a lot of your shots hahaha I like that eyes only on the edge of the frame shot a lot bro. Thanks Katherine for the house, it's a gorgeous house. Your parents have an amazing bedroom, #goals. Thanks Dinh-Ho Chau for putting up with my lousiness. Thanks for making me a soundtrack even though I used white noise. I changed the poem after I recorded Maria's voiceover and basically, the music didn't fit right and although it was definitely sad music, it just didn't seem right. Thanks for understanding and being cool about it. Also thanks for removing the static from the voiceover LOL Thanks Josh Valageorgiou for giving me hot tips in the editing suite and thanks Oliver Brighton for teaching me how to speedgrade in the editing suite. Thanks aftrs for the equipment and studio and for this opportunity. I'll be in a tonne of debt by the end of the course and I probably won't be rich and stinking famous but watching my own work in that theatre was an amazing feeling. It was so nice to see the girls spread out over a huge screen and to hear my own poetry on loudspeakers. I was so happy.

I did make a lot of mistakes but I'm sure I learnt from them probably. I think if anything, I'd change the way I tackled the whole rape topic. I feel like I accidentally romanticised it and that was shitty of me. I would've liked to have inserted a scene of women holding onto Trinh for dear life as she bawls her eyes out. But I thought it up too late. Oh well. The scene in the film was supposed to reflect the ugly nature of rape, the deflowering of a young girl in the worst way. I do admit that while I was shooting it, I forgot this and instead, I was more focused on making the shot pretty.

Anyways, this was my fave still:

Thanks for reading and thanks for watching my first film. Next film: Either 'Nature Boy' (working title), a series of voice messages sent to a boy who runs away into the deep depths of foliage and greenery or 'Original Sin' (working title), an electric take on the adam and eve story. 

Papi pacify our luv

Below is a series of photos mostly taken by Maria, all from the second day of shooting White is the Colour of the End (WITCOTE) at my mate Katherine's house. Enjoy lol:

Blue, White and Green

Cinematographer Joe

Just kidding, his name is Michail

Vietnamese wedding shoot

Polybort, polybort, graining on dat wood lmao

I heart natural lighting + gold polyboards

Me workin it, pls don't touch me

Why's everybody on the ground?

Oh, that's why, for the funeral preperations

SHE LOOKS FUCKING DEAD HAHAHHAHAH AND IF YOU ZOOM IN ON HER FACE IT LOOKS LIKE SHE'S DROOLING

Oops, she dead again.

but she still good to film

Me and Michail discussing shots for 40 minutes while Trinh tries to lie as still as possible as to not disturb the flowers in her hair but also trying so desperately to shield her eyes from the sun.

We didn't really need this shot at all, it's actually not in any footage, Maria just wanted to IG herself

It was supposed to look like moss but that didn't quite work out.

I feel like I subconsciously stole all these ideas from tumblr but I can't prove it and neither can you.

Maria trying so hard to get artsy candid photos of Emily

The fking ad said kendall jenner lookalike and I got this wtf