Mulling over my personal statement for the AFTRS application. I need to sell myself to the examiners in a 3 minute video presentation. Why me, and not one of the other hundred applicants? I have to get them excited about my prospects. I need to convince them that I have the drive and vision to be a successful director. I must be charismatic, exuberant, confident and inspirational. All the things we idealise in youth. What will I say to the camera? Perhaps a little something like this?

My name is nereis, I was born in Australia 25 years ago, to Malaysian-Chinese immigrants. I grew up in Melbourne and Sydney, living in the suburbs but spending most weekends on the family farm. I went to an Agricultural high school and did well enough to receive a Co-op scholarship in Business Information Technology. But my favourite subjects at school were English and visual arts, and even as I was studying Business and Information Systems I was writing filmscripts and reviewing films for the student paper. I was two years into my degree and working fulltime at the Stock Exchange as a computer programmer, when I saw Hal Hartley's Trust and decided to change course. I was quite unhappy at the time. I was attending uni at nights, and writing my scripts on the train to and from work. Despite the prestige of the scholarship, I felt I wasn't getting the exciting and collegiate university experience that I wanted. But most of all, it was the fact that Hal Hartley worked in a construction company for two years before enrolling in filmschool and becoming a filmmaker, that made me realise it wasn't too late for me to become one too.

So I gave up my scholarship and switched to Arts to follow this dream. Out of all the artistic mediums, I feel film excites the most senses, it best captures the mind's eye. I've been writing and making short films for 5 years now, and whilst I'm still not a great filmmaker, I feel I have the persistance and dedication to become one. I want to make films that create transcendental moments, moments of joy, moments that make others want to tell their stories. I hope to craft romantic, humanistic stories, like that of the Italian and Japanese neo-realists, but with the inventive, playful style of the French new wave and Hong Kong action flicks. My key issues and themes revolve around globalism and cultural conflict - the displacement and struggle of individuals to negotiate some measure of happiness in a rapidly changing world. But I'd also like to explore more universal concepts of desire, duty and destiny - how these divergent forces create compromised identities and dramatic chains of events.

I want people to fall in love with my characters, and be moved by the transitory beauty of the images I create. I want to surprise them with ideas and emotions, thrill them with imaginative associations and stylistic leaps of faith. Above all, I want to tell stories with sincerity. I think this is one of the great strengths of Australian cinema - the honesty and integrity we bring to our films. There is a sense of love and pride in each movie we produce. These are not mere works of entertainment but expressions of our culture and ability. Each Australian film has a sense of its own importance - there's a reverence that resonates even in our most commercial films. However, as a young country with a boutique film industry, we have a lot of room to grow. Our prospects are fantastic. Globalism and multiculturalism have had a massive social impact on our culture and identity, creating many questions that need to be investigated, new stories that need to be told. We have yet to document many aspects of this cultural sea-change, and I think it is this need that will drive an exciting new wave in Australian filmmaking.

I have a long way to go before I can contribute to this industry. I have yet to learn how to block a scene effectively, get the most out of my actors and master the technical aspects of this craft. I hope AFTRS can help me achieve these goals, by providing me with mentors and collaborators that I can learn from. In 5 years time I hope to be making my first feature, exhibiting my work at film festivals around the world, and helping others make their films. Or at the very least, earning enough money to support my writing and filmmaking projects. For me, that would be happiness.

Listening to Danger's anthem and typing like a speed-freak. Lately, the impulse to blog has been closely tied to mp3-inspiration. I've been doing a lot of downloading as I work on my creative proposal for the AFTRS application. My "killer treatment" is coming along quite nicely. I now have a good storyline with developed characters. It's a weird mix of reality and fiction, as was my last film. I like this approach because you can document your friends and certain aspects of their reality within a dramatic creation.

A nasty piece of reality is unfolding at work. Looks like the latest round of workforce reductions is going to claim me as a victim. One of my four remaining colleagues was made redundant last week, setting the scene for my own forced exit. The timing is not bad actually, as I need more time to prepare my AFTRS application! But I'm worried about cashflow and career direction, now that the rug is beginning to slip. My sideline web-design business is beginning to show promise, but not enough to be a viable safety net. Luckily I've lined up a job interview for a trafficking/planning position with a large advertising agency. It's not exactly what I want to do but it's a glamour agency with big clients and the opportunity to move around, or so I hope. On the downside, campaign trafficking is a classic shit-kicking job and pays significantly less than what I get now. Still, I'm excited! If I get offered this job I'm going to take it, redundancy or no redundancy. This place is dead anyways! Bring on the next episode.

Paul Simon's singing about wanting to go to Graceland, and for some reason, I feel like I know what he means. I went to Graceland today. The sun was out and I was missing my women's sunglasses, but it's a condition of my rehabilitation that I give up my sickboy accessories. Had lunch with Nath in Crows Nest and drove out to the AFTRS to clarify a few things about my application. In the end there wasn't much clarification to be had. The student centre advised me to "do whatever you think would improve your application." In other words, the more work you put in, the greater your chances of getting in. Not quite the answer I wanted to hear, with only two weeks left on the clock, and fulltime work about to resume next Monday. To top it all, my little sideline web-design business is finally beginning to generate some projects... 3 of them in fact, due mid-September. There's no rest for the wicked.

I need to draw on some of Kweli's persistance, dedication, and concentrate on getting my application in on time. Now that the pennicillin is kicking in, the pressure is on to make up for lost time. I'll need to be firing on all cylinders and then some. From the look of the other candidates queued up in the student centre, the competition will be fierce. When I asked the helpdesk if people were submitting scripts and storyboards, or just a plot synopsis for the creative proposal component, this snooty nerd behind me told me to write a treatment, not a synopsis. I gave him "Blue Steel" and blew my nose.

Proceeding to the AFTRS library, I booked a screening room and watched a few short films by Ivan Sen, Cate Shortland and Teck Tan - 3 recent directing graduates whom I greatly admire. Watching their work was both impressive and scary. I'm not capable of such exemplary filmmaking, but the thought that AFTRS can train me up to that level justifies everything I am now struggling with. I've decided to write to Teck Tan and volunteer to work as an assistant on any of his future projects, if he'll take me on. Aimee at SAPFF says she'll help me get his contact details.

Now the big question is, can I get all this done in two weeks of evenings and weekends?
1) write, shoot and edit a 3 min personal statement
2) recut my honours film to make it look more professional
3) write, shoot and edit a 3 min critique of my work to date
4) write a killer treatment for a new short film

Can I get some action from the back section? Pull the finger out nereis! It's time to do some real work.

Flame on! I'm gone!

Listening to Akhenaton rap in French about God knows what. His mysterious hiphop argot is strangely soothing... maybe because I don't have to think to enjoy the lyrics.

I close my eyes but they still feel like they're popping out of my head. I've got blood in my snot and a headache that just won't go away. Looks like I was premature with the declaration of Stayin Alive... the T-cells might have won the battle but they were so busy celebrating on Friday night they lost the war. The doctor says I've shaken off the virus but have now come down with a bacterial "Upper Respiratory Tract Infection." In other words they have no idea what it is, but it's not the flu. And to top it all my wisdom teeth are descending. I'm in a world of pain!!!

Application status: not good.
I've been in bed for 9 days now, and not in a good way, like, say, Pam & Tommy's honeymoon. I've tried reading books, watching DVD's, anything to keep the little momentum I had going. But it's futile - even the Fresh Prince of Bel Air makes my head hurt. Yesterday I started taking pennicillin. Noted some small improvement today. Forced myself to get out of bed and get some work done. Blogging is a start... I haven't had much human contact in the last few days... so not enough sympathy! Need to share my misfortune around and move on.

As my braincells die around me, I've had little bursts of inspiration. Part of the application is a personal statement about my ambitions, what I want to contribute to the Australian film industry and how I think AFTRS can help me get there. I also have to pitch a film that I would like to make. I'm not sure whether this is a supposed to be a short film or a feature film, but I've woken up in the middle of the night twice now with ideas for this project.

My starting point for the personal statement is that as an Asian-Australian, there are not many Australian films that I can identify with. Most Aussie films are about our colourful criminal underground or moody identity/reconciliation pieces set in the Outback or the Bush. There is a distinct lack of Asians in the Australian media, but like the Greeks and Italians before us, our time must come. So I would like to help build this AA new wave by making playful, humanist films about Asian youth in the cities, as well as stories of Goldrush diggers, pearl divers, cane cutters, islanders, students and tourists.

Ideally my career path would follow that of Ang Lee. After representing his peeps in his early films, Ang was able to escape from his pigeonhole as an self-conscious Asian director and make films that appealed to a broader audience. Similarly, I would like to make a film about the horse racing industry in the 1950s, in the age before drug testing, when jockeys and trainers got away with race-fixing and murder. I'm also fascinated by international airports, where the drama is played out by a constantly changing set of walk-on characters.

I'm actually very passionate about Australian film. I like how our films strive for some truth or sincerity. There is a goodness about them... perhaps the innocence of a young nation coming to terms with itself. Our national cinema follows a more European than Hollywood model, in that it is relies more on colourful characters and relationship-based stories, rather than novelty and marketing. To put it another way, Australian films have less bullshit and more heart. For these reasons, my favourite Aussie films are Thank God He Met Lizzie, Bliss, Newsfront, Gallipoli, Chopper, Lantana, Two Hands, Walkabout and Last Days of Chez Nous.

I'm aliiiiiive! Long live the T-cell! I've been laid out horizontal for the last 4 days, at war with the flu virus from hell. Today is the first time this week that I've been able to read and write without causing brain damage to myself. Come to think of it, it's been a week of consistent brain damage, thanks to some glorious stacks and drunken antics down in the Snowies. I spent the weekend living it up at Blue Cow, trying to remember how to ski after not having performed the act in 10 years, and enjoying the love of the Westside massive in what was undeniably the biggest bender of my life. Out west they like to show you love by holding you to the floor and forcing you to drink spirits straight from the bottle, despite slurred protestations that you're already paralytic and can't even stand up to take a piss... or something to that effect.

Anyway I felt the love and even got to give some of it back at the end of the night when I generously projectile vomited on a friend who was trying to tuck me into bed for the third time, ruining her favourite pair of jeans. I haven't hurled like that since I drank a whole magnum of cheap champagne at an end of semester philosophy party. I remember the Nietzsche video making more and more sense as the afternoon progressed, and having great intellectual difficulty walking home to my ice-cream bucket. Which I promptly filled 4 times, no less. Since that profound moment of exorcism I've been unable to even sniff champagne, that nasty bourgeois plonk, without turning green. The Neech would've been proud.

But I have to say Philosophy Piss-up 1997, had nothing on Slope Invasion 2002. This was debauchery of the purest kind, a la Antonioni's Blow Out, minus a few prostitutes and deaths. And in the highly competitive "I'm sooooo drunk" stakes, vomitting on Teresa's jeans actually put me one up on everyone else. I had miraculously, gained some uber-male cred for soiling designer female clothing with my highly flammable bile. Yet despite the accolades of the morning after, guilt pressed itself upon my heart. Before I could even sober up, the jeans had been washed and sterilised, there was nothing I could do to atone. Should I offer to buy her new jeans? That would be one very expensive hurl. I settled on a more pragmatic course of action, and vowed to lie in wait for that fateful day, when I could return the favour by proferring my trouser leg at a time of great need.

Ah, such chivalry is worthy of poetry...