It must be amazing to be 24 and immersed in a career you love. Mark Trần knows the feeling firsthand.

Trần, a Northern California native, abandoned the biology and chemistry classes in college and shifted his focus to filmmaking. Now, his work, ''All About Dad,'' has been chosen as the closing work of the Vietnamese International Film Festival, which ends Sunday. Trần opened up to Kỳ-Phong Paul Trần about his passion for making movies.

Q: Where did you grow up? How old are you?

A: I grew up in Stockton, Calif. A lot of Southeast Asian immigrants lived there, including Vietnamese, Cambodians, Hmong. I lived there for 17 years until I moved out to go to college in San Jose. I’m now 24 years old.

Q: What is your family like? When did they come to the United States? And how did they come?

A: Most non-Vietnamese flip when I tell them that I have eight older siblings. I’m the youngest of the bunch, and the only one born in the U.S. Most of them were born in Việt Nam, and my brother was born in the Philippines after they left Việt Nam. I guess that makes me the spoiled American brat. After my dad left prison for his involvement in the war, he became a fisherman, where he had access to a boat. From there, the family and 30 others on that boat left in 1982. We all know the story, although they were more fortunate than those who had lost loved ones.

Q: How did you become interested in becoming a filmmaker? Was there a first film or time when you said, ''Hey, I have to do this?'' What was that moment?

A: I was introduced to filmmaking in high school. I was doing video projects for my classes and felt like I had a knack for it. I remember shooting samurai fight scenes, and rap videos my senior year, and being so passionate about the craft, as I am today.

When I got to college, I was enrolled in biology and chemistry courses. I failed my classes that semester and immediately switched over to film. I thought that my parents would be upset with me for not following the traditional second-generation paradigm, but they were pretty cool about it.

Q: Did growing up in America influence you? How so?

A: I’d definitely say so. If I lived in Nha Trang, or Hội An, I might’ve been a farmer, or selling cell phones to tourists. Being an American allows more freedom to choose a career based on passion, rather than necessity or survival. It also affects the content of my work as well: ''All About Dad'' is comedy/drama about a Vietnamese father who has trouble accepting the ideals and path that of his ''Americanized'' children.

Q: What are influential films? And directors? Guilty pleasures?

A: My tastes are all over the map. Favorite director would have to be Wong Kar-Wai; he’s so good at creating a feeling or mood, and amazing with visuals. I’m also pretty big on Wes Anderson, for his offbeat sense of humor. There are so many: ''Buffalo ’66,'' ''All The Real Girls,'' ''After This Our Exile,'' ''Annie Hall,'' ''The Godfather''… Guilty pleasure would have to be ''Dumb and Dumber.'' I’ve seen it so many times and it still makes me laugh.

Q: What was your immediate path to becoming a director?

A: I started making short films as soon as I entered film school as a freshman. Most of the students at film school begin making films when they’re juniors and seniors, but I had three extra years to make mistakes and grow. I worked as assistant camera for a while, and I also became an editor, and edited feature films. I tried to do as much as I could in different departments; I think that really helps a director in knowing how to utilize the entire toolbox.

Q: What do your parents think of your non-traditional career? Did they ever try and persuade you to become a doctor or engineer?

A: Haha. Dr. Mark Trần, MD, would have been their dream, but they would have settled with Mark the pharmacist. They were weary, but supportive when I told them that I wanted to make films. Then I made a film called ''The Fisherman’s Troubled Odyssey'' when I first switched majors. It was about my family’s struggles in escaping Việt Nam, and they adored it. I guess it was kind of a political move on my part in earning their faith. Ha.

Q: You’re quite young for a feature filmmaker. What are the benefits of being so young? And the challenges? Is it hard for actors or producers when they first meet you?

A: When I was a teenager, I had a short film in a big festival. So when the filmmakers were all drinking at the exclusive filmmaker soirees at bars, I was able to sneak in with a filmmaker’s pass without being carded. I felt so cool and mature. Being young means you have a lot of energy — you know, pulling all-nighters, and that insatiable hunger artists have when they’re ''working.'' But being young is much more challenging than it is beneficial.

When I’m working on a set, everyone is usually older than I am. I feel like I have to earn everyone’s trust from the get-go, though that’s true for most directors anyway. It’s hard for an actor to trust a kid-director who presumably has limited life experiences. I have to just act like I know what I’m doing, and use big words while I’m at it. One of the actresses on ''All About Dad'' almost left the audition when she found out that a 22-year-old was directing it In the end, I’ve found that people will ultimately trust you just by the way you communicate with them.

Q: ''All About Dad'' is your first feature film, but rumor has it that you’ve made dozens of short films. Is that true? How do you find time to go to school, make movies, and still have a life?

A: Part of the challenge of being a filmmaker is finding the time to do it. When I was in college, I had a part-time job. I found an office job where I could write scripts and do homework on my off-time. I forced myself to stay up late on film endeavors and wake up early to write. A lot of writers and directors don’t make any money when they start out, so they have to get a regular job. Then they get comfortable, and forget to make films. When ''All About Dad'' was in post-production, my editor was taking some classes, and I had a job. We had to make the most of our spare time, editing (in the) morning, and going to work right after. It was exhausting, but that’s what’s expected when no one is getting paid.

Q: I’ve always wanted to ask this question to someone younger than me, someone who grew up with digital and computer technology ingrained into their life (I lived in the generation that went from analog to digital). How has filmmaking chan-ged now that the high-quality cameras and editing equipment are relatively inexpensive and accessible? I mean now, a teenager can shoot and cut their own movie, post it online and be a viable medium. What does that mean for filmmaking?

A: It’s hard to imagine being an editor when digital editing wasn’t an option. Back then, they had to physically cut film, and hold the film strips up to the light to find the exact moment they want to cut. To make an adjustment could mean hours. Then, the editors would go home to their wives or husbands with film strips in their pockets and cuts all over their hands. That boggles my mind. Even tape-to-tape editing sounds painful to me. I’m lucky to be in an age where I can immediately play-back a scene by clicking and dragging.

I think it’s great, though, because now you don’t have to be a rich kid to dabble. It just means we will be able to see more stories from more diverse backgrounds, the things that we never knew existed. We often hear talk about how digital will never replace film, but film and tape is just a medium. The medium will always change, and the audience will continue to adjust to what’s coming. When theatrical plays were once the norm, movies was considered a farcical form of entertainment. Fifty years later, movies were the norm, and television was considered garbage. It’ll keep changing, whether we like it or not. Now that YouTube and iPods are more popular, we’ll start seeing films with more close-ups. Maybe cinema will exist in holographic form eventually and we’d have to adjust to that.

Q: What was your reaction to being selected for ViFF and then being chosen as the closing night film?

A: Excited. I think it’s an enjoyable film that will close-out the festival with some good laughs. There’s a unique, light-hearted quality about ''All About Dad'' that I think audiences will appreciate, regardless of ethnicity.

Q: Can you please tell me a little about the origin of ''All About Dad''? Everything from the origins to the script, the casting, the actual filming, the editing process, and last, finding a distributor. Any funny or not-so-funny anecdotes?

A: I was taking a screenwriting class when I started. I was 19 years old and wanted to write about a recent heartbreak. My professor talked me into doing something about Vietnamese people, as Vietnamese stories aren’t heard too often, more specifically, Vietnamese Americans. When it was complete, I took it to the department head of production and wanted to turn it into a production. As soon as we found some money, we dived into production and shot the film in the summer of 2007. It took me about five to six months to cast the film, as there are very few Vietnamese actors out there. Some of the cast, including the title character Dad, are non-actors. We found him by putting up fliers all over San Jose, looking for someone who could fit the role, regardless of any acting experience. We casted '' Đĩnh Đỗ,'' the older brother role, based on the auditioner’s ability to insult me. And the actor who was cast also had no acting experience. David Huỳnh and Minh Đỗ, who played the brothers, have a brotherly relationship off the set. I egged them on to play pranks on each other, on and off the set.

Editing the film was not easy. (We) spent a long time looking through every single frame of the film. We cut out a lot of material from the original cut, and added new scenes that we shot months later. We changed the structure of the film by moving some scenes around so they’d happen earlier, and some later. I learned a lot about myself as a writer, and as a director, and about what not to do on my next film.

Q: As a Vietnamese American writer, I write about Vietnamese people but try to avoid stories that revolve strictly around identity and identity issues and focus on the very intimate drama of our lives aside from identity. Is this an expectation others have of you or that you have/had of yourself? And if so, how do you negotiate this issue?

A: I tend to write about things that I know, and the characters I write don’t struggle with identity. People do things they way they do. And it’s their upbringing that determines what is most appropriate in the given situation, based on their value-system.

Q: What is the most challenging part of directing a film? And what is the most rewarding?

A: The biggest challenge in directing a film for me is that I never know if what I’m doing is right. It’s all about taking risks and relying on your instincts. We can justify all we want about why we used a wide shot for an entire scene, with reasons like ''I want the character to feel small and lonely. I don’t want to tell the audience how the character feels in the eyes, but rather, the use of shadows and framing, etc…'' It either works or it doesn’t. Maybe a dolly shot, or a nice close-up will be far more effective. There is no definitive answer to the way we make films. It’s all subjective, but that’s my favorite part about filmmaking. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to do it right, and that’s what makes it so fun and exciting.

Even in directing a performance, I don’t have a particular method in getting a good performance out of actors because actors are all so different with each other. Some can be so good, you don’t have to tell them anything, and their instincts will surprise you. Some have nervous habits they tend to gravitate toward when they don’t feel comfortable and all you can really do is make them comfortable and confident. In a sense, the challenge is the reward.

Q: If an aspiring filmmaker were reading this interview, what advice would you give to him or her? Something you didn’t know before you got into the ''business'' that you would have made things much easier or possible?

A: An old friend of mine told me that in the film business, you will constantly be asked to compromise. Don’t compromise unless you absolutely must.