Unlike many directors, Bernard did not grow up with a Super 8mm in the basement and filming cheesy C-grade horror flicks at the backyard with his younger brothers. Instead, he grew up holding inanimate objects and pretend to be in fantasy worlds in the living room as his parents thought he had ADD.
But once during the running of the Original Star Wars trilogy on TV in celebration of the 20th Anniversary, this young Chinese boy realized that he wanted to make movies.
It was not until high school that he got a taste of what acting would be in drama class. And it was not until he chose videography as his Drama major that he wrote and filmed his first short. Shooting in miniDV and editing on two SuperVHS decks... linear editing! The film was about a homeless man and the tragic loss of his best friend.
Time went by and Bernard lay his dreams of becoming a filmmaker to pursue a more stable career in computing. Though, once he finished his Computer Science degree and told himself he didn't want to see numbers and parameters for a job, he opted to enroll at the Sydney College of the Arts with their Masters of Film and Digital Image course. After graduation, he worked at several Sydney production companies as editor or technical analyst.
Still lacking the taste of film creativeness, it was not until a chance encounter with Hong Kong director, Ronny Yu, that he was pushed once again into the dreams he so thought of walking since that night in his parent's room, seeing Luke Skywalker with his trusty saber.
He enrolled himself into the New York Film Academy to spruce up his writing. Currently, he's traveling the world, writing and by the end of 2008, he will have several self written and directed short films to showcase his talents.
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