Kevin Tran, a successful filmmaker and SBCC alum, was born and raised in Santa Barbara. He recently returned to live in his hometown with his family after attending NYU and living in New York City. He’s happy to be back, and has great memories of his time at Santa Barbara City College.
“SBCC has amazing teachers and mentors,” he said. “When I went to NYU, I thought I’d be behind compared to others that were there as freshmen, but that wasn’t the case at all. I felt like what I learned at SBCC was on par with some of the best film schools in the world.”
Kevin says he was an average student in high school at San Marcos High, but once he took classes about movies and filmmaking at SBCC, he became “pretty obsessed.” He took his education more seriously and found SBCC to be a great opportunity to reset his priorities and focus more on what he truly wanted to do. He says it was incredibly important to have teachers that pushed students creatively and academically, helping them to get where they wanted to go.
“I took as many film classes as possible,” Kevin said. “I particularly enjoyed classes with Helen Fey and Nico Maestu—they really expanded my knowledge of film history and just made my love for movies richer. I took a pretty life changing screenwriting class with Jon O’Brien, and my film production classes with Curtis Bieber made me fully prepared to make my own movies.”
Kevin started a film marketing company called Crater with a friend and colleague in New York City. They primarily edit movie trailers for companies all over the world. He also has a film production company called Transmission Pictures where he focuses on writing and directing his own projects in addition to creating branded content and commercials.
Lately, he’s been working with the Santa Barbara Independent on a video series spotlighting local artists and entrepreneurs. He was featured in an article about the series (called Transmissions) and his other successful film projects. So far, the they’ve featured fascinating stories about the owners of Lighthouse Skate Shop, the chef who founded Rascal’s Vegan, and Ruben Zarate, the veteran musician behind the band Dante Elephante. We’re excited to see more!
