Living is learning and in living a good life we teach what we learn to others. At a very young age my family exposed me to all kinds of creative arts, from painting and sculpture to opera and Broadway; the good ones had a lasting message. Some person somewhere had something important to teach, something so compelling they produced a work of art, which concisely or otherwise served up a big idea for others to enjoy, interpret, love, or hate. With great art, it is impossible not to feel something, and whatever that feeling might be, it means that—for a moment, at least, as you watched or read or admired—you felt a part of an experience you had no part in. The phenomenon is an awesome one. To experience it is to live, however temporarily, a “false life,” one that charges and inspires you to do things in your real one.

Of all the teaching arts, I found motion pictures to be the most exciting. They tell the biggest stories, in the most exotic places, with the most extraordinary people. And they use full size toys to make them. How cool is that? And millions of people of all kinds, shapes, and creeds see it and hopefully feel it.

Growing up in a small town in Massachusetts, I imagined I might become a writer and a director for motion pictures. The journey to becoming is long and different than we expect; today, I am a visual effects supervisor, and I have been  …