The best thing that can happen where someone leaves the theater is to be a different person than when they walked in. For me the movie that did that was the Lego Movie. I remember seeing it with my family and coming out, going home, and picking up my own legos to play with. I would make stop motion films about my legos having epic fights and car chases that I still have to this day all because that film made me know it’s possible.
That moment changed the course of my life. It inspired me to tell stories that could reach people and that people would connect with, inspiring them to be more than they are at the time. However small a moment, an expression, or a glance, they make all the difference and help the audience not only to fall in love with the film, but with your shot in particular. There are moments whenever I watch a movie that just make me sit up straight in my chair and say “wow that was amazing!”. That feeling of awe and excitement has a magical quality that film is able to bring to people and animation is a unique medium in that it is able to do those things in a heightened way.
My goal as an animator and a storyteller is to reach out to people, that they would see something I made and, like happened with me all those years ago, light up something inside of them. Our lives and the lives of others are shaped by the stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves. So stories are incredibly powerful, and to me, there is no greater joy and aspiration within myself than to share something that someone might watch and go “Wow, I want to do THAT”.