While every director lives for making features, for a good five year stretch I fell in love with making shorts. Like a man on a mission, I was going to convince all these labels to let me take stories I'd written of the years, turn them into mini-movies and serve them up as dance and pop music videos to millions of viewers. And guess what - it worked.

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The story for A Lifetime Away I wrote about my Grandfather when I was 14. Sure, there were elements changed, but the idea remained the same. He was in WWII and we had these neighbors that were mormon missionaries. I had become friends with them even though their culture and religion was vastly different, we really bonded over our views of how this world needs to take better care of each other. They were the guys who would lead the adults into better behavior, seriously. 15 year olds correcting the grown ups around them. And I remember wondering if his wife had been tempted when he was gone for so long, and her being such a sassy person, what would it have been like if she met my neighbors when I was kid? What would have happened.

And well, I was 14, so every story I came up with had some 80's magical moment to it. The cinema I was raised on is still apparent even in my serious works today.