I Wanted To Be the World's Youngest Auteur. Richard Salgado

As long as I can remember, I've wanted to make movies. There was a short period when I wanted to be the starting point guard for the L.A. Lakers, but that passed quickly enough and I was right back to the more realistic goal of being a world-renowned filmmaker.I spent most of my adolescence crawling around on my knees to get low angle shots with a video camera that my mother found at Salvation Army. Discovering a beaten down old wheelchair, I immediately put it to good use as a dolly. I read every film book the local library had and made innumerable short films starring my mother and Patrick, a Shi-Tzu dog blind in one eye. The concept of fully realizing a story through not only language but also imagery and sound was irresistible. Despite the vast reservoir of self-acquired knowledge I'd accumulated, however, there was still much I had yet to learn. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that at the time.

When I began college, choosing a major was easy. Just as quickly as I declared myself a film major, however, I became incredibly disillusioned. I wanted to learn how to make movies, not sit in a classroom, listening to professors lecture for two hours on the spiritual significance of John Wayne's shadow in "The...