It was an ambitious goal, but Hollywood was built on ambitious goals.

Jason Carman gave himself until his 20th birthday to make a high-concept, effects-driven short film that would capture the attention of studio executives, convincing them to toss him the keys to a megabudget feature.

Now at age 25, having missed his deadline by a smidge, Carman is on the verge of enjoying a splashy debut for his sci-fi short, Planet, at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts on Saturday. The question is whether studio executives will take notice—and, if they do, whether Carman can parlay that attention into his bigger ambition: injecting a sense of techno-optimism into Hollywood movies.

Stranger things have happened, both onscreen and off.

Following a two-year stint as head of content at aerospace hub A

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