With pedestrian regularity, Hollywood churns out movies about attaining impossible dreams.

But sometimes, those dreams really do come true.

William Feightner originally headed to Southern California to pursue his law degree after graduating from Fresno State in 1971 with a bachelor’s in philosophy. After his first year in law school, he got a summer job working in a Hollywood post-production house.

He never returned to law school.

Feightner is now senior executive vice president of EFILM, the self-proclaimed “most advanced digital laboratory in the world.”

“I fell into what I’m doing,” Feighter said in a phone interview with The Collegian. “You never know what opportunities are out there.”

Even though philosophy is not the field in which Feightner ended up working, he said it helped balance out his technical skills and rounded him out as a person.

“I think it’s a small percentage of people who know what they want to do in school,” he said. “The most important thing is find your passion in what you’re studying.”

He said he was lucky to find a career that embraced him, and even required, both technical and creative thinking.

EFILM specializes in cutting-edge digital technology. Under Feightner’s direction, the company was responsible for producing the first fully digitized film, “We Were Soldiers.” Each frame of the movie took six seconds to digitize. Previously, only scenes such as those containing computerized special effects had been digitized.

Digitizing a film increases the clarity and improves the color, among other things.

“It’s sort of like the analogy of home photographs,” Feighter said, comparing the difference between 35mm photos and digital photos to the difference between non-digitized and digitized films.

Feightner received an Academy Award two years ago for an archival process that EFILM had developed, but he said he “can’t be too smug about it.”

“Right around the corner are new technologies and techniques,” he said, explaining that part of his job is to keep an eye on the horizon for emerging technology that will take movies to a new level.

Feightner also has an Emmy Award and a Monitor Award under his belt.

“I’m most proud of the quality of work we do,” he said. “It all started as a dream.”

Feightner said the key to success is finding a job to look forward to every day. “Be passionate about what you do,” he said.