o/
Ofc you can make anything programmatically, it’s UE 
Depends on how much time You want to put into it, as essentially besides learning cinematic’s & Sequencer you also need to learn blueprints scripting, animation graphs, probably some AI concepts, animating in engine, VFX & destruction and basic game framework.
For beginning try with Sequencer and it’s events + some blueprints scripting for triggers as you mention. Basic stuff can be found in Learning library, don’t be overwhelmed, it takes time, Unreal is a huge beast of an engine. From there I suggest picking some from Film & TV, Cinematics & Media to get a glimpse of how it is.
Good luck 