Keith Andreen grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he developed a passionate love for movies and moviemaking at a young age – an enthusiasm nurtured by his cinephile father, who enjoyed sharing classic Hollywood films with his son. Given this background, it was only a matter of time before Andreen decided to make the trek west to Los Angeles, where, arriving in the mid-1990s, he soon established himself as a “Human Swiss Army Knife,” working as a PA, grip, set builder, 1st AC, DP, electrician, gaffer, stunt driver, and actor.
Among his many credits, Andreen served as a segment producer on Big Brother and Combat Missions; was a camera operator and key grip on T.J. Scott’s Death Valley; and acted in Grey’s Anatomy, Longmire, The Resistance, Snow Bride, and Ernesto’s Manifesto. In addition, he created one of the industry’s most successful on-camera/coaching studios for working actors. In his own work, Andreen strives to create narratives, often based on episodes from his life, that eschew popular culture and special effects in order to plumb the depths of human experience.
Apart from his work in film, Andreen has worked with the international nonprofit organization Build On to build schools in impoverished areas, including Nepal, Haiti, Malawi, and Senegal. He also travels the world doing adventure photography in exotic and dangerous locations. (To see his work, visit his Instagram account @KeithAndreen.) This interview took place in early September
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. For readers unfamiliar with your background, what drew you to a career in the film?
I was initially drawn to a career in theater, but the hard realities of pay and earnings in live theater versus what was possible in film and television definitely guided me away from the Broadway and Second City stage route and more towards a commercial career in Hollywood. That’s why, when given the choice between attending several schools on the East Coast and in New York City versus the schools I was able to get into on the West Coast, I ended up choosing to attend Loyola Marymount University. It provided ties to an incredible, highly rated, School of Film and Television and the proximity to Los Angeles meant I could begin my professional career by auditioning and writing while still being in university. In fact, my class at Loyola included many people who went on to extremely successful careers in Hollywood including Colin Hanks, Linda Cardellini, Busy Phillips, Chris Sullivan, Lauren Levy, Gloria Calderon-Kellett, DeSean Terry, LeRoy McClain, Sam Restivo, Chris McCaleb, David Michael Maurer, Frank Borin, Paul Marchand, and Tanner Kling and Chris Hanada of Retrofit Films. The list goes on. It was a tremendous group of talented people collaborating, competing, and pushing each other to improve. With storytellers like that all together you are bound to learn and improve; iron sharpens iron. So naturally, the theater education pushed my love of storytelling and entertaining into the realm of a career in film and television.
You just have to LOVE telling stories and collaborating with incredibly passionate, driven, and talented individuals and I feel film and television is the ultimate art form for that sort of collaboration.
Who were your early influences and how did they impact your career?
My father was unquestionably my first influence. He was an oil pipeline property accountant in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who never graduated from college, but he had a vast knowledge and understanding of cinema and he made sure to sit all of his children down and make sure we watched and understood the classics, from Gone with the Wind to The Best Years of Our Lives to Singin’ in the Rain to Kramer Versus Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, Dog Day Afternoon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Glory, Braveheart…you name it. Three of his four children went on to work in Hollywood and it was entirely because of him. My next major influence was my first theater teacher and director, Patrick Daugherty. He cast me in the French play La Dispute in which I performed both in Classical French and also English. I had to phonetically memorize all of my lines for that play. He was a brilliant teacher and director. Professionally, my first influence was Howard Schultz, my first Executive Producer in television at CBS. He taught me how to be a professional writer, how to take notes, how to rewrite, how to grow thick skin, how to understand characters, beats, plot, structure, format, etc. There were many others, of course, including many of my peers who never failed to inspire me, but those are probably the three fundamental influences on my work in Hollywood.
Your latest project titled ‘Mayfly’ features at the FirstGlance Film Festival. Can you tell us more about the movie and what the audience can expect?
Best-selling self-help author Aaron Driscoll may look like a successful motivational speaker on the outside, but inside, he hides a dark secret, that he thought would remain buried deep in his past. After a long day of talk shows, book signings, and motivational speaking, he returns home to his mansion and passes out, only to be startled awake by what initially appears to be an obsessed fan holding him at gunpoint, demanding the truth about his shameful past, and forcing him into a painful reckoning that will either kill him or be his salvation.
It’s an intense, character-driven piece that is powerfully performed by an incredibly talented cast. I did my best to stay out of their way and not be an “intrusive director” who made you feel the pulling of the reins. Instead, I strived for a much more subtle approach so the audience could get swept up in the story and the emotions of the characters until, hopefully, they’re left with a lot to think about at the end.
Is it fair to say the plot encourages us to self-reflect and register that, irrespective of our apparent successes, we all have personal challenges to perceived failures to overcome? You co-wrote, directed, and produced the movie. Please share with us the origins of the story, how you came to develop the project, and what you’d like the audience to take from the film.
I would say that’s a true statement, yes. Definitely. Everyone is the star of their own life-movie, but we forget that means other people are the stars of THEIR life-movies and we are just supporting characters. Oftentimes this lens through which we see the world can block empathy and commonality from being perceived by us because we’re so caught up in our own lives. It’s good for everyone to remember that the Instagram Model/Influencer you see traveling the world doesn’t have that “perfect life” that we see on their feed. The Celebrity Actor we see on the red carpet has financial challenges, or a family member battling addiction or illness. The Evangelical Preacher standing up at the podium extolling us with sermons about other people’s faults, flaws and sins has their own closet full of mistakes and demons they are desperately trying to keep hidden. It’s trite to say “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but there’s a solid bit of truth in there that we should keep in mind from a positive angle: always be ready to forgive and understand because people may be dealing with a lot more than you’d ever imagine. Sometimes that rude statement or curt behavior or terrible driving is not really an indicator of the kind of person they are, but a symptom that they’re in need of help. And maybe you’re the person who can end up saving them.
Delving further into the storyline and narrative. You co-wrote this film with Philadelphia native, Katrina Law. Did you have a similar vision and ideas from the very start or were there compromises in the character development and direction of the plot? Can you share with us the development process and how you finalized the screenplay?
Well, like you said, I wrote this film with Katrina Law in March 2022. We went straight into preproduction, shot it in June, and flew through the postproduction process, thanks to the kind of good fortune for which one can only hope. Our entire team brought their A-game from start to finish, which made this one of the most fulfilling collaborations I’ve ever been a part of.
The story started with Katrina. She had an idea and started putting down notes as they came to her. Occasionally she’d ask me for advice or come to me with questions, but I’d always just encourage her to get as much of the story down as she could before she brought me what she had. Initially, the story centered around the female character of Daniella, but gradually Katrina felt that the real center of the story was Aaron, Warren Kole’s character, so her subsequent rewrites went more in that direction. By the time she brought it to me, she had a rough idea of the story she wanted to tell, but I certainly had a ton of questions. When you rewrite someone else’s work or collaborate on an idea that originated with someone else, you HAVE to fully understand what story they were trying to tell, but eventually, you also have to assert some form of ownership in the story yourself or you’re just a mercenary writer with no stake in the story. So after I worked out exactly what Katrina was going for, I began to shape the story around my own feelings and questions while also honoring hers. As any parent can tell you, having a child changes everything. For me, fatherhood introduced a whole new set of anxieties: Will I be a good father? Will I live long enough to see my daughter grow to womanhood? Will I be able to keep her safe? We like to imagine ourselves as heroes, but what if there was something I couldn’t protect her from? Could I live with that failure? Would I be able to go on? With this film, I wanted to address the reality of living in a world where such fears are all too real and must be dealt with.
These themes became central to the overall story as well as to the main character of Aaron Driscoll. In every instance, we tried to base the film in reality, and strove for emotional honesty. I’ve always felt that the most successful films are the ones that, even when they take us to fantastical places, have characters that are genuine and relatable, and stories that are based on real human experience. Similarly, the camerawork should always serve the story. Here, this is reflected in the increasingly erratic visuals – which move from stable and controlled to handheld and claustrophobic – as the lead character’s world collapses around him and his foundations are rocked by self-realization.
My hope is that audiences will be touched by the film, and even more that they will be moved to look at their own lives with greater kindness, openness, and forgiveness. It’s important to remember that not everybody processes grief and trauma in the same way. Nobody is perfect. But it’s not until we’re honest with ourselves that we can truly begin to heal.
Congratulations on the film’s success to date. It has won Best Short Film at the Montelupo International Film Festival, Film In Focus International Film Festival, and Long Story Shorts International Film Festival, it was a semi-finalist for Best Short Film at the Beverly Hills Fade In Awards and is currently nominated for Best Short Film at the Richmond International Film Festival. Did you feel you were working on an award-winning project during the creative process at the time?
Well, not intending to brag, but more to give credit to my whole team I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that Mayfly has also won Best Short Film at Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, Best Dramatic Short at the Full Bloom Film Festival, Best Short Film at Serbest International Film Festival, was accepted into the prestigious Academy Award Qualifying LA Shorts International Film Festival and our lead actor, Warren Kole, is currently nominated for Best Actor at the historic Catalina Film Festival as well. Not to mention that we just found out that Mayfly is nominated for Best Drama and Best Director at FirstGlance Film Festival: Philadelphia. Fingers crossed we get some good news on those last ones over the coming weeks!
But to answer your question truthfully, Mayfly started off intending to be no more than a director’s reel/sample for me and the collaboration with the incredible team of creatives I had working on it with me is what elevated it to being something worthy of awards and recognition. During production, I kept having crew members and department heads coming up to me in the quiet moments and quietly lobbying me to submit Mayfly to festivals. Many of them really encouraged me to submit it and push it because of how much they believed in what we were making as a team. It was so flattering and inspiring. Eventually I was able to get out of my own way and see what they were seeing. When you’re directing you’re so involved in the day-to-day challenges and every little thing that could go wrong or bother you that sometimes you forget to step back and see the overall piece that’s being created by the whole team. But you HAVE to do that so you don’t lose perspective and so you can also enjoy the process. So in a way my team fell in love with Mayfly before I could, but their love made me take a second and see what we were doing and appreciate it in the moment and I’m eternally grateful for that.
Please tell us more about the production schedule, crew, and casting.
The script was started in March, 2022 and completed for shooting by the end of May, 2022. We had physical production in the first week of June and shot the entire project over four and a half days. We started with two all-nighters, shooting “night for night” in Los Angeles, then went to a half-day on Wednesday evening so people could start resetting their clocks. Then we had two more full days on Thursday and Friday. I left Saturday and flew to Puerto Rico where I gave the hard drives to my editor, David Michael Maurer, ACE, and he had Reaktor Studios onboard all of the data and create proxies so he could begin hacking away at the first cut. We got our first cut by mid-August, locked the edit by the end of September and had sound, color and VFX completed with a finished film by that Halloween, 2022.
Much of my crew was assembled from people we’ve known and worked with over the years. My Director of Photography, the incredibly talented and easygoing Dillon Schneider, was an amazing referral from another DP friend of mine and he and I got along like a house on fire. A lot of our crew were regular talents from NCIS and were kind enough to contribute their skills to our short. Picture Shop were the last minute superheroes who rolled out the red carpet for us and helped us with most of our post-production needs from color correction, VFX (through Ghost VFX) and final assembly, along with AGE Post for rerecording, mixing and final polish on audio.
As far as casting goes, we only held auditions for the role of Grace, the little girl, and it was incredibly easy to make that call. She simply stood out head-andshoulders above the rest. Her talent was undeniable and we owe casting director Michelle Lewitt immensely for helping us find her. She’s going on to big things.
Michelle also helped us reach out to Warren Kole for the lead role of Aaron. We sent over the script and, once we found out he was interested, I had a meeting with him via Zoom to pitch him on the film, the team, and ultimately myself. I must’ve said something right because he agreed and the rest is history. He was dedicated and serious from the start and took an incredible amount of ownership in his role which was so gratifying because it wasn’t like I had it in the budget to pay the guy the rate that he’s worked so hard to earn. Still, he treated the job like I was giving him A+ treatment and that kind of leadership reflected and trickled down through the rest of the cast and crew. Lucy Blehar was another referral from Michelle Lewitt and she was wonderful to work with. Very emotionally available and easy to direct. And Chanté Bowser was an actress I had worked with in the past, so I just called her up and asked her if she wanted to be a part of it and I was lucky that she said yes. All-in-all it was a production that had the magic touch throughout the process. I was very, very lucky.
What other projects are in the pipeline?
I have three feature film scripts and three television series with finished show bibles, books and pilot scripts, that are ready to go out and be pitched. I have another pilot script that I’m presently rewriting and then a feature script that I intend to write afterwards with the intention of producing and directing myself with my entire team again…getting the band back together.
BUT before ANY of that can happen, we’ve got to get a FAIR DEAL from the AMPTP for both the WGA as well as SAG/AFTRA. So I’ve got a lot more picketing ahead of me in the short term. We will win this battle and the AMPTP will eventually come to their senses because 1) we are inarguably in the right and 2) this is an existential battle for us and merely a battle of greed, more private jets and yachts and stock buybacks for them. We’re trying not to lose our homes. They’re trying to buy their third. Or fourth.
So that’s the whole pipeline for me in the short term. Hopefully it’s resolved sooner rather than later because I know that I, as well as so many of my creative friends, have a whole lot more incredible stories to share with you all.
Where can our readers find out more about you?
I am on Instagram at @KeithAndreen and on Threads at @KeithAndreen as well. Regarding the rest of my team, here are their socials as well as the official websites for Mayfly which are religiously updated with the most current screening times, locations, awards won, and significant events with the film:
Regarding the rest of my team, here are their socials as well as the official websites for Mayfly which are religiously updated with the most current screening times, locations, awards won and significant events with the film: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mayflyshortfilm – @MayflyShortFilm Facebook – MayflytheFilm https://www.facebook.com/MayflytheFilm Official Film Freeway Page – https://filmfreeway.com/projects/2544349 Official Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN22NKQgsWE Official Website – https://mayflyshortfilm.com DIRECTED by @KeithAndreen WRITTEN by @KeithAndreen @KatrinaLaw PRODUCED by @KeithAndreen @KatrinaLaw @8mmGirl @JSTCB ASSOCIATE PRODUCER @DavidMichaelMaurer STARRING @WarrenKole @KatrinaLaw #GRACEJENKINS @ChanteBowser @LucyBlee @DaveScales @Jaucoin17 ORIGINAL SCORE by @SeanBeavan @8mmGirl DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY @Dillon_Schneider EDITED by @DavidMichaelMaurer PRODUCTION DESIGN by @Sara.Kugelmass SET DECORATION / PROPS by @cornepeli COSTUME DESIGN by @LexyRawr KEY HAIR AND MAKEUP @MelissaKWagner SFX MAKEUP @TriciaHeal PRODUCTION SOUND @JeffHaddad @GCCSound STEADY CAM/ CAMERA OPERATOR @Troosteadi GAFFER @Super8aml 1ST ASSISTANT CAMERA @JHall.Films 2ND AC @The_Air_Hunter CRAFT SERVICES by @1Liner COLOR AND POST by @PictureShop OFFICIAL TRAILER EDITOR IG TAG – Marc D’Amour – @bringtherock
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