Meet Matt Farren of Anonymouse Production in Playa Vista

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Farren.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Matt. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I grew up in Northern California, just North of San Francisco, in a small town called Rohnert Park. My mom was a paramedic, and my dad was a fireman; both expected me, or any of my four siblings, to end up following in their footsteps– but that never even registered with me. Ever since I can remember, I knew I was going to make movies: and I did, even as a kid! I’d use my iPod touch to film my siblings living out stories that I’d imagined, and I’d put them together on iMovie. My siblings and I eventually stopped making movies together (blame it on creative differences), but I never lost the passion. Throughout high school, I knew I had to get out of my small town and broaden my horizons if I wanted to make anything that ever made any impact.

So, six months after graduating high school, and two months after turning 18, I made the big move South to Simi Valley (the first town outside of the LA county border). It wasn’t Hollywood, but attending community college so close to LA meant our field trips included jaunts to studios, writing sessions, and keynote speeches with respected individuals from the industry. I began school as an English major to avoid pigeonholing myself (so my grandpa would say) but it wasn’t even a month into my education before I switched my major to Film Production. I made my first short film in my second semester at school as a final project, and ever since then, I haven’t been able to stop. I haven’t needed to make any more films for my classes, but I made five the next year, and two much longer short films the year after, the first of which by far has had the biggest impact on my life. Keep in mind, this is all while still being a full time student, and working full-time at a dine-in movie theater. My most impactful film is called Chuck, and it’s about Charlie Brown as a 90 years old man. It stars my housemate, also named Chuck, who is also a 90 years old man.

In the film, Charlie Brown realizes that he’s reaching the end of his life, and hasn’t accomplished almost anything that he wishes he had. So, with the help of his sister Sally, his best friend Linus, and the infamous Lucy, he decides to take his future into his own hands. The film is far from a professional production, but it’s earnest and heartfelt. The film is only 20-odd minutes long, but I spent half a year editing it until there was nothing more for me to tweak. The results have been only inspiring: the joy it’s brought the cast of the film, through working on it, watching it, and sharing it with friends and family is all the reason I’ll ever need to keep making movies. The real Chuck premiered the film at the Simi Valley Senior Center for a whole group of his–er–older friends, and watching them gasp, and laugh, and tear up reminded me of the power of film. Since then, the film Chuck has begun to move around to other Senior Communities, playing for much larger groups of senior citizens, and has been found as a source of inspiration for people to make changes in their own lives. I’m now leaving the Simi Valley area.

I graduated from my Community College with honors, and I’m now transferring to Loyola Marymount University to major in Screenwriting. I’m editing another film currently, have another I’m writing, and I’m helping produce several other projects for friends, and for a few strangers who just really liked Chuck. Film is a powerful tool to inspire, and as long as I think I can use it to help others become the best versions of themselves, I’ll never put down my camera. I’m gonna keep making movies until I get paid to, and I won’t stop until long after that. So, keep an eye out for the Anonymouse Production banner. It’ll probably have an image of a mouse wearing a mask, and it’ll mean that I finally made it– much to the surprise of a Firefighter and a Paramedic.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Living alone while juggling a full-time course load, a full-time job, and social responsibilities is never easy. Being able to afford how to live out here took a whole year of adjustments, but I’d also never lived on my own before, not to mention, so far from home. So, adding filmmaking to the list has made me too busy for my own good at times. The amount of work I put in is crazy, and so it’s always been incredibly painful when it doesn’t work out. For example, in the summer of 2018, I made a short film I was going to use to apply to film schools. I prepared for months and rented a location in Idaho to fully realize my vision. We were gonna have one shot to get it done, but I knew with the right amount of preparation we could do it. And we did! Filming went off without a hitch. We got all the footage we needed, recorded all our audio, and had fun doing it. What could go wrong? Well, in the editing room, I discovered half of the footage was missing. I called my director of photography. He had a panic attack. Turns out he’d formatted a card he thought he’d offloaded. He hadn’t. So, that film was never finished. I was able to make other films, and I’d argue that they were better for the lessons I’d learned, but that was still one of the biggest disappointments of my life.

The other biggest struggle I’ve had to deal with is living so far from my family. Missing them is enough on its own, but when the Tubbs Fire broke out in 2017, that brought new light to how hard this could really be. The Tubbs fire blazed powerfully in Santa Rosa, the town where I went to high school, and the town where my Mom was living at the time. Having a disaster happening so close to so many people I cared about was enough to get me back North to help. Seeing old friends again under such terrible circumstances only reminded me how blessed I am to be where I am, and to have what I do. My families houses were spared, thankfully, and I was able to return to work and school not long after, only to watch the Thomas Fire burn over the hill where I was living. Again, my friends and new family I’d found while living here ended up lucky, but it was just another hard chapter in a crazy year.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Anonymouse Production story. Tell us more about the business.
Anonymouse Production is a personal business. It’s all about creating projects for others to find themselves in and helping others create projects that can do the same. It’s really still in its most formative stages, but it’s something I’m so proud of already. It brings my friends and cohorts together under one name to work on what we’re passionate about. That’s probably what sets us apart most: we’re not a group of businesspeople, or visionaries that rely on each other; we’re just friends who love to work together. That might change as what we work on becomes bigger, but we’ll never lose our approach to our projects. Find the things that you can’t stop imagining, and make it so everyone else can see it too. Don’t make something because you can, make something because you have to.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I’ve been very lucky, and I don’t take it for granted. I was lucky to find the place where I’ve lived the past few years; a good friend’s grandma introduced me to an older man with a spare room, and the rest is history. I was lucky to find something I was so passionate about in life at such an early age, so I could focus on it for so long (or at least, in comparison to my younger friends). I was lucky to get a job early on that I’ve loved to do and didn’t mind spending so much time working on. I was lucky to find a school that was so well fitted for my needs in such a beautiful area.

I’ve been lucky to meet incredible people that I get along with who want to work with me. I’ve been lucky to have been raised the way I was, and I’ve been lucky to have found my life outlook so young: no matter what happens in life, it’s either a lesson or a blessing. Nothing more, nothing less. I try to not take anything for granted, because it’s all playing into making my life a better story, and it’s all working together to make me the best version of myself I can be. There have been plenty of lucky happenstances in my life, but as long as I keep my lesson/blessing mentality, life can throw anything at me and I’ll be okay.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @mjfarren

Image Credit:
Mason Charles

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