Rising Stars: Meet Elinor Keyes of East Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elinor Keyes

Hi Elinor, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story started out early and fast. When I was 13 years old, I was accepted into Mary Baldwin College’s Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, which meant that I was able to skip high school entirely and start studying to earn my bachelor’s degree by 17. This was an amazing opportunity for me in terms of what I was able to accomplish, but it also meant that I had to have a lot of big decisions about the trajectory of my life planned out at a very young age. Luckily, 13-year-olds are known for their stellar life-planning skills, so obviously I didn’t have any issues there. At the time, I had my mind set on becoming an actor, so I decided that I was going to major in theatre– a choice that was much to the chagrin of the numerous adults with developed foresight that I knew and maybe should have listened to. On the upside, I really did thrive in the theatre program during the four years that I spent there, and I truly loved getting to be a part of it. I got involved in every show that I could: mostly as a performer, but I also dabbled in writing, directing, and various production jobs behind the scenes. Mary Baldwin is also connected to the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, where I developed a passion for Early Modern theatre– to the point that when I graduated from college, I immediately went overseas to Bath, England to earn my master’s degree in Shakespeare. I finished my grad program and earned my second degree in 2020, and without a ton of options to pursue or roots to return to, I just decided to move to L.A. and start my life out here. Originally, I continued down my path of pursuing acting exclusively, but as time went on I started to realize that it just wasn’t as good of a fit as I had hoped. As much as I loved being in front of the camera, I didn’t find it fulfilling anymore to just perform– I wanted to be more involved in the actual creation of the story and the production process. In 2022, I created my company, Cotton Candy Flavor Media, LLC., and started using it to produce my own material and the work of other independent creators. I started focusing on writing, producing, and directing films as well as acting in them, and managed to put out a lot of truly unique projects through the company while also learning and practicing new skills on a regular basis. This year, I’ve realized that I also want to work my love of art and cartoons into my career, and started to switch my focus from primarily live-action film to primarily animation. I’ve really been diving into the field headfirst, and I’ve met some truly amazing people who have been able to help me in my journey. Currently, I’m working on producing my first animated projects, developing my drawing and storyboarding skills, and trying to find ways to get involved with studio productions. Even though it’s still early in terms of my transition into animation, I feel like I’ve never been on such a clear or fitting path.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Uh, no, I definitely wouldn’t say that the road has been especially smooth. For starters, don’t get stuck in a different country studying Shakespeare in the midst of a global pandemic. It’s hard enough to get someone to sponsor your Visa when you’re in the country for some esoteric-ass, extremely specific academic field anyway, never mind when it’s basically the apocalypse and you have to convince them that it’s absolutely vital that you and your plucky group of artists put on a touring production of The Tempest so you can keep living in England. That’s not a career plan; that’s the plot of a really abysmal 90s family movie. Not every snag that I’ve hit so far has been quite as dramatic as that one– for the most part, I’ve just gotten into things, found they didn’t work out the way I needed them to, and realized that I had to change course. I’ve been hit with crushing self-doubt, dealt with mind-bending existential crises, and considered leaving the field entirely. I don’t think that those feelings are all that uncommon for people in this business– it’s a notoriously unstable industry that can really sink its teeth into a person’s insecurities– but a lot of my personal situation was also due to the fact that I was just so young when I started planning out my life. Regardless of how well I knew myself at the age of 13, at some point I was bound to waver from the path that I had laid out as I grew up. I don’t regret anything– having to change course is what led me to where I am today– but it is interesting to think sometimes about what could have happened if I had gone into a different field. Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that while some things may have been made easier, I would have ended up with a tremendous sense of unfulfillment if I had pursued any other path than what I did. I definitely picked Hard Mode when I went into the arts, but sometimes Hard Mode is more fun, and it makes the little wins mean so much more than they would in any other context.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I consider myself to be sort of a “multidisciplinary artist”– my main gigs are writing and producing, but I have a wide number of skills and interests that I love to employ whenever I’m given the chance. My first big project was a webseries that I created entitled “Olympic Proportions”, which was a cheesy mockumentary-style sitcom about the Greek gods. “Olympic Proportions” spurred the creation of my company, Cotton Candy Flavor Media, LLC., and was the first production to ever be released under its name. The point of making the series at the time was to give as many of the actors in my circle as possible a chance to be on screen, and to make a simple but effective production with very few resources. In order to make the project come to fruition, I had to take on a lot of jobs myself, and ended up serving as the writer, director, and producer of the series in addition to acting in it, promoting it, making props and costume pieces, and doing basically whatever else needed to be done. It turned into a far more complicated project than I anticipated, but I discovered throughout the process that I actually really thrived when I had the opportunity to work on making all the different pieces come together. It was because of that experience that I started formally pursuing producing as a career, and I decided to keep my company up and running to create more independent work.

Cotton Candy Flavor Media’s second project was my first ever official short film, a darkly comedic spy thriller/quirky romance called “Getting Hit On”. The story is about a hitman who takes a man out on a date in order to kill him, but ends up falling in love with him instead. “Getting Hit On” has been met with a humbling amount of success over the last year or so, amassing more than 25 awards on the festival circuit and earning a number of screenings at events around the country, including its official premiere on the big screen at the TCL Chinese Theatres. The film has since been released to the public and is available to watch on YouTube if you’re curious.

At the moment, I’m working on shifting away from live-action film when it comes to my own personal projects, and have been working towards producing more material in the field of animation. I’m diving into the deep end by just going ahead and producing my first official animated short: a bizarre, existential dark comedy that I wrote entitled “Get Yeast To It”. The piece is about a version of the afterlife where humans are judged in death by a sentient cell of yeast and sentenced to eternity based on whether or not they ever ate bread. It’s some pretty disturbing nonsense, and it’s going to be really fun to make and watch. We already have a fantastic team assembled to produce and animate the short, and we’re currently running a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money we need for the project. You can find our IndieGoGo page at ​​https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/get-yeast-to-it#/ if you’re interested in helping us get the dough. (Most of production so far has just been making bread puns.)

In short, I’d say that I do a lot of different things, but my true specialty is simply getting things done. I consider my main asset to the industry to be my ability to switch my focus from the tactical, logistical side of things to the creative side, and to use both parts of my personality to make a fully developed product. It might not be the flashiest or most lauded skill out there, but it has taken me far, and has given me an edge that I wouldn’t otherwise have when it comes to making art. I’ve created so many things that I am proud of, and I’m confident that the best is yet to come.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Oh, I was always a little freak– and not a very nice one, at that. Ever since I learned how to talk, I’ve never really been able to keep my opinions to myself. I got described as “bossy” a lot. I was pretty savvy when it came to finding ways to employ my unique, obnoxious skillset in any interaction, which kept me protected, if insufferable. In kindergarten, I learned what a “googol” was (it’s 10 to the power of 100, or a 1 with 100 zeros after it), and started using it to put an end to petty playground arguments– e.g. if a kid told me that they “hated me times a thousand”, I could come back with, “YEAH, WELL, I HATE YOU TIMES A GOOGOL, WHICH IS A NUMBER SO BIG THAT YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF IT, AND THAT MEANS THAT I HATE YOU MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER EVEN KNOW, SO THERE!”. At this point, the other kid would usually give up, not because my argument had any actual validity, but because I was clearly such a lost cause that it wasn’t worth it to even keep trying to connect. I did karate for a while, and kept getting reprimanded when I sparred because I refused to stop kicking my opponents in the knees. Hey, I was shorter, weaker, and younger than everyone else in the room– how ELSE was I supposed to take out those 6-year-olds? At the knees, that’s how.

Aside from negging the mathematically inferior and crippling martial arts babies, I had an absurd number of interests that I was constantly trying to engage. My love for coming up with stories started early. In third grade, we had an assignment where we got to write and illustrate our own picture books. I came up with a story called “The Momi Home for People with Problems”, which was about a home for disabled children that was run by two abusive and neglectful adults. The children ended up hatching a plan to lure the two wards up to the top of the building together and push them both off the roof to their deaths. My teacher was gravely concerned. My dad paid me ten dollars to put the story on Facebook. I think that was also the year that I finally got a story accepted to GriffinTales, a program that came to our school annually to put on a performance of selected pieces written by area students. I had tried to get my work in every year before, and was always very disappointed when it wasn’t chosen. By my third time trying, I had picked up on the trend that stories about poop, farts, and other bathroom humor tended to be selected, and used this information to write a very simple story about a tortoise who peed on every person who picked it up. The story got in, and I got to see my writing performed by actual actors in front of all my classmates. That was my first official scriptwriting experience, and my first lesson on the importance of marketability. I also loved performing from a very young age, and started seizing on every opportunity to be in the spotlight. Some of my earliest resume credits include the March Hare in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland Jr., Scared Villager #3 in a children’s production of Jekyll and Hyde, and the lead nerd girl character in some one-act that I can’t remember the name of (I was very proud of that one at the time). I was a figure skater for about 8 years, competing with a program set to Camille Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre (the beginning of a lengthy and confusing goth phase). I loved art and music, and made a lot of wacky projects just for the heck of it. Do any of you out there remember those scented pencils called “Smencils” that became a trend around 2007 or so? For some reason, I just HATED those things, and wrote a whole song roasting them entitled “Silly Pencils” that I performed at my elementary school talent show. I later made an animation for the song on Scratch, because apparently the legacy of “Silly Pencils” warranted more material. I always did pretty well in academics– you have to if you’re planning to apply for college at the age of 12. I came in eighth in a national French-speaking contest, made it to the finals of the letter-to-an-author writing program, and helped my math team take home first prize at the statewide math meet. You know, just like any other well-adjusted kid who definitely won’t grow up to remember, let alone still sort of take pride in, any of these utterly meaningless achievements 10 to 15 years later.

Now, at the ripe old age of 23, I can’t really say that much has changed when it comes to the basic facets of my personality. I’m still loud and annoying and a total know-it-all– I’ve tried to improve my skills in shutting up sometimes, but a zebra can’t change her very alienating stripes. I did, however, find a group of people who don’t just put up with my weird, grating, unconventional hangups, but actually seem to value those traits in me, and I’m more thankful for those folks than I can say. My love for creating and performing has led me to a career that I love and feel like I belong in. I’ve continued to pursue a wide number of passions, and have finally started moving in a direction where I can start using a lot of them all at once, which was my true childhood dream all along. I guess that the moral of my life story is that the things that make you kind of a nightmare as a kid will probably still make you kind of a nightmare as an adult, but you’ll eventually find a fitting path and a group of other weirdos who really vibe with that. Also, if you cross me, I’ll come to your home at night and kick you in the knees. I’ve still got it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cottoncandyflavormedia.com
• Instagram: @nellkeyes_
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cottoncandyflavormedia8979
• Other: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/get-yeast-to-it#/