Conversations with Andy Brewster

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy Brewster.

Hi Andy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Yea, well I really started telling stories visually in middle school with stop motion animation. There was a great niche community in my homeschool circles growing up around Raleigh.

Then after a couple of years of taking film classes (and then teaching kids’ filmmaking camps) with Michelle Murray Wells at Sonorous Road off Hillsborough St, I realized, “Hey, maybe I can actually do this for a living.”

It might have been the gutsiest decision ever made–I only knew a handful of people who worked in media professionally–but I applied to, was accepted at, and attended a top-ranked film and great books school near Los Angeles, Biola University, and their Torrey Honors College.

Those 4 years were wild and, in a lot of ways, made Andy, well, Andy. From discovering filmmakers and artists I take inspiration from, to becoming friends with some of the most talented filmmakers in my generation (and people I hope to keep making cool stuff with), working with the Producers Guild of America (PGA) as a College Ambassador… to working on literally dozens of projects all over the west coast, including producing 2 features, one with distribution titled Rubaru (https://www.rubaruthemovie.com) and a COVID-Christmas musical with a local Raleigh-area church in 2020 called, All is Calm (https://andyjbrewster.com/christmas-sweet-all-is-calm).

I went into school dead set on climbing the corporate studio ladder. That’s why you go to LA, right? I came perilously close to stepping through that door, particularly in 2020 right before The Blip. But, through COVID, learning my own strengths and weaknesses, and sage advice from some veteran industry mentors, I realized working in the indie space is so much more daunting and rewarding.

After school, I spent a year building a startup production company with some terrific guys at Action Studios (https://www.actionstudios.tv) producing ad campaigns and influencer content, and then this spring accepted an offer from an established commercial director here in Raleigh (Peter Scheibner) to partner with him as a Creative Producer!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh hahaha absolutely not. It’s a small miracle any film gets greenlit, let alone finished. We consume content at such furious rates, I think most people have no idea how much literal blood, sweat, and tears go into seconds of professional-looking content.

And in the indie and startup worlds in particular, that much agency over your own workday and future is both so enabling and paralyzing at the same time. It’s never been easier or cheaper to make content that looks good, but that’s true for everyone else, too.

It doesn’t really matter if your content looks good, ‘cause everyone’s reels look good. But, can you make an audience care about what you put on screen? Can you stand out in a marketplace that’s changing faster than you can make content? Those are the winning skill sets that are needed this decade.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Thank you! As a Creative Producer, I love taking concepts from their beginning all the way to completion. It’s the sort of role where I get to flex both my creativity and organizational skills and enable other creatives along the way to do their best work.

The bread and butter of my day-to-day are applying that to commercial projects, working with a brand to tell part of their story in small and entertaining packages. Sometimes that means making a social media clip for a company and other times that means producing a TV commercial meant for national audiences.

Now coming back to Raleigh, I’m partnering with local commercial director Peter Scheibner (https://scheibner.co) to expand and rebrand his production company as “The 541 Co.” So many local central NC marketing agencies fly in actors and crews from LA or NY for the large commercial projects here and overlook the amazing freelance talent in Wake county! As a producer and director-led company, we want to change that and prove to local agencies that hiring locals is better.

And throughout all the projects we do, we hold to these core principles:

1. Go the extra mile: Do above what’s expected of you for both clients and crews.

2. Story is king: Whether it’s a national commercial that’s gonna play on Sunday Night Football or a short film, every creative choice needs to serve the story being told.

3. People > Ideas: This dovetails #1, but ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas. So, even when the creative process gets frustrating or the hours on set drag on, remember that people are more valuable than efficiency. profit margins, etc.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
On a large scale in the entertainment industry, I think we might be seeing the content bubble finally start to burst. Especially if we’re heading into a large recession, I think we’re going to see the big streamers start to get more selective about the projects they greenlight and, like AppleTV+, lean into quality over quantity again.

Locally in Raleigh, as the Triangle grows, Peter and I at The 541 Co. would love to see Raleigh’s freelance market expand. Rather than a lot of 4-10-employee production companies in Raleigh that rely on the full-time staff of generalists, we want to see more specialized directors of photography, 1st and 2nd assistant camera people, makeup artists, production designers, etc.

Thrive in Raleigh instead of moving to Charlotte, Wilmington, or a larger market. Then we’ll finally see top-tier content being filmed locally by local artists on more of a consistent basis rather than, again, local agencies outsourcing to New York or LA crews.

Part of that I think will happen naturally over time as Raleigh grows, but it’s also going to make a concerted effort on the part of the other local freelance producers and directors in Raleigh to think a little more as a community to share resources, contacts, and fight together for better rates for the crews we hire.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://andyjbrewster.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andy.j.brewster/

Image Credits
Action Studios, Sally Bloom, Longleaf Film Festival, NC Museum of History, and All is Calm