Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aiden Keltner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Aiden thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

One of my focuses as a filmmaker is on telling stories of people with lived experience with mental illness, and specifically serious mental illness (SMI). My father is a psychiatrist and I have close family members with serious mental illness, so this subject has always been close to my heart. Society in many ways has let down people with an SMI and their families. Because of the stigma around mental illness, the resources available to people with mental illnesses are significantly less than people with a physical illness.

My most recent film, Crane, which I produced with support from a grant from Voices with Impact, tells the story of a girl whose father has a serious mental illness and is currently in a psychiatric hospital. My previous film Amazing Grace tells the story of a mother caring for her adult son with schizophrenia. To tell these stories accurately, I interviewed and spoke to multiple different people who had a parent or child with an SMI as well as people diagnosed with a mental illness. My hope is these films can shed more light on a community which has been too often forgotten by our society.

Aiden, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a filmmaker and based in San Diego and Los Angeles. I have directed and collaborated on multiple narrative films and commercials up and down the West Coast. I cut my teeth through high school working on sets at various film schools including the American Film Institute, USC and UCLA. After graduating, instead of attending film school, I chose to continue working professionally on sets, working on commercials and shows for companies such as Amazon, Netflix, and CBS. I take what I have learned from these experiences into my own films and commercials. My next film Crane will be released later this year with Voices with Impact who awarded the project with a grant. My previous film, Amazing Grace, was awarded Best Drama Short Film at San Diego Film Week and received the Audience Award for Best Local Narrative Short Film at Coronado Island Film Festival. With my business partner Aakash, I also work extensively on various types of projects and commercials. Most recently, I directed a commercial for the vacuum company Dreame.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

To me, definitely the most rewarding aspect of working in this field is collaboration. I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with extremely talented artists on the films I have created. I think there is something quite beautiful about a group of technicians and artists working together towards a common goal. One of the biggest misconceptions about filmmaking is films are created by the singular vision of a director, when in reality filmmaking is the most collaborative medium you can work in. It is only with the talent and skill of the entire cast and crew, that films get made.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my creative partner, Aakash Raj, while he was at the American Film Institute. We both have had very similar career paths, as we started working on sets at a very young age. I met Aakash when I was 17 working as a camera assistant on a project he was shooting. Later, when I developed a more in depth short film than I had previously created, I reached out to Aakash to see if he would shoot it. Now Aakash serves as the cinematographer on all of my films and commercials. I’m very grateful that we have developed a shorthand so we are able to easily develop a visual approach for whatever project we are working on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aidenkeltner.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aidenkeltner/
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?eav=AfbO5fqPgNcD7vOqwNn-NeRhPDdI5iug39uA_JL9A9d1YqDFzINh6BlLEtUCbMwIPGU&paipv=0

Image Credits
Oscar Perez & Frank Farooq