A Bit About Me

Background on Anne Freeman Brooks

My name is Freeman, it's a family name.

I'm a filmmaker and video producer existing outside of the LA NYC entertainment industry. Why? Because the summer I was supposed to pick an industry and move there...I was sentenced to come home for Jury Duty.

I packed up my degree in Film & Television Production from Boston University and drove home to Virginia Beach. But I never got called to the Jurors Stand and I accidentally fell in love with Virginia. I saw a need for freelance video production in my community and stayed busy with that. In my free time, I filmed my home life. Which at the time was: myself, my aunt & uncle, and my 3 young cousins all under one roof.

My cousin, Elliot (6), and I naturally started a Daily Vlog to entertain our subscribers with our unlikely living situation. She and I would do a range of things that not many people on the internet ever took interest in. But we would screen an episode every week for our family and that is where the magic was. There was something almost addicting about having out family outings and big moments screened back to us on a comedically edited format.

Well one day, I eventually moved out and got married. It was difficult to film our vlog without living together. Our lives look completely different today than they did 4 years ago. But, now we have these incredible episodes to look back on. We have that magical chapter in our lives preserved on ice. It took me a few years to realize that crystalizing a chapter was the true value in documentation. You never foresee your life changing in the future, but it does! Then it always becomes fun to look back at how things used to be. Good, old-fashioned, nostalgia.

Fast-forward to the pandemic. I wanted to throw my husband a "virtual birthday party", so I did the thing I saw people doing and I reached out to all of his friends and told them to send me a video wishing him a happy birthday. I had dozens of submissions and edited them together into a 26 min birthday special. I even took it to the next level by filming myself "host" the special.

I screened the film for my husband on his birthday in 2020 and he was touched. In a time when he couldn't physically be with loved ones on his birthday, this was a way to make him feel loved...and entertained!

Later that year I made one for his sister. I decided to start to introduce theme into the mix. My sister-in-law is a big True Crime fan, so I gave the whole video a Dateline feel to it. She loved it and that is how the Well Wishes videos were born.