Chico, CA Agricultural Commercial Filmmaker - Andersen&Sons Shelling
Walnuts are one of the snacks of choice within the TréCrib, in fact, we almost always have some sort of nutty snack in the house. One of great things about living in Northern California is all of the local and fresh produce, rice, and other crops, that you can pick up almost anywhere. One of the biggest farm names in Chico when it comes to processing these nuts is Andersen & Sons Shelling. They are a family owned walnut ranch that helps local growers shell, store and package their almonds, walnuts and other products. Andersen & Sons also sells their product internationally and to many stores you’d recognize! They recently reached out to us to help them tell their company story through video, and we were excited to make this vision a reality.
With all the agriculture surrounding us here in Northern California, it’s no surprise that we work regularly with the farming community. There’s not a year that goes by that we don’t have one or two video projects that are agriculture related. It’s a lot of fun because growing up in the suburbs, I never really knew how my food got from the ground onto my plate.
This project was one that especially stood out from the rest for me, due to the complex infrastructure of the walnut shelling and packaging facilities. The concept was the “life of a walnut”. We wanted to document the life of a walnut from planting, to shaking, to processing to packaging. While showing this process, we wanted to tell the story of Andersen & Sons, and lucky for us we were able to get their founder to do a voiceover at the beginning of the film to introduce their history.
When you watch the film, you can see how much technology is utilized to get our favorite snack to the shelves. My favorite of these machines is the kernel laser sorter that is capable of picking out defective kernels from thousands in split second using lasers. Truly remarkable!
Andersen’s is a great company, with great people and a great service and product. I highly suggest you pick up a bag, or a whole box, if you happen to come upon one in your next grocery run.
