About Me

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Fred Herrman spent the first ten years of his life in a house perched atop the Hollywood Hills, in a neighborhood that looked out across Los Angeles from Dodger Stadium to Century City—back when the hills still held open lots waiting to be built on. His father constructed their first home there in 1962 for $55,000, a detail that feels almost archaeological now, like a marker from another era of the city.

At age ten, Fred’s family moved down into Studio City’s Longridge Estates, then a quiet and unassuming neighborhood that would, over time, evolve into one of Los Angeles’ enclaves of film and television figures. Within a short walk of his parents’ home lived names that would later become part of the broader cultural fabric: Elizabeth Montgomery, Barbara Eden, William Conrad, David Rose, Loni Anderson, Steven Seagal, Patrick Swayze, Robert Hegyes, Drew Barrymore and her mother, Andy and David Williams, and Leif Garrett, among many others. It was an environment where the ordinary and the iconic coexisted without much announcement.

Growing up in that setting, Fred developed a wide range of interests—film, music, investing, architecture, and travel—many of which still inform his work today. Family trips took him across the country, particularly to New York and Boston, where extended family connections added another layer to his sense of place and history.

He attended the University of Southern California, majoring in psychology, influenced in part by his mother’s work in the field. At the same time, he pursued film and music, studying jazz piano and later attending a summer performance program at Berklee College of Music in Boston. After graduating from USC in 1988, Fred spent four years working in group homes and psychiatric hospitals with both children and adults—an experience that grounded his understanding of human behavior before he transitioned into the entertainment industry.

In 1993, Fred joined The Walt Disney Company, beginning in television as a Production Assistant on Boy Meets World, and later moving into feature animation. He worked on six films, starting with Pocahontas, where he served as a Production Supervisor, and went on to collaborate with Roy E. Disney on Fantasia 2000. After a period working in live-action production, he joined DreamWorks Animation from 2004 to 2006. He was also invited to work on two feature projects at Pixar, opportunities he ultimately declined in order to care for his parents as they faced Alzheimer’s and dementia—decisions that reflect the personal priorities that have shaped his life as much as his professional work.

Fred’s father, an engineer and writer, spent much of his career in public relations at Hughes Aircraft Company. Outside of his professional life, he was an amateur archaeologist and paleontologist, traveling extensively and participating in digs across Peru, Egypt, Mexico, Asia, Costa Rica, India, and Somalia. That influence—an attentiveness to layers of history and what lies beneath the surface—left a lasting imprint. It’s a perspective Fred carries into his own work, whether exploring physical landscapes or the quieter terrain of memory and time.

His mother was a pioneering child development specialist in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s and later served as a Guardian ad Litem with CASA of Los Angeles. Her work, grounded in empathy and advocacy, shaped Fred’s worldview early on and instilled in him a lasting commitment to understanding people and their stories.

Today, Fred’s core pursuits—traveling, writing, photography, and video—reflect a life spent observing, documenting, and interpreting the world around him. Whether through film, writing, or the lens of what he sometimes thinks of as “urban archaeology,” his work traces the visible and invisible structures that shape both places and people over time.