including cameraman Osmond Borradaile who came out of retirement to make the film, Anderson used the hospital's doctors, staff and patients, explaining “I prefer to work with real people. If they have had the kind of life experience you are after, you can get them, not to act, but to react and there is then the possibility of getting some very convincing performances. It doesn’t always work, but when it does it is dynamite.” To the amazement of officials at Health and Welfare Canada, the patients who participated began to show improvement. He also cast patients’ family members (including Allan Fotheringham). When the film was finished, everyone in it toured the province to stage the film. The film was well received and Health and Welfare Canada canceled its plans to build a second mental hospital. Post-NFB In 1951, Anderson was sent to London as the NFB's first Commonwealth Exchange Director at the Crown Film Unit. While he was there, he could see that the British government was taking steps to shut down that unit—it would be closed in 1952. Anderson returned to Ottawa, where he found that the Canadian government was in the process of moving the NFB head office to Montreal, and making other organizational changes. Anderson decided to go out on his own and left the NFB in 1956, forming Robert Anderson Associates. He used his NFB colleague Fergus McDonell as his editor; NFB photographer, writer and director Doug Wilkinson became Robert Anderson Associates’ Vice-president until both men retired from filmmaking in 1976. One of his first independent projects was the 12-film series The Disordered Mind, which ran on the CBC. The films were psychiatric case studies of real people with real problems working with real doctors. It was made for television, but it was strong enough to be used in the training of nurses and doctors and related disciplines and was internationally distributed. Many of his films were commissioned by pharmaceutical companies; others came from suggestions by the medical community. His 1965 film Smoking and Lung Cancer was made for the Montreal Chest Institute. (Its original title was The Left Lung of Edward R. Murrow. Murrow, who was dying of lung cancer and campaigning against smoking, backed out.) His 1963 film Mrs. Reynolds Needs a Nurse is still used in nursing schools. Anderson spent two years as a consultant to National Educational Television, the precursor of PBS.