[1][2][3][4] Andersen went to high school in Los Angeles, where one of his classmates was future colleague, Michael Asher.
Andersen attended the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s and then returned to his hometown of Los Angeles to attend USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he studied with Arthur Knight and eventually assisted on Knight's project The History of Sex in Cinema.
He regularly attended local screening series including shows by the Trak Film Group and Movies Round Midnight and famously wrote about an unpopular screening of Andy Warhol's Sleep.
[5] After USC, Andersen attended UCLA and completed his experimental documentaries Olivia's Place and Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer.
[7] In 2010 he completed Get Out of the Car, a portrait of signs and abandoned spaces set to Los Angeles music.