Chris Robertson

Chris Robertson

I chose my Uncle Chris to interview because he has a life very different than mine. He is a cinematographer, which is a director of photography, for movies and commercials.

            Chris Robertson was born on April 26, 1967.  He was the second youngest in his family. He had one older and three younger siblings. They grew up in the small town of Abita Springs, Louisiana. He mainly grew up with his two brothers, his first sister was born when he was a freshmen in high school.

            For fun, Chris rode his bike with his brothers all over the town. He had different routes his friends and he would use code names for, like Banana. They would have pine-cone wars in the backyard or make forts and spaceships, using only cardboard boxes. He also really liked making model airplanes.

            Chris and his two brothers, Shawn and Kevin (my dad), liked to annoy each other during long car trips. They were not allowed to touch each other in the car because their parents would get tired of hearing “He touched me! “ So they would do the next best thing, which was putting their fingers an inch from each other’s face until their brother got frustrated. The other way they would annoy each other was by whispering taunts under their breaths, so that they all could hear it, but their parents could not.

                                                                                                                                       

            When they were young, they didn’t eat any soda or candy. In the morning there were two choices of cereal, Cheerios and Raisin Bran. Chris hated Raisin Bran, so Cheerios it was. Lunch was usually a baloney sandwich. They usually repeated dinners, a cycle of pork chops and rice a roni, hamburger, spaghetti and chicken casserole, stewed chicken, and sometimes tacos. Chris did not like to eat his veggies and had to sit at the table for a long time until he finished. They never went out to eat at a restaurant.

            Chris hated school, even though he got good grades. He went to a school that went from kindergarten through ninth grade. He didn’t like school because there were older bullies, so he pretended to be sick a lot. He remembers being amazed at the end of the year at the kids who had perfect attendance. He thought it was “crazy and weird” they hadn’t missed a single day.

           When Chris was little he wanted to be an international diamond thief. He wanted a castle on an island in the middle of the ocean where he could live and a cool leather outfit to use when he stole from museums. He didn’t know his current job, cinematographer, existed when he was little.

             Now, Chris mainly works on commercials. His favorite commercial is one for flood insurance. They had to actually build part of a home over a tank of water and lowered it into the water when it was time to film. Chris had to get a scuba diving license and film underwater! It was hard because when light hit the water it refracted as the water rose. That meant where the light hit kept on moving.  When the commercial was finished, he thought it looked really cool.

            Chris’ job is fun, but challenging. The cameras he has to hold are 40 pounds each! Also some of his work days are up to 26 hours long, but rarely shorter than 12 hours. He has to run a big crew of people, be responsible for all the technical things, and always be creative. He also has to make sure the director is pleased.

  

             Chris thinks that the hardest thing about his job is pleasing people with big egos. He has to get them all on the same page and make sure they all feel happy about how things are going. He says it’s challenging when you are tired to stay calm and keep everything working smoothly and everyone satisfied.

             Chris does a lot of cool thing for his job. He has travelled all over the world, met famous people, and been on navy ships. The thing that struck him the most was when he was working on a film and they had to shoot in a state prison. He got to meet inmates on death row and see thing “absolutely no one sees”. He says it gave him a lot to think about.

             My uncle Chris has a very different life than mine. I really liked interviewing him and learning about his childhood and his current job.

-Manna Robertson