Roberto Castelli’s Route from Photography to Filmmaking
Roberto Castelli grew up in Argentina - a country of contrasts, where life isn’t easy, but there’s plenty to fall in love with. A small town kid, in Tucumán, he spent his days running on the city’s dusty, hot streets. One word stretches over his entire childhood when he looks back - freedom. But, with freedom came hardship, of the kind that spawned a love/hate relationship between Roberto and his homeland. “Argentina had a deep impact on the way I see the world,” he says. This sentiment becomes evident through his masterful use of self-irony and explorations of the darker side of humour.
Continuing on the theme of contrast, Roberto might have spent the days with bruises on his legs and dust in his hair from playing football, but at the end of it all he always turned to books. “Many times I’d find myself reading politics or biographies at a very young age. I remember being anxious to grow up.” He continues, “On the flip side, I also loved playing soccer - we spent the days playing in the neighbourhood, building our own courts in deserted fields. We then spent the evenings playing board games and inventing our own. I guess we were very creative kids in that way - if we felt we were missing something as a group to play, we would make it ourselves. I’ve always loved to be able to create my own things and be independent.”
Following his care-free and creatively-infused childhood, Roberto went to college where he studied journalism and audiovisual communication, though he never got to finish the degree. In the fourth year of his studies, he started working as a photographer and got into what he looks back on as a ‘crazy project’ called ‘The Mongol Rally’. For it, the team drove an ambulance from Madrid to Ulan Bator, which led Roberto to try and shoot a documentary and that in its own right made him drop out of school.
Off the back of that Roberto says that he has always loved real-life experience more than theory. “College was fun and there were many interesting classes and everything, but what really got under my skin were the crazy passion projects I dove into. Another one of them was a short film I shot with a girl I was trying to impress at the time (it was her script). I had no clue about directing, it was all based on pure intuition, and somehow it worked. The best part of the story is that today that girl is my wife - almost 15 years later.”
So, after dropping out, Roberto got stuck in freelance photography doing pretty much everything he could get his hands on - products, weddings, events, wherever the camera took him. These years cemented his love for photography which he still returns to sometimes. “It feels nice to come back to where everything began. Also, shooting skills are an amazing background for my work as a director today. I speak the same language as my DOPs, I have a very clear insight of the technicalities of production and sometimes it is very useful on the creative side, because I can use those skills and experience to think of creative ways to tell a story.”
Since photography was what Roberto was concentrating on, advertising or technically directing in the advertising industry was not yet on the cards. However, a happy accident changed the course of things somewhat drastically. In his freelance photography journey, Roberto bought the 5D MKII camera with the goal of upping his photography game for events, but quickly realised that it was “one of the most disruptive cameras in the past 20 years”. It totally changed the landscape, almost merging the spheres of filmmaking and photography and allowing pretty much anybody to shoot cinema-grade content with small and low budget equipment.
“It was a game changer,” he says. “As I had the camera, one of my classmates proposed to shoot a couple of short films to enter a contest at college, just to see how it works. Surprisingly, we won.” That win was what made Roberto rethink the possibilities. From that day, he started shooting on the 5D MKII, which turned out to be the first step of the pipeline leading to his own production company and his life as a director.
This beginning means that whatever Roberto knew, was completely self taught. “I was shooting everything I could but I was also editing myself, grading myself, absolutely everything. Some of the classes from my four years of school gave me some background on cinema and a beautiful insight on the reason why certain things are made in some way.” The following months and years were crowned by practice, practice and more practice. “Shooting, shooting and more shooting - every day, until you get paid.”
Some lessons Roberto took away from the beginning of his career were centred around the importance of being clear and brave with your own creative decisions. “Be very clear with what you want and who you are, never be afraid to ask,” he says. “And never be afraid to go crazy on a project. Many times we hold ourselves back, but the reality is that creatives want to have as much fun as you do.”
When looking back on his first professional project, Roberto remembers a music video he and his friends made for a band. “I say ‘we’ because this was an entire passion project which we shot at the time with a group of friends, many of them not even remotely related to the production scene,” he explains. His dad, who has a construction company, also helped with the script. The cast were Roberto’s closest friends (and even he makes an appearance in the video) and everything was hand made by a completely inexperienced group of friends.
An interesting setup for what then snowballed into a very difficult concept - people falling from the roof into an empty room. “I look at the final video today and I see so many things wrong with it,” Roberto laughs. “But mostly I see valuable lessons. Shooting that first music video I learned that if I could achieve that with so many challenges, I could overcome anything. I learned to love the craft and most importantly, that I love working with friends - something I do to this day.”
Lesson after lesson and project after project, Roberto grew as a filmmaker and was finally able to establish his own production company - Le Chuck Studio. One of the first projects they shot was a L’Óreal film with Jessica Goicoechea, which turned out incredible despite the ‘ridiculously small’ crew and almost equally small budget. “With that film, many other bigger projects came along and I feel somehow it was a breaking point in my career. The ambition and work we put into it took us to another level and eventually the company grew to film really big projects.”
Roberto’s wild journey with Le Chuck went on for five years during which he came to truly understand the love he has for creating film. “I feel like what we do as directors is so special. Sometimes I feel like it’s not even a job. Of course, it’s a job, but how much fun is it to be on set, right?! It’s something I deeply love. The darkness, the crew, working with people that eventually become trusted friends. Creating universes each and every time, not knowing what will come next. It feels to me like an adventure, and I feel so lucky that this is my craft.”
However, in saying that, Roberto finds himself somewhat anxious due to its inconsistency. The back and forth swing between having too much to deal with and almost nothing at all is the roller coaster that he has not been able to get off since he got that special camera back in the day. “It can be hard. But it can also be a good thing - it depends on how you are wired internally,” says Roberto. So even though the instability has its impact, he wouldn't be happier sitting behind a desk day in and day out. He adds, “I love how my line of work is completely free and random. And that has the other side of the coin, which is absolutely necessary for the good part to be as it is.” Freedom and duality - both reminiscent of his childhood in Argentina.
Looking at the future, what is important for Roberto is to continue developing his own style of filmmaking, both visually and from a narrative perspective, and be able to translate it into his work. “Being hired for a project, not only because you are a good director who does a good job, but also because they want specifically your style and how you do things - I think that is what I would call success.”
But, to have a style that people want is to understand how to plug it into the current of the ever-changing industry Roberto works in. And while he follows DOPs, producers, art directors, companies and whatnot, he believes that in such a dynamic digital environment one simply cannot be on top of everything. “I have many inputs per day on what is being done, not only in Spain but around the world. I don’t believe it’s necessary to have this as a guidebook. I think it’s more important to make decisions based on your own personal look and approach rather than this or that trend.” Besides this, Roberto loves the human aspect of his job - so while AI might be the next exciting technological development, the human factor for him will never lose its importance.
When you take him away from his craft, Roberto still loves all he loved as a kid - sports and building things. Beyond that, he shares that he has had a few fiction projects sitting in his bedside drawer for a long time. “Finally, I’m starting to develop one of them, which is currently being pre-produced. So that is an amazing side project I have ongoing at the moment which keeps me really excited.”
Over everything else though, Roberto’s love for creativity has remained and only grown through time, as has his work ethic and need for working with people he enjoys. He leaves us with this: “I’ve always had really high expectations of myself and that has been a huge motor in my life. It has helped to get me started and get me where I am today. Now I feel that all I want to do is enjoy as much time as possible with my wife and kids, so I work hard. Balancing the two is difficult, but it’s important to at least try.”
