Portrait of the cinematographer Alejandro Roa smiling in his hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico.

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It is a pleasure to say hello and share my story.

I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1981 and I have to say that I owe George Lucas for the passion that he awakened in me toward this profession.


It's a nice story that I'll tell you right away, and of course if you're not interested you can just skip the next part!


I was about 5 years old when I contracted chickenpox, a very common disease at that time. The treatment is simple, wait for it to pass by itself and do not scratch because removing one of those scabs leaves scars for life; Due to it being highly contagious, you must remain isolated for several days.

Early portrait of content creator Alejandro Roa at four years old in 1985.

And there you have it, a 5-year-old boy, isolated, bored and with an insane itch. So, to entertain me in the mornings when there were no children's programs on TV and to stop me from scratching and scarring myself for life, my parents brought home a Beta VCR with a Star Wars tape, pirated of course.

The tape left me amazed It was wonderful. Everything that happened in the galaxy and how the ships traveled at the speed of light, all those strange characters on hostile planets that with the power of the force and a sword of light could defeat all enemies.

My mother, with all her love, gathered the courage to tell her son that "it's all a lie," and explained to me how they make such amazing scenes, how those ships that seem immense are actually models, which can fit inside a room.

That cruel truth blew my mind, But it also opened up a universe of possibilities. Now I could bring everything I imagined to life, create fantastic worlds and tell any story I dreamed of.

I was always a little curious. I liked to discover things, to look in my grandparents' drawers and see what wonders and rare objects I could find. I loved to learn, to see how things worked, how people developed their work, things of the day to day, of my environment; But I hated school, I easily lost attention, my imagination won me over and I went off to invent new worlds and tell myself amazing stories That was always more fun for me than mathematics.

Alejandro Roa during his first feature film project, operating a cinema camera inside a private jet.

My first feature film experience on an international production.

I finished my basic studies as best I could and then what seemed like the most terrifying question - what are you going to study? And it was terrifying because I didn't want to make a mistake, I didn't want to waste time and a couple of years after starting a career, realize that I didn't like it and that I should study something else. And I think that like many others, I had a lot of different voices talking to me. Let me explain.

An aunt said to me that I should study literature. And she had some justification to believe it. For some time during my childhood I was into writing. I spent hours filling notebooks with stories. They were probably really bad and had no meaning, stories that go nowhere but still, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I remember once a cousin came with her boyfriend who was studying philosophy and told me, “Well, if you want to study literature maybe you should start with philosophy." And there you have it, more noise in my head!

    A witch friend of mine wanted me on her side in the strange esoteric world. My psychologist told me that I had a special facility to understand people, their behavior and personality. It must be true, but I was always more attracted to the artistic world. 

    Music was out of the question. My father, a great organist and pianist, tried to teach me piano but I failed. I lost my patience and hated the monotony of repetition, repeating and repeating the same exercise over and over again. It was that and a fleeting attempt to learn violin, which is another great story that my mother will be happy to tell you and laugh a little.

    Sculpture caught my attention; I made several things with plaster and it entertained me a lot. Plastic arts I couldn't even dream of. I was terribly bad at drawing anything. But acting and theater blew my mind. I loved to play characters and go on stage whenever I could during the events we organized in a church group I belonged to. 

    It's funny how patterns repeat themselves, my father always wanted to study music, but his family told him, "study something else. As a musician you will starve to death." So, before being a musician he was an accountant, a career he never pursued nor liked. Probably unconsciously but honestly, he told me "Acting is not going to put food on your table".

    So, I had to find something that I liked and that would enable me to make a living from it. Bachelor of Science and Communication. Here we go, a relatively new and fashionable field. I was just about to jump headfirst into a career that has a lot of subjects that do not interest me at all, when suddenly a charitable soul appeared and showed me the right way. He told me about a school of Audiovisual Arts, all those subjects that didn't interest me were out, but above all there were all those other career options that I loved.

    Literature: Check - you have to create and tell stories, write scripts.
    Psychology: Check -you have to give specific personalities to the characters in the scripts, you have to expect them to behave in a certain way.
    Acting: Check.
    Theater: Check- cinema is derived from theater.
    Sculpture: Not too much - from time to time you have to invent or propose some props. Prosthetics may be the closest thing but that didn't discourage me in the least. 
    On second thoughts, stop motion cinema has much more to do with sculpture.

    And there hiding in the shadows was photography. It was like that mysterious subject that observes you from the shadows, silent but capturing everything with those lenses that amplify reality and enhance the image.
Cinematographer Alejandro Roa operating a professional RED cinema camera on set.
    I have to admit, it was not my first choice of specialty, I had always used the video camera my dad had or a 35mm film camera but it was nothing special for me. It was always an instrument for capturing the moment or the story I was imagining, until I understood that a single image can tell a story, and you can create something totally different atmospheres one from another in the same space and with the same framing. I mean, you can create the atmosphere for a romance or horror film in exactly the same location, just by modifying the light, and that same atmosphere has the ability to catch the viewer's attention in seconds. 

    While I was studying, I had some very good opportunities to collaborate professionally. I participated in the production of a pilot for a TV horror series and, oh my god, that was the point where I fell madly in love with this discipline. Looking back now as I am writing these lines almost 20 years later, I have to say that I am very fortunate and grateful to life and to God for showing me this world in that way.

    It was the first professional production that I had attended, and I was only the assistant to the production assistant, but it was magical. We filmed all night in a cemetery and it was those powerful lights that the photographer used, creating halos of light and pronounced shadows that generated a much more terrifying scenario than reality. Seeing that through the screen, I felt like a part of my brain that I I even had was opening up and causing a wave of emotions to run through my body.
    Later, I had the opportunity to shoot a short film with Manolo Caro. It was an exhausting but wonderful 28 hours of continuous production. The story was filmed in 16mm and required a series of still photographs capturing very specific moments that I shot with a 35mm camera. I never saw the result, but it was a great experience. Almost everything was filmed in a studio, and covered with black blankets, the entire short film had this background and once again the light created the magic.

    The set design was simple, but the light brought it to life. An opaque, styrofoam sphere came to life with the light it reflected from a 650w tungsten bulb transforming it into an urban lamp, or a jar of honey glowed on a shelf when the light passed through the jar. I remember that we created a scene where a bicycle moved forward by moving the camera and not the bicycle. Because the background was black and we had no other points of reference, we managed to create the illusion that the bicycle was moving in a large area, when in fact, all we had was a few feet of a space in a university cinema forum.

    During my college years I also had the opportunity to participate in the filming of concerts, commercials and other projects. All those experiences marked my life, showing me without a doubt what my vocation should be.

    Edited by Michael Cole.

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