Los Angeles Clippers Film Producer/Editor and Clarke Central High School 2012 graduate Andre Robinson stands with 2016-17 ODYSSEY Media Group staff members after leading a workshop on digital storytelling. Robinson was a Sports staffer during his senior year and believes it was a positive experience for himself and others he worked with. “It’s a sense of excitement that I got being around people who wanted to be something. They were all chasing awards, great articles, and so I thought it was pretty dope. It was really a life-changing experience, those workdays,” Robinson said. “What the ODYSSEY experience did was catapult me into believing in myself that if you do what it takes, you can escape all that pain and all that harm.” Photo by David Ragsdale
Variety Staffer Chloe Sears: What brought you to Clarke Central? What was your story before you came to Clarke Central? You growing up, Mom, Dad, that background?
Los Angeles Clippers Creative Producer Andre Robinson: I was raised by my grandparents. My mother had me at a very young age, around 14, 15. My grandparents kind of took me under their wing and at that time I was getting a lot of installments of who the person I am today. Then that quickly changed around third grade when I moved to Maryland. Everything kind of went downhill. My happiness as a child, my childhood, a lot of traumatic things happened to me. The way I view and I still am affected by it today, but a lot of things happened for me from the third-grade years to high school. So it was a lot of character-building stuff that I like to disguise as it built who I was, to know that I can do a lot of things. From dealing with those things, it created a sense of wanting to belong and be liked because I felt at times at home, I wasn’t beloved and I wasn’t liked. You find yourself searching for attention, that attention may be acting up in class or trying to be the class clown, hanging with crowds, focusing on things that are not typically important. I didn’t practice the skills of being a student very young, so it affected my performance. When you’re going home and you’re not practicing reading or anything like that, your confidence is down when you’re in class. My skills on the educational side were really, really bad and I had teachers tell me, “You’re below average at this. You’re below average at that. You’ve below average at that. It weighs on a kid mentally that he can’t accomplish anything, and so when I tell you being on a stage at ODYSSEY and knowing that I achieved something meant so much more to me than anything in the world because I literally had people strip my confidence away. I literally had the world put darkness in me that I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and see that I was a real King or conqueror. I couldn’t achieve anything. What the ODYSSEY experience did was catapult me into believing in myself that if you do what it takes, you can escape all that pain and all that harm. It really was a big moment for me to understand that I can be in the same room as the Senator and tell him my story, and people actually listened. It was a big moment for me. I didn’t really think about how long that was. That was at the low place over there, by Waffle House.
CS: What pushed you to actually join ODYSSEY?
AR: I think it’s just like I said, noticing the signs and things that you are putting you on for success. When I came to Clarke Central, it was my sophomore year, and so one of the things that really stood out to me was, I was always the kid who always got magazines and looked at the pictures, right? So I will grab the magazine look to see if I was actually in the magazine. Look for pictures of me. So that’s what most kids do, but then, it was something cool, where I felt like them coming into the street team, I think them coming into the cafeteria, passing on the tables and things of that nature was a cool thing. I was kind of like, ‘Ain’t nobody want to put me in an article?’ So on a real note, I just thought that was a pretty cool thing that they were doing. It was different from anybody else. I liked the crew that they had. It was really different for most people. That was one of the bright lights. I had ambitions to be still part of sports as the sports broadcaster. I thought that the things that they were doing on the sports page… I thought I could try to learn some things or be around it and I would like it.
CS: What college did you go to? Are all the late nights spent doing schoolwork actually worth it?
AR: I’m a little embarrassed about this and a little hesitant when I get those questions. When I was in school, I laser focused on what I wanted to do. I was in school, but I wasn’t. I went to school for four years, but like I just said, nothing in school taught me what I needed to do for my job. It prepared me for social skills and prepared me for life in time management and all those things. But actual schoolwork? No, it wasn’t that. It was actually being in an environment of people wanting to be somebody, I think that was the biggest key. I went to South Carolina State and then Clemson. When I was at Clemson, things really took off. I was around a collective group of individuals. Close or not, you sense that everyone wants to be someone. Deshaun Watson, he wants to be the best football player that he can be. That motivated me. People that you work with, I wanted to be the best at this, that. I want to be the best at this and that, and so you’re getting amongst the elite hard workers and (it) rubs off on you. Or even you see them grinding hard and you’re like, ‘I gotta go harder’.
CS: (Our adviser, Mr. Ragsdale, mentioned) you used to do a ton of networking. How did you get all that networking to happen?
AR: The networking came from doing great work and being confident within myself. I think going to a HBCU instills that confidence in you. You’re around people who look like you, who act like you and talk like you, and multiple people at most times, as an African American, you only think success is privilege to someone who has a different color. Then when you go to HBCU, I realized, “OK, this person’s successful. This person’s successful. This person’s successful. This person has a great job.” So it gave me a sense of confidence that I’m not a number in a diversity chart. I’m actually someone who can accomplish multiple things, and so I think that was definitely a much-needed experience for me. I recommend any person who goes to HBCU. I would never have been the person that I am now if I didn’t attend South Carolina State.
CS: Are you keeping up with what some of your colleagues are doing these days?
AR: I keep in touch with (2011 CCHS alumnus) Carlton (Heard). Some relationships you kind of outgrow or they can’t go with you in certain places. It definitely is a cool feeling when a person who had more on field success than me really looked to me off the field for success. I thought that was really dope. You know, I shot Carlton’s first video when he was at South Carolina, and then he was interested in it. He was like, “Maybe I want to do this.” It was kind of like a dope experience with that, and then helping him with his career.
CS: From ODYSSEY with (ODYSSEY Media Group adviser) Mr. (David) Ragsdale to the place you’re in now, who have your mentors been?
AR: You get a collection of people. It takes a village to raise a child, so you’re definitely around like a bunch of people with that kind of throw nuggets in your ear, and then comes like a whole tree. It’s not really a person, but the knowledge and listening to what’s being fed to you. The universe is going to give you every tool for you to be successful. One of the most powerful talks to me actually happened to be watching a YouTube video. I didn’t know this person, but I was watching Steve Harvey’s jump video. That one really catapulted me into a different type of framing to take ownership of my life. Ragsdale’s been with me since 2011, so he’s definitely been one. I definitely have a lot of people from every stop that I’ve been at that have contributed to my pool of like judgment or my pool of understanding what’s going on and why this should be the way it is.
CS: How did you become involved with the L.A. Clippers?
AR: I was at Ohio State University and they came and got me. When you do great work you have a good reputation about yourself, and you really want the job, people come and find you and they give you an opportunity. You just got to have a want-to attitude to be the best and really do something that most people can’t do, and I feel like that’s how I got the opportunity.
CS: What was the hardest part of your journey getting to the L.A. Clippers?
AR: Part of my journey was overcoming a lot of obstacles. A lot of it was mental obstacles, you feel like you’re not good enough, or you’re feeling like your background or whatever it may be, may not be like this, or you might not have that many funds, so you put a lot of mental blocks and a lot of mental barriers based off of you. But then you realize that there’s no secrets in this world, success is not just for selected people, it’s for the ones who work the hardest. When you understand that, your preparation, and the way you execute, will only benefit you and (the) outcome. You can’t worry about the events, but you can control your reaction. So when you have an opportunity, your reaction is, “I’m going to work twice as hard or I’m going to do this. I’m going to pay attention to details. I’m going to sharpen this skill. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.” And your outcome is built off of your reaction. So I was saying pisspoor preparation promotes pisspoor performance and pisspoor performance promotes pain. I don’t want pain and pain is failure. So I’m going to prepare each and every day to be having great preparation and having a great performance.
CS: What’s your favorite part about your job, and what’s your least favorite part?
AR: My favorite part about my job is moments like this, where I can go back and talk to kids, and be an example of what they can accomplish and what they can do. If I had described this opportunity and what I do to (ODYSSEY Media Group adviser David) Ragsdale a couple years ago, he would probably be like, I don’t even know if that exists. So it’s like, I definitely didn’t know it exists, so it makes me feel great that, you know, I can go back to my hometown and there’s kids who say, “I want to be just like Andre.” So I think that’s one of the best parts, understanding that you’ve created a path for them to know that they have options. And I think that’s probably one of the coolest parts and the ones that I enjoy the most. I think the last (part of that question was) the part that I don’t like. I pass on that question.
CS: What advice would you give other people who want to work in the film industry as well?
AR: Do it. That’s the best advice, you know, Quentin Tarantino, he says, “I didn’t go to the directing school, I went to go direct.” So, it’s simply just doing it. That’s pretty much it.
CS: How has COVID-19 impacted your business and the way that you work?
AR: It’s a lot of invisible lines. A lot of things you can’t see that you can’t see and you’re supposed to deal with and it’s like, “How am I supposed to know that?” I would say especially in our field that we have to come interview, take photos and things like that. So it’s like trying to do your job with an invisible barrier, like a real force field of where you can access, so I think the biggest thing is access.
