PSU recently offered three-star offensive lineman Christopher Andre Otto (6-foot-5, 285-pounds). Otto is choosing his school with not just a strong consideration for football, but also his passion of filmmaking.
“Academics is really important to me,” said Otto. “But I want to go and pursue filmmaking later on in life, so I definitely try to go to a school that can help me with that.”
”I’ve just always loved creating movies. In high school, so I started to seriously get into it, touch the camera, you know?”
Otto’s dream is to play in the NFL then use that money to invest in his own film studio. He’s a big fan of filmmakers Jordan Peele and Stephen Spielberg with his favorite genre being fantasy and his favorite movie being Shawshank Redemption.
He’s already found success in filmmaking as Otto has a variety of awards from high school contests. He’s currently sticking with short films or micro movies, something he was taught to do in order to hone his skills.
”We have a filmmaking class at high school as an elective, so I’ve been doing that for the past four years,” said Otto. “I’ve won a few competitions.”
“They’re usually shorter films. I’ve been taught that if you can make a really good short film, you can expand it and work on making longer films. So I’ve been doing one minute to five minute films usually.”
This particular film below titled Homemade was a finalist for the 2021 Best Micro Movie at the All American High School Film Festival. Otto also has a first place award from a major competition and several finalist nods from state competitions for a variety of his works.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Due to his interest in filmmaking, Otto’s main choices thus far are schools with a strong filmmaking program. He has already taken an official visit to Stanford and Princeton with official visits scheduled later this month for Florida State and Syracuse. He has one official visit remaining and has discussed with Penn State about using it with them.
On the football field, Otto says that his speed is his best trait. In addition to football he runs track and wrestles, making him a three-sport athlete.
One of the things he knew about Penn State was its strong wrestling program, although Otto wouldn’t wrestle for them in college. He’s been talking with Penn State off-and-on this past year but was still somewhat surprised when Penn State reached out with an offer.
“It feels great,” said Otto on the offer. “I wasn’t expecting it for awhile. They’ve kind of been talking to me, every once-in-awhile, but it’s been awhile since we talked a lot. I’m excited to build that relationship.”
When asked about each of the schools he’s taking an official visit to – Stanford, Princeton, Florida State and Syracuse – he neglected to talk about the football teams and instead spoke on each of their filmmaking programs. He spoke the most at length on Florida State, his state’s university. Currently all three major recruiting outlets – On3, Rivals and 247Sports – are projecting him to go to Florida State.
Although he mentioned that he has always seen himself leaving Florida, and doesn’t feel like there would be any difficulty adjusting to life far away from home. That is evident that three of the four schools that used an official visit are thousands of miles away from his home in Key West, Florida.
Regardless of where Otto chooses to go to school, his career could be one to follow closely. Perhaps he’ll make a movie about it, one day.
