Posted by Candace L. on 08/18/2008

It all began on August 28, 2005 for the Roberts family. That was when tape began rolling on Kim Rivers Roberts’ home video of her neighborhood's preparations for the impending hurricane. Many of the folks on their porches and at the corner stores nonchalantly went about their routines, proclaiming they would not be moved by a storm. They'd never evacuated before and Katrina would be no different. Kim's husband, Scott, even repeated reports from the news that New Orleans might only get a mild beating from the storm since the brunt appeared to be heading to Mississippi. Nonetheless, in a press conference, Mayor Ray Nagin encouraged those who could get out to do so. Kim runs around the neighborhood like a kid in a candy store, stoked to be getting these funny and honest insights from her friends and relatives. It was her first film, shot on a Hi-8 camera she had just bought from a friend a few days earlier for twenty bucks. The shocking images she would capture during Hurricane Katrina laid the foundation for the moving portrayal of her family's survival, Trouble the Water.