Experimental: A Senior Experimental Art Piece by Michael Francisco (2012)

A mess. A monstrosity. A metamorphosis. A tangled web. There are many ways to describe my senior year at high school, and that last one may just hit the nail on the head. Being a first-year at Freestyle Academy made me feel like I was always playing catch-up, balancing precariously upon thin wires hoping to appease a crowd below, but mostly myself. How do you white balance a shot? Lay another line down. What is white balance anyway? The wires criss-cross. Filming. Photoshop. Lighting. Wacom Tablets. Macbooks. Casting actors. Writing scripts. Shallow depth of field. It's all new to me, and each tether forms a complicated spider web. And that spider web is controlled by my monstrous ambition...

My experimental photograph is comprised of three photos: a close-up of a camera lens, a stretched-out headphone cord, and a shot of the inside of a bike cage. The stretched-out headphone cords represent all of the concepts that I needed to learn as a new student to Freestyle experiencing most of the technology for the first time. They criss-cross against the backdrop of the bike cage to form a steely spider-web. The bike cage represents the fact that I did not have a car all senior year and needed to find alternate forms of transportation. Ironically, as a film student, getting from location to location to get shots at specific times was extremely important, and not having a car exacerbated the problem. Lastly, the spider sitting on the web is comprised of a close-up of a camera lens and the legs are made up of the ends of of the headphone cords. This monstrous being represents my obsession with becoming a movie director, which drives all my actions despite all the hardships.