About Myself

Matt Juliano carrying a bag full of film memorabilia and holding a camera in front of a golden sunset with palm trees.

Hello! My name is Autumn Juliano, and I am a Senior at Freestyle Academy taking Digital Media II, English IV, and Film II. I have two younger brothers named Aidan and Zachary, and also have three cats named Penny, Nickel, and Dime, who are all siblings from the same litter and love each other to death! (Sometimes they take this literally and fight just a bit too rough)

Three kittens, two brown, one gray, cuddling together in a cardboard box.
From left to right: Dime, Penny, & Nickel

I love to travel, though I haven’t yet left the continent. My family loves to visit the Disney parks, and I recently took a cruise to Alaska. I am a huge film nerd, and my favorites include Star Wars, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, WALL-E and Home Alone. For a long time, I only ever watched movies, without considering I could make some of my own.

A line of people getting on to a red helicopter with an Alaskan mountain range in the background.
My family and I boarding a helicopter to visit Chilkat Glacier

However, in 2020, fuelled by pandemic boredom and inspiration from having recently watched the Back to the Future trilogy, my brothers and I decided to try our hands at making a movie of our own. We called it Back in Time, a parody of Back to the Future with me taking on the role of the crazy inventor and my middle brother, Aidan, playing the nonplussed teenager along for the ride. We wrote out a script, built props with old tech parts, a bike, and about half a roll of bright green masking tape, and acted in front of my iPhone 7. Afterward, I edited it together using a browser program called WeVideo, and even created my first visual effect: a simple flare iMovie transition to represent time travel.

In a scene from one of their films, Matt dresses as a scientist and encourages his brother, Aidan, who is riding a bicycle covered in tape and electronics, meant to look like a time machine.
A scene from our film, Back in Time

Since then, we have created over a dozen short films together, all featuring the same characters encountering a variety of stories based on other classic adventure films such as Indiana Jones or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!. When I found out about Freestyle last year, I was drooling at all of the opportunities and materials I would have access to and get to learn about, not to mention the great community and quality of education! I applied as soon as I could, and now here I am!

Matt standing in front of the Freestyle Academy sign.

This year, I am really looking forward to sharpening my skills and learning to use more materials and techniques, in hopes that I may be able to go to a college with a good film program and begin a career in the industry! I am also looking forward to being a part of the Freestyle community, and plan to spend as much time on campus as I can!