This was created for an Avant-garde assignment at Loyola Marymount University. It is a meditation on the dangers of success and how crippling the need to succeed can be. Throughout much of our early lives, we are paraded with trophies, badges, certificates, etc. setting up this expectation that our value lies solely in success and that failure is not an option. This can become overwhelming and both limit creativity and artistic expression. This feeling of being buried by the need to constantly succeed in life is what ultimately led me to tell this experimental story.

I consistently find ways to utilize Super8mm film to the fullest and how it can add to the way a story is told. I believe the image created from Super8mm is visually synonymous with the way one sees memories or dreams. A human’s brain plays back these memories almost like the bulb inside a film projector will cast the film’s images onto a screen. As humans grow older, memories become fragmented and distant almost like the intense grain filling up the frame of 8mm film. This relationship between the mind and film is what ultimately led me to create Refraction.