Francis Cell-Fis Owusu

Francis Owusu aka Cell-fis was born in La Grange, IL. He has two twin sisters Helen and Helena Owusu. At the age of 4, Francis moved to Ghana to live with his grandparents. He lived there for 4 years and came back to the U.S speaking an additional language "Twi." Francis' Dad Berko "The Journalist" Owusu taught him how to played the guitar. After that, Francis learned how to play saxophone by joining the school band. 4 years later he chose to learn the keyboard. He composed over 500 instrumentals by the time he was 18 yrs old. He worked with a lot of local artist and he wrote songs himself. Cell-fis was the name he chose for a rap name. He went on to record demos and mixtapes for himself and others until 2006. He learned audio engineering thru analog methods, not a computer in sight. He released his first solo album "Back from vacation." He produced all the tracks himself. He had a music video shot for his leading single "Come with me." The video was shot overseas in Ghana. The video was a success and was the jam of the week on MTV base. Despite his album not getting the sales he hoped for, he walked away with something worth more than album sales. Watching the process of how his music video was made inspired him to pursue the world of filmmaking. In 2008, he was given the opportunity to write a jingle for Mcdonalds. He missed the deadline by a couple of hours. The agent looking for the jingle was on the move and Francis missed the opportunity. The jingle he wrote and produced was called "Are you hungry" and he had a music video shot of the jingle. He posted the video online and the video received a lot of positive feedback, a quarter of a million views on youtube. In the same year, he flew to Germany to collaborate with a Ghanian artist by the name of Ofori Amponsah. Ofori was Ghana's reigning artist at that time. Ofori's status in Ghana was equivalent to Prince. He had a studio in Germany and invited Francis to record a song with him. The song was a hit, but it did not move Francis' career forward. A year later after he went to Germany, Francis got accepted by Columbia College Chicago. Francis was on a mission the minute he stepped on campus. The first classes he took was a mix of audio and video. He took an audio visual class that unlocked a skill he had mastered at the age of 13. He used to sound design stories using sound effects and music on cassette tapes. As a kid, he was not aware that he was sound designing. He would record sounds from video games and movies then edit the sounds into a story. Taking the audio/visual class opened his eyes and made him fully understand the true nature of sound designing. He made three audio movies that same year. These projects took him 100hrs each to complete. At the time, all he had was a fantom x keyboard, a mac book pro, logic pro and Final Cut 7. He was new to the digital world of applications and software. So he chose a name that represented what he wanted his production company to be. "Dis is low-key Studios" was the name. He made a simple bumper using imovie and he started to promote the name in all his early works. When he started diving deep into video production, the first screenplay he wrote was the first movie he made called "Darlene." Once again, proving that his work speak volumes, he went viral again. This time he got half of million views on youtube. Some people till this day still don't know that "Darlene" was a student film. No budget, just creativity, a razor sharp focus and a solid vision. Based on the film's small success, word got around that Francis was more than just a sound guy roaming the campus. He was the all in one filmmaker ready to make a name for himself. A year later, he wrote and directed his 2nd film "A world without facebook". For a student film, he had more than 15 people in the movie. The script he wrote generated a buzz around campus and a lot of people signed up to be involved. He even had three different cameraman filming different parts of the movie. The facebook movie didn't do the Darlene numbers, but Francis had perfected his craft with the technical aspect of filming. The edits were seamless and the sound was excellent. A year later, Francis shifted his focus on shooting music videos. Music and audio being a big part of his background, he felt that it was the best path for him at the time. So he directed a few music videos for himself and others. He was writing, producing, and recording songs. He wasn't getting the recognition he thought he would get for being the jack of all trades. So he thought he would get more exposure by taking his skills to the west coast. In 2012, he moved to Las Vegas. The first week he arrived, he was hired to shoot a reality show pilot for a vegas celebrity magician called Murray. Murray had won "America's got talent" and his name was started to grow. The pilot came out better than anyone expected. Francis had took his laptop and portable speakers to Murray's house the next day after the shoot. Murray and his friends couldn't believe Francis had shot, and edited their pilot in 24hrs. Murray and friends had never seen someone do that before especially in their presence. Francis started making a name for himself in that short time. He ventured more into the film world which put his musical abilities to the side. After meeting celebrities (Nick Cannon, Shaq) just to name a few, he got into the world of advertising in 2014. He had a 9-5 job that tested and pushed his video editing skills for a span of 5 years. He was done with freelancing, but he had one more offer just a month into his new position. Francis was being hired by a Con man that went around the nation ruining the lives of videographers and newlyweds. The con man fronted as a wedding videographer business. He would book weddings, hire videographers, then take the money and run. So the videographers would get to the event, film the wedding and not get paid. The newlyweds were the ones that really suffered. The con man had been in touch with Francis for a few months via email. Francis had asked for a downpayment before fully accepting the job. The con man started coming up with excuses and Francis started to suspect that he was being conned. He was able to escape the con and avoid that situation. The con man did not take Francis' refusal lightly, so he added Francis on the "do not hire list" in Nevada. The list was on the Rip-off report site. The con man fabricated the whole complaint with no solid proof and the site posted the compliant against Francis. Francis was not aware of the do not hire list until he was referred by one of his clients to film another local vegas celebrity. During the conversation, the new client had googled Francis and saw the rip -off report. He did not tip Francis off, he just hung up and Francis did not know why. A few weeks later, Francis discovered his name on the list. Luckily for Francis, he had just got hired at the advertising company and he did not have to worry about the list. Francis did try to get some freelancing jobs after finding out and he had no luck. No one was hiring him and the company he worked for became aware of Francis' unique edits, it caught their attention. They had to research who they had hired and by doing so, they came across the do not hire list. Francis was one of the company's best employees they had ever seen. They would try to get the other employees to learn Francis' tricks and trades when it came to editing their content. The company knew Francis wouldn't be able to advance with other jobs as long as that list was out, so they used it to their advantage. In a way, Francis was trapped and the only way out would be to move out of Nevada. 2 months later, Francis got involved in a terrible accident which fractured his ankle. He was a few breaks away from getting his foot amputated. The injury on top of the malpractice put Francis in a wheel chair for a year. Francis was also expecting his first born later that year in December 2014. Francis did not start walking again until mid 2015. During the time he was down is when the idea of Define Love was created. He started writing it as an erotica based on the success of the book "50 shades of grey." He wrote the first part of his series and lost it during a data exchange between his old and new phone. He still had his footnotes but he was not in a rush to rewrite the first part. In 2016, Francis decided to bring back his musical abilities. The last time he had produced an instrumental was in 2013. He felt that he was out of touch and started researching what software/equipment people were using at that time. He came across "finger drumming" and beat machines. Francis came from an analog world where all he had was a keyboard, so he did not understand beat machines. He continued to research and finally bought a beat machine. Francis was rusty but it did not take long for him to get back in the groove. In 2019, he entered in his first film contest. The contest was hosted by Tongal. The rules were you had to tell a 10 min story using 10% percent of real Nasa footage. This was not a challenge at all for Francis. He wrote, starred, directed (filmed himself), edited, and sound designed the project in a week. The movie was called "Stuck." He filmed the whole movie in his living room using green screen technology with a $100 budget. The $100 was for the astronaut costume he wore in the movie. This was the first time he made a whole movie by himself with no help. Despite the film coming out really good, he did not win the contest. In 2020, the con man that ruined Francis' reputation was put on trial. The attorney general of Boston started exposing the con man in courts. The attorney even did justice and helped Francis by commenting on the "do not hire list." He was able to provide some proof that Francis was innocent. Francis had previously proved his innocence by recording the email conversations with his phone between the two. He posted the video as a comment under the "do not hire" list. This helped shaved some of the darkness from his rep, but so much damage had been done. Francis had wrote another series by the name of "Boss Up." He shot the first episode twice. The first shoot was in 2019 and the 2nd shoot was in 2020. He swapped the actresses and kept the actor. Francis was in a groove to film all five episodes until the 2020 pandemic lockdowns happened. He was not able to secure a location due to covid restrictions. Francis put "Boss Up" aside and started to write the Define Love book again. The lockdowns of 2020 gave Francis enough time to come up with the plot. He always had the characters, but he needed a moving vehicle to bring the whole picture together. When online dating started surging thru the pandemic, that is how he was able to find the premise for his love story. In 2021, Francis started writing out the episodes for the series. Francis' mother Pauline Owusu encouraged him to get back to filmmaking. She told him that she would produce his new series along with his father Berko Owusu. This motivated Francis and he went out and bought his first pocket cinema camera. He upgraded his Gh5 to the S1h and shot his first big budget film "Define Love Part 1: Sh'tty Love." This series is expected to be released in 2022. Francis is ready to take the film world by storm.