Define Love

Francis Owusu aka Cell-fis was born on March 6, 1984 in La Grange, IL. He has two younger 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."

He started off as a musician at the age of 10 with the help of his parents. Francis played the guitar, saxophone, then later chose 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." (Currently on Spotify). 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.