Benjamin Shell
This is a photo of me

I came to Freestyle Academy in search of a place to expand my music production. Before I came to Freestyle, I had been making music on my laptop for about 4 years. But even before that, I had always been playing around with Garageband on my mom’s desktop ever since I can remember. Once I was fortunate enough to get my own laptop, I started using Garageband again. I started out by teaching myself how to make beats and then I started to write songs to these beats. Then during the summer of 2015, I saved up enough money for my job as a soccer camp counselor to buy a mic, a better audio program (Logic Pro X) and other recording equipment. Soon, it evolved into me not only producing and writing my songs, but recording, engineering, mixing, and then mastering these songs.

Not only has my production of songs served as a creative outlet, but it has also served as an emotional outlet. If I am having a bad day or I am upset about something, I could power up Logic Pro X and get lost in the program. Soon whatever had me upset, has faded away into the sound waves of the music that I have just created. Having both a creative and emotional outlet readily available for me to use helped me get through rough times and also helped keep me out of trouble.

Coming into Freestyle, I was extremely excited to learn new music production skills and to also expand my current skills. In my opinion, this has been achieved and has even exceeded what I expected. My music production and my experience at Freestyle has made my overall high school experience much more enjoyable and also unique.

-Benjamin Shell

Conceptual
The first website I created while at Freestyle was my Conceptual website. This website displays my work from our conceptual unit during the first quarter. The overarching theme for our conceptual unit was creating content that was deeper than the surface meaning. Some of these works include poetry, photography, and music production. Click here for my Conceptual website
This is a screenshot of my conceptual website
Narrative
For the Narrative Unit at Freestyle Academy, we wrote a piece of flash fiction in our English that had to be around 750 words or less. That story was then used in our other classes to develop projects. In our Digital Media class, we developed an audio book with music and SFX for the story. Along with that, we constructed a website that correlated with the themes of our story. Since my story takes place in a car, I designed my header images for my pages to look like wheels. In our Design class, we used the story for our illustrations. We had to create a fictional creature based on the characteristics of our story character and then illustrated a scene from our story. Throughout this website, you may be able to view the various parts and projects that I created all based off one little story! Click here for my Narrative website
This is a screenshot of my narrative website
Documentary
For the Documentary project at Freestyle Academy, we were asked to explore and find interesting ways to express the untold stories of our community. After much brainstorming with my family, I landed on NCAA athletics at Stanford. I grew up going to Stanford sporting events and watching NCAA athletics, yet I knew a little bit about the organization and wanted to learn more. So, I wanted to help educate people on what the NCAA is and provide an insight into what the organization is. But as I was gathering my research and conducting my interviews, I became enthralled in the stories of administrators within the organization. In addition to educating people on the NCAA, I wanted to tell the stories of those involved in the NCAA. Click here for my Documentary website
This is a screenshot of my documentary website
3 Beats a Day
For the explorations projects at Freestyle Academy, I was asked to either explore a new skill or build upon a current one. I choose to build upon my music production skills. To achieve this, I created a large number of beats and pushed myself to create a better one each time. I got this idea came from Kanye West who used to produce “3 beats a day” in order to improve his skills and eventually break into the industry as a producer. Click here for my Explorations website
This is a screenshot of my explorations website