By taking TRI-X black & white reversal 16mm film and capturing 900 different stills from NC-17 rated films through a 35mm photo camera and projecting the images at the standard cinematic frame rate of 24 frames per second, Freytag’s Pyramid of Climactic Light interrogates the relationship between the individual film frame and the audience’s perception of ideology projected from the relationship between each frame. The images that I selected were bodies of individuals in non-violent and sentimental acts of love and friendship. By using a cropped frame, the bodies extend beyond the frame and onto the sprockets, allowing the subject to devour cinematic space and time that has been dissolved and satiated through censorship. The images synchronize with sound snippets from critically-acclaimed films from 1968 to 2017 that have been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association. The violence of the sound is reflected in the pattern of light emitted from the flickering images, which is chronologically representative of the five acts of Freytag’s Pyramid. Freytag’s Pyramid is a dramatic structure based on Aristotle’s Poetics and consists of five acts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement (Freytag). The five-act structure is used as the framework for most mainstream films. Mainstream audiences often consume images without considering the censored ideology that shapes their viewing pleasure. The MPAA has been curating mainstream audience appetites through censorship since 1968 with ratings from G (General Audience) to NC-17 (Adults Only) (Motion). Many theaters refuse to exhibit NC-17 material. The MPAA rating system often treats LGBTQA+ material more harshly than heterosexual and violent material (Pollard). My goal for this piece is to disrupt the audience’s complacency about their consumption of images to expand the possibilities of narrative storytelling in mainstream cinema. This project began as a short experimental film and has expanded into a 5-channel video installation.