Concept for my Portrait

Shot 1: Red paint dripping onto a canvas, eventually forming a heart. (we later discover that the red "paint" is actually blood.
Shot 2: I am sitting along in a dark room crying over the canvas. I look up and it is revealed that I am crying blood.
Shot 3: The canvas with the bloody heart is lit on fire. Paper money is used as kindling for the fire.
Shot 4: Hands scoop up the ashes of the burned canvas.
Shot 5: The ashes are used as potting soil for a flowering plant. This shot will have a dream-like, almost magic quality about it. This is the moment of hope for the future to come out of the destruction of the present.
Shot 6: The flowers are shown in a close-up. They have tiny hearts inside each one- the destruction of first heart has created the ashes that nourished these flowers to grow new hearts.
Shot 7: An extreme close-up shows my lips smiling.

These shots will be edited together with a sound-track that I am having made for this project specifically. It will be inspired by the sound-track for "Requiem for a Dream". It will be in a minor key for the majority of the short with a few major chords to highlight the moments of hope in this piece.

The opening scene shows how something beautiful (a painting) can be created from the pain and even destruction of its creator (bloody tears). It shows how you can work for something (or someone) that you think is worth your blood, sweat and tears. Creation often, if not always, springs up from destruction.

The next visual of the burning canvas is comparable to life taking away the work of art that was created at such cost to its creator. It is life kicking you while you are down, repeatedly. It is the ultimate destructive act; the destruction of the beauty that comes from a prior destructive act. It is the death of any hope that something can come after the incineration of your heart, soul and sense of self are destroyed. Even material wealth is taken away in the flames in the form of currency. It leaves you with nothing. Or does it...?

By using the ashes of the burning canvas to plant a flower, a seed of hope is allowed to exist in the middle of all the dark imagery. This shows that there is redemption even in utter destruction- even when it does not seem apparent that there is anything left, some ashes just might be enough.

The reveal of the hearts blooming in the center of the flowers is the redemption of the piece. It shows how the heart that was destroyed earlier has been reborn in a new form. It allows room for hope and because flowers continue to grow it shows that they will continue to grow stronger and more luscious with proper care. The heart painting has given way to a living, growing multitude of tiny and fragile hearts that can only continue growing.

And a smile is self-explanitory: even though this project represents a lot of inner turmoil and pain, it contains hope for the future and the knowledge that happiness is never truly dead and gone. It's my way of working through some really difficult things but reminding everyone that I will be ok. Maybe it is even to remind myself that I will be ok.