Lionheart

"Lionheart" is a film about love, loss, and redemption in the face of failure, all inspired by the beautiful music of Grammy nominated musician, James Bay.

In November of 2015, I was commissioned by Republic Records and Talenthouse to make a short film based on James' album "Chaos and the Calm." I immediately downloaded the record and listened to it on repeat during a flight from St. Louis to Los Angeles. What transpired, was a rush of emotion and deep rooted memories, that transported me back to a time in my life where I was at my lowest - dealing with one of the most brutal break ups of my entire life.

I decided to take these very real moments in time and adapt them into a failed music video concept that I had written for a different artist only months prior. The result was the story of "Lionheart," about a man ("Charlie") who is staring in the face of the end of a relationship and makes a most selfish decision to walk away, before it gets too late. Upon his journey, he begins writing to his now lost love, hoping to someday return to her as a better man and collecting these thoughts in a jar that he totes on his back.

The concept won the approval of James Bay himself, and he contacted me personally to help sculpt what became the final plot of the film. James is/was fascinated with the landscapes of North America that he normally can only see from his passing tour bus, and wanted to see it photographed beautifully on screen. So, it became my mission to seek out some of the various landscapes in Southern California that can all be accessed within an hour of any direction of the surrounding Los Angeles area and make them our primary locations for telling this story.

While "Lionheart" is not a traditional narrative by any means (it is 1 part Music Video, 1 Part Short Film and 1 Part Experimental), it is meant to capture moments in time, both in memory and reality. It is a brutal reminder that not every question has an answer, and not every relationship delivers on a satisfying ending.