Listen to Your Heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC1uX7esjUA

So here is the link to one of my first videos... Listen to Your Heart. I shot this In February, in Central Park, with my good friend Eric Bourne. Eric is a part of Parsons dance company. He is super talented as well as an all around beautiful person. So I felt very lucky that he was eager to be a part of my first project where I was only behind the camera and not in front.

Drew G is a DJ who has this amazing podcast called Dirty Pop. Check it out on iTunes. I first fell in love with his mixes at David Barton Gym. So I decided to use this particularly amazing portion of one of them where He took the song Listen to Your Heart and added music from the score of TRON by Daft Punk. The music reminds me of a battlefield.

So I started thinking how dramatic the beats were with the reiteration of "Listen to your Heart". It reminded me of the battle inside yourself when you're in love but something inside you has changed or something in the person you're with has changed and you are essentially battling yourself to figure out "Do I stay or do I go?" It's not an easy situation by any means: when two people people love each other and respect each other but have found themselves on different pages. A war begins inside to analyze where it went wrong and what will happen if I let go? What will happen if I stay?

My original idea was to do a video in a blizzard. I thought that would be the perfect backdrop for this tumultuous subject matter. However by the time I was ready to shoot and got Eric on board, the snow which prior had been so abundant, was melting. So another concept began to form in my head. The idea of "The grass is greener on the other side".

The video is obviously  about a battle inside yourself.... there are two sides in the video..... the more muted shots portray a more contemplative character who is waring with decision making, and then there are the more technicolor, VIBRANT, sinister shots of a seductive alternative to that character. Yin and Yang. I really like the concept that seductive is bright and shiny and not dark and seedy. While there are dark shots.... in particular the ones where Eric is wearing the veil... I like that the saturation is bumped up and you can see those bright blue eyes.

The choices we make in relationships... of all kinds... shape us as human beings. When we meet people... for 30 seconds, or for years at a time, we are always affected. The people that we decide to "shack up" with severely affect us. I once read an amazing book called "Eat Pray Love" recommended by my best friend Nikki Lanza (after my first big break up). By now every one has heard of this... but there is an amazing part of the book where the protagonist, Liz, is told that you can have multiple soul mates.... sometimes living with a soulmate is just too painful because by definition a soulmate is a mirror.  They exist in your life to show you... YOU. That stuck with me.
And that is "Listen to your Heart."