Willow Smith - Transparent Soul

"It is said that a saintly person is so pure that he or she acts like a spotless mirror. When we come in the presence of such a mirror-like soul, we can see both the beauty and ugliness of our inner life."
-Radhanath Swami

This confrontation with ideality is one that shocks the senses. Self-reflection is forced upon us after a brush with divinity. Personal observations made objectively turn into the only trustable truth we know, our own subjective thoughts.

Fight or flight kicks in as we’re forced to reckon with the harmony of our akashic record when compared to a creature whose complete awareness of our imperfections is as plain to them as its fathomless purity is to us.

This film will be a chase and then reconciliation. A visually fascinating ego death brought forth from a psychedelically motivated divine intervention.

Concept

Willow starts out at a party in an abandoned house. She is smoking and drinking, thinking she’s the shit. Our camera is handheld and raw, the frame clear and sharp, adapting effortlessly to the energy of the track, and following Willow as she vibes with other partiers. Willow then enters into a hallucinatory state and trippy visuals start to work their way into her crossfaded reality.

Willow is on one tonight, angry and judgmental. The frame distorts as her temper escalates. Then from the corner of her eye she sees a humanoid being that appears to be made of mirror shards. Willow sees her distorted reflection in the face of the being.

We intercut the central narrative with performances of Willow on stage singing for the party. Camera sweeps around her, she performs to it, reaches out to it, and reacts to it as it rows towards her.

Willow’s internalized terror grows as the being advances. Refractions of light and the psychedelic environment bounces off its reflective fractal skin. The frame distorts even further now, stylistically artifacting and shaking with random somatic movement. She begins to run through the party, trying to hide from her own reflection.

Willow gathers herself “I think I’m fine, it’s just a bad trip”. She goes back to being her regular sus self. The frame’s distortions quiet some, but not all the way.

She goes to the bathroom in a fruitless effort to center herself. 

Drunk and angry she starts talking to herself in the mirror. Then she throws up in the sink. It’s a strange multi-hued metallic sludge, She looks up at the mirror again. The being is behind her. The distortion kicks back up. She turns around, terrified. It's gone.

Shooting on a SnorriCam rig, we capture Willow running out of the bathroom escaping to an empty corner as the party rages around her. Willow slides down the wall and looks at her surroundings. The walls are breathing and closing in, shadows in the corner of her vision duck out of sight, distortions eat away at her perception of self and space. She’s having a full-on panic attack.

Willow’s in the corner. She’s sweating and shaking. Visions of the being keep coming up in her mind. She tries to shake her head free of the thought, but it doesn't work. It becomes so unbearable that she runs out of the party.

Willow is running down the street as the being slowly stalks from behind. She’s running hysterically trying to escape her reflection. She falls to the ground and turns around. The being is right above her. Defying gravity, the being tips itself forward, camera mimicking it’s movement, as it hovers inches away from Willow’s face. She sees herself in the broken reflection. The camera zooms into Willow’s eye, we see the mirror being reflected in her terrified stare, in VFX the camera then pushes into and through Willow’s pupil.

Now a trippy montage starts up, where she sees a personification of 'oneness' through abstract art. Karmic reconciliation. A graphic ego death, complete with mind-blowing colors that push up against this reality’s capabilities and strategically placed ancient symbols and letters that appear simultaneously familiar and alien. The quantum-psychic underpinnings of the knowable world.

The camera zooms back out, but now the reflection is no longer shattered. Willow sees herself clearly in the mirror being, whose body is now more sleek and aesthetic. The camera frame is crystal clear once again. The being offers its hand to Willow to help her off of the ground. She slowly extends her hand towards it.