SYNOPSIS

High above a forest of trees. A beautiful, color-filled day. Birds singing, nearly idyllic. After a moment, we gently glide down below the branches, to find a Man, walking along a tree-lined path. He is beyond content, totally present in this solitary moment,  hearing the bird-song overhead in the trees, feeling the breeze on each inch of his skin. A perfect presence.

We flash quickly to others in similar, seemingly “normal” situations: an elementary school Teacher in her classroom; a Boy with his mother in the supermarket; an Army Sergeant reading a letter from home.

Then. . .

A gunshot.

The visual world immediately slows to a barely perceptible trudge, draining itself of color, to a desaturated black and white. In her own world, the Sergeant drops the letter and turns to see where the shot came from. The Boy in the supermarket, dropping a cereal box, follows suit, turning his head to see. The Teacher in her classroom, repeats the process.

Back with our Man in the forest, birds have halted mid-flight, trees sway at a glacial pace. An eery stillness presides. The Man looks down at his hands, to see if they move normally. They do. Although the world around him has slowed, he is able to move freely in this nearly frozen, surreal moment.

Taking in the motionless landscape in front of him, he senses he's not alone. As he turns around, he slowly focuses on something in the distance, an object glinting in the sunlight. A look of recognition and knowing disbelief fills his face.

As we shift perspective, we now see the from the point of view of what he recognizes, an unknown yet familiar foe. A bullet. No gun, no gunman. Just a single bullet. Quasi-frozen in mid-flight, spinning slowly, vapor trail in tow.

The man breathes in slowly and begins his elegy. His own personal requiem.

“Here, bullet.”

He implores the bullet to do what it came to do, to rip into him, to snap his bones, to make him bleed. But the bullet continues to spin and inch forward ever so slowly. As it does, the Man moves toward his antagonist, getting a unique, up-close perspective. Just as he begins to circle around it, he turns into the Teacher, right before our eyes.

The Teacher continues the lament, studying the bullet, taunting it. The realization that the bullet is moving to the kill-spot and the finality of this moment starts to sink in. With both anger and dread in her tone, she becomes the Boy for an instant, then eventually the Sergeant, walking beside the bullet, almost guiding it to its intended target.

With one final turn to face the bullet, our Man reappears.

Standing where this tragedy was set in motion, he begins a final, frantic, repetitive mantra:

“Here, bullet. . .here, bullet. . .here, bullet. . .”

As he continues, the images on screen now shift sporadically back and forth between our heroes, and moments of the bullet’s previous interactions: a bullet-riddled traffic sign, the Boy’s birthday party, a bloody, lifeless rabbit, the Man’s wedding day, kids running away from a school, the Sergeant sharing a beer with cohorts, the Kennedy motorcade, infantry-men from WWI, mothers crying, flesh ripping, blood spilling. A visual cacophony.

As the music and images slowly dissipate, we are left with just the Man, in the still, uneasy quiet of the forest, his breath the only sound.

He rips open his shirt, his chest laid bare and vulnerable.

Finally, with a look of resigned disbelief, he whispers his final command:

“Here.”

Silence. Darkness.

Then. . .

Gunshot. The same one we heard only minutes ago.

In a split second, we are high above the trees again, in full color, the birds scatter in real time.

As the world continues to turn, we are left here in this static point of view, in this stillness. Silent witnesses above a canopy of trees that cover the unseen, hidden death below.