The Shadowed Heart is a dark reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s public-domain Oz universe, created as an AI-assisted short film about grief, power, and moral transformation. Oz has fallen. The Tin Woodman has been slain. The Scarecrow has been taken. Dorothy Gale, hardened by loss, now leads the last army of Oz through mud, ruin, and storm toward the Witch’s castle, carrying the dead Tin Woodman’s forged heart as both relic and wound. What began as a journey home has become a march to retribution — a final passage through the broken heart of Oz, where every step toward justice carries the weight of what has been lost.
The project was made through a hybrid process combining human authorship with generative AI. I directed the concept, visual language, shot selection, editing, pacing, and overall emotional design, while AI tools were used for visual ideation, image generation, worldbuilding, and motion creation. Each sequence was shaped through iterative prompting, reference-guided refinement, and editorial curation to maintain consistency of character, atmosphere, and tone.
My aim was not simply to showcase AI spectacle, but to use emerging tools in service of mythic, emotionally grounded storytelling. The Shadowed Heart explores how violence reshapes identity and how goodness can be altered by grief and war, using AI to reinterpret a familiar cultural mythology while remaining anchored in authorship, restraint, and emotional intention.
