Roses are Red is a teen rom-com about a lesbian trying crushing on a straight girl.
Inspiration
I am the director, producer, and screenwriter of Roses are Red. The main purpose of this film was to show people that love is seen in different perspectives and even though that it doesn’t work out how you’d like it would, there is a bright side. Scars heal, life goes on. I believe that there was a lot of factors that played into my inspiration for writing this film, however, I’d say the main one is experience. I wanted to play with the character of Sam, so I wrote him as almost the comic relief, however, his true purpose was to act as the Devil sitting on Rose’s shoulder. Violet was a very innocent and blissful character. She was supposed to act as an opposite to Rose, however, the more the film progressed (and the more our editing progressed) they drew more similarities that we intended to.
For context, the original script was 18 pages long (not including the title page). I thought that everything in that version was necessary, and that we needed everything in order to make the story progress. Many versions later, we ended with a 12 page version of the script. I feel like with this project I improved my screenwriting style and general understanding of film language. Before getting rid of the Film Noir idea, I researched common storylines within Noir, and soon realized that my style and Noir’s style is very different and I honestly can’t imagine Roses are Red in that style. I believe the colorful settings and locations we decided to shoot in would be overlooked, and would force the audience to pay attention to the acting more - a weak point in the film.
Pre-Production and Planning
The idea of their flower names came from a very long and heated discussion between Matthew and I. We both had different visions of how the names should be like. After settling on our iconic names of Rose and Violet, we continued to argue about Sam. That was longer, but to sum it up, I ended up going on for two class periods until we settled on the simple name.
The main research and pre-production happened over our Messenger group chat, however, there were several times where I would go to bed and toss and turn because of the ideas flying through my head. It began difficult keeping it all in my head and trying to remember them all, so I made a folder on Google Drive where my group and I would refer to constantly. This folder only grew until it had over - well I don’t know how to check the storage in a Google Drive folder, but assume it’s a lot.
Name Suggestions ^
After the script was finalized, and we completed a Scene by Scene for locations, we went location scouting. The following page shows the pre-production documents.
These are scene-by-scenes. They help organize thoughts and track the film in a linear order based on each section
These were the emails (and text) I received to the places where we needed permission to film
Left to Right:
Email I sent to several people asking them to act. Note, all the dates and times are visible and bolded and the summary of the film is seen.
Audition call I sent out after we got no confirmations from our first choices. I researched how to write an audition call and how to conduct one.
Some of the audition videos, note the single and double. We thought that Grazzia and Nikki (bottom right) had the best on screen chemistry compared to the others. 10 auditions were held in total.
This is the production document that I created to track our progress. The green one is during spring break and the purple one is when we got back to school and understood that we didn’t need that much time.
Production
Call sheets created several days before the shoot. It told everyone what scene we were shooting, props, costumes, equipment, the location of the shoot, and most importantly, when they should show up (nine call sheets were created).
Several days prior to our first shoot, I printed out the newest version of the script and wrote down acting notes. I called this process ‘margining’ however I bet there’s a better name for it. In theory it was a handy thing that I brought to every shoot. I relied on it greatly, however, right before our last shoot, I lost it. I thought that the concept of margining is very useful, however, next time I’ll be sure to take photos and keep a digital version up to date.
In my opinion, the hardest part of the technical aspect was lighting and sound. I felt that we could’ve done a much better job with both aspects. As we realized later, the light served no artistic purpose, and the sound was uneven in between takes.
I also felt that our main actress was difficult to work with, in the sense that she didn’t listen to notes, and refused to spit out her gum during the takes. She was just difficult to work with, however, it was too late to change her at that point, so I stuck out and dealt with it best I could. I thought the direction I gave her was good, however, it could’ve been better. I believe I could’ve been harder and firmer.
I didn’t anticipate Sam would become the way he did. The actor of Sam essentially didn’t act as the character, he acted as himself. I thought this was annoying, as Sam was my favorite character I wrote, and I felt that he almost ruined it. Having people from a third party watch the film and watch his acting made me see that the acting of Sam was probably the strongest in the whole film.
On set, I often forgot that my actors didn’t understand what I meant half the time. I would say locking down, and phones would still go off during the shoot. I would ask how the actors were doing - and if they were ready - they would nod, and as soon as we started rolling, they asked what we were doing in this shot (forcing us to stop the recording, and wasting space on the CFAST cards).
Post-Production
Filmmaker’s Credits, Roses are Red, Scene Two Actor’s Credits, Roses are Red
I wrote in a scene which incorporated the credits for the filmmakers, I thought this was smart and different from how other films in the class and at the festival made their credits. At the very end of the film, we put in the best shots of the actors alongside their name and role. I wanted the font to be something that would make it seem like the film was funny. The font for the credits looked great on the first try, and by splitting them up by color it was easy to understand and read. The font for the title was harder to find, but it was worth it. Originally, we wanted the credits to look like they were painted on surfaces, and didn’t move with every frame, however this proved to be too difficult and took too long, so I decided to scrap the idea and we stuck with stationary writing.
Song choice and sound design was one of the hardest parts of post production. In the scene with Rose and Violet’s almost kiss, the editor and I went through many versions that could act as the thing that distracts Violet, and symbolizes their disconnect. I think my editor and I had different ideas for the songs - she chose very country songs and soundtracks, however, I wanted more rock and 80s music. I am especially fond of the track we chose for the dancing scene and the florist, I only wish we had more tracks like that, however, I understand that the genre didn’t fit all the moods in the film.
Multiple masks were used in the making of the film, as well as split edits, and the telephone effect - something that I recently found out about, and immediately fell in love with. Color grading was the job of the editor, however, she was not good at it. Thankfully, our cinematographer was, so the job of color grading got handed over to him on the day when we had to export the film for the festival. I was there the entire time to make sure that the color wasn’t too pink or too orange, and I am particularly happy with the color grading in Rose’s bedroom, since this was one of the hardest color grades in the film (which was my fault, I tried to take over lighting, and made the shots blue, after this I stopped trying to control the cinematographer’s job).
Overall, I am happy with how the final edit turned out.
Evaluation
I wanted to create your typical romantic comedy with relatable characters. I felt that in order to create such environment, I would be better suited as the director, since I know how I wanted the actors to play out their roles and how I wanted certain shots to look to induce the emotion I wanted to show. I wanted people to relate to the character of Rose, even though they might not be in the same situation or have the same orientation. Although this film was created mainly for the LGBT community to have something that they can see and relate with, I understand that anyone can view this film and see a bit of themselves in it. I could be happier with the outcome of certain points in the film, mostly acting and certain cinematography choices, however I am still happy with the way it turned out.
I feel as though my main weaknesses in this film was being impatient on set, and then not being demanding enough. I wish I had the patience to do a certain shot until I thought it was perfect, however, my impatience got in the way, and we ended up settling on the shot that looked the least bad out of all of them. This was not a good mindset that we had, and I feel as though this really showed in the kiss scene at the beach.
Although communicating with the locations we wanted and the talent wasn’t an issue, I thought that communicating within our working group wasn’t the strongest, and could be greatly improved. I believe that this is mostly my fault, as there were moments when I kept quiet during production and post production when I should not have.
Overall, this project has helped me gain confidence in my writing and trust the people I work with. In the future I will work on my communication skills, perfect my elevator pitch, and learn to become a more demanding director, while also working on my editing skills. Although the final outcome was not what I expected to see, I am still proud of the work my team and I have created, as well as our dedication to the project and our wish to make this the best it could have been.
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