By Tine Roycroft

Take a group of passionate film artists, throw in a thirst for a realistic representation of the stormy side of life, and then tell everyone they need to make magic with a shoestring budget. Lights, camera, action: you’ve got Sick Rose Films.

Sick Rose Films is the brainchild of a creative band of Emerson College and New York University alum ~ Matt O’Connell, Joseph Provenzano, Patrick Mongeau, Julianna Schopper and Kristina Provenzano ~ who sought to portray life truthfully ~ with both the dark and the light tightly entwined. They began with their first film, Night Sounds.

“Joe [Provenzano] and Pat [Mongeau] wrote Night Sounds,” Matthew O’Connell said in a recent interview. “It was based on a true story. A small time drug dealer accidentally murders a college kid. The college kid has two friends who are witnesses to the crime and our story starts from there. “

O’Connell, 25 and a Framingham resident, produced the project and, despite an intrinsic love for the art, found the experience to be a challenging one. The members of the film company had pooled their money together to get Night Sounds up and running, but even then funds were tight, with camera rental fees monopolizing most of budget. They needed a cast that was both high quality and low cost.

“We put an ad up on Craig’s List,” said O’Connell, “and it was very successful. We had about one hundred responses and we couldn’t use everyone. Also, some people expected to be paid and we just couldn’t pay them.”

O’Connell and his colleagues chose a few of the many talented actors, asked some longtime associates to join in on the talent, and the shooting began. But with film locations ranging from Allston to Arlington and Mashpee to Menden, both crew and cast were literally running around the state for two weeks straight.

“It was just tough keeping people happy,” stated O’Connell. “People were falling over because they were so tired, people were threatening to quit. And when you hardly have a budget, you really feel it when you need to drive to a location and you’re spending a ton of money on gas. But in the end it was really rewarding for everyone who participated.”

Nights Sounds came alive with the blood, sweat and tears of Sick Rose’s members and went onto the film circuit where it met with great acclaim. The success further fueled the group’s fire for film and soon they began holding script meetings for the latest Sick Rose creation – Infinite Dreams.

“It’s a complex feature. Infinite Dreams is about a twenty something guy named Rodney,” O’Connell revealed. “It takes place in the archetypal New England town ~ everybody knows everybody. Rodney is at a bit of a crisis in his life and he’s been having these dreams and visions that are leading him to this other dark world. It’s affecting the town, it’s affecting him and ultimately he has to make a decision between leaving a boring life or possibly hurting everyone he has come to know.”

After completing the script, the members of Sick Rose knew that they had cinematic gold on their hands and wanted to turn those pages of script into a feature film. Once more, they all dug deep into their own pockets and gathered enough money to create a trailer in order to show others the immense potential of Infinite Dreams.

Sick Rose Films is looking forward to 2009 and has but one resolution – to find people who are interested in bringing a full length version of Infinite Dreams to the silver screen.

“We are really excited about the project,” O’Connell said. “We just completed a rough cut of the trailer and already everyone is telling us how much potential it has.”

For more information on Sick Rose Films, go to www.sickrosefilms.com.