Rose Reid Talks ‘The Lightning Code’ Filmmaking, Working With Family, And Screenwriting Background

Rose Reid co-writes and stars in “The Lightning Code,” a family feature that also features her brother (Andrew Reid) in the lead role and her father (Julian Reid) as an executive producer. This indie driven project, shot in Tennessee, is now playing in theaters and Reid talks about  “The Lightning Code’s” filmmaking journey.

 

“The Lightning Code” centers on Miles Fletcher (Andrew Reid), a teenage inventor who unlocks the ability for limitless energy. His invention, which was originally started by his late mother, catches the eye of one of the head honchos (Rose Reid) at Luxos Energy. Miles’ original intent to continue his mother’s legacy and make the world a better place is sideswiped by Luxos Energy’s power hungry head (René Ashton). Now it’s up to Miles and his friends (Sienna Ribeiro, Ryder Khatiwala) to reclaim the invention and possibly save the world in the process!

Question: So I am with Rose Reid actress, co-writer of “The Tesla Kid,” aka “The Lightning Code.” What’s the real title? I like both titles. Talk about that big transition. 

Rose Reid: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

This movie went through so many different titles because when you’re first writing the script, you come up with an idea that you think  is this really cool and unique name for something.

And then, as you get into the marketing and everything, you realize, “Oh, maybe people don’t actually . . . that title doesn’t really tell you much about the movie or this this title doesn’t really represent the movie in the way that it should.

It’s always frustrating for the creatives because you’re so used to talking about it and being really excited about it and promoting it to your friends and family and the people in your immediate circle, and then it changes names. And you’re like “Oh, it’s “The Tesla Kid” (or) “The Lightning Code.” So yeah it’s “The Lightning Code.” I think it does a really good job of describing what the film is. (It gives the movie) this kind of like sci-fi feel. And that’s what we were going for.

Question: So you’re Gen Z? I’m Gen X and I’m very close to my sister.

I, I have a wonderful niece, but we’re lucky if we just, because we’re siblings, we just grunt when we speak.That’s a long conversation.

Rose Reid: Yeah. That’s impressive.

Question: But speaking of more impressive, what’s it like to actually work with a sibling and just actually have your blood, sweat, and tears in a project like this?

In a personal project like this?

Rose Reid: Yeah, so the tiniest bit of backstory. I’ve been working in this industry since I was somewhere between 14 and 16 years old, depending on which project you wanna consider my first. Originally it was just something that I really wanted to do, and as I got older and realized that my brother could be interested and my dad could be interested, we all just realized that this could potentially be a family business.

The joke (is) my mom would get into catering and my other brother would get into VFX. My youngest brother Andrew did decide that he wanted to get into film and for the longest time it was just this pipe dream.

Hey, maybe someday down the line we’ll get to all come together as a family and create something and like actually make a project just us. And that’s what this project was. I’ve worked with family members in the past in like different capacities.

And so I knew going into it that of course there’s gonna be things, like you said, you have this unspoken language that you have when you’re communicating with a family member. Sometimes it doesn’t sound the most respectful, even though because you guys just have shorthand and you, like you said, you grunted each other and you have the luxury of being a little bit you can speak in shorter terms with family members than you can with someone else.

But when you work in this professional environment, you have to remember (to) be professional. So that was something that we constantly had to remember. But I would say that I’m Andrew’s biggest critic.

I think he’s mine. And we’re also each other’s biggest supporters. So I think that it  makes for a really good team on a project like this where we can pull each other aside and say, “Hey, maybe that wasn’t your best take. You wanna do you wanna try that again?”

We were able to really work with each other as scene partners. So it was a really unique experience for sure.

Question: This movie, it’s a family affair as the cliche goes, but this movie could also be great for families to view together. And what was your inspiration behind co-writing this project?

Was it also to actually bring the family to see a unique film, indie drama like this, and as well as shine a spotlight possibly on Tesla himself. So can you speak to that?

Rose Reid: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. Yeah, we definitely wanted this to be a family friendly project that everybody could come and enjoy.

We wanted people to come and have a good time and leave feeling a little better than they did when they showed up. So yeah, that was definitely part of the idea behind this.

Another reason that we were really passionate about this project in particular is because it does shine light on on an underappreciated inventor who did so many incredible things and didn’t get to live to see his impact that he really made on the world.

So this was an ode to Nikola Tesla as well. As filmmakers we all talk about this and it’s a big topic of conversation right now, which is that everything is either a sequel or a prequel or a remake, or there’s all these, regurgitating the same IP basically.

This was an opportunity to make something new and fun and, doesn’t take itself too seriously, but at the same time is dealing with some pretty big topics and some pretty high stakes. It was definitely the idea to always go ahead and bring the whole family out.

And yes, it is a family affair. So that was something that was pretty important to us.

 

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Question: What about shining a light on power versus purpose? 

I think the heart of this movie is saying that sometimes you put your talents to use for a purposeful existence in this world making a difference as opposed for the love of power and pure profit. Is that something that’s embedded within your film as well

Rose Reid: That’s a great question. Yes, definitely. It’s. I think it’s obviously cliche to say that the path to hell is paved with good intentions, but I think that’s something that we found really intriguing about Nikola Tesla’s work, is that by the end of his career, he was very jaded and he was so angry about some of the ways that he was betrayed or overlooked that he did start creating weapons and that was something that we wanted to explore is to show that yeah, you can have all of the best intentions, but if you’re not putting it towards the right thing, it can be used for the wrong thing.

That’s something that our main character Miles really struggles with in the film is he’s initially doing it for, like you said, the idea of fame, glory, and, potentially also helping to revive the legacy of his mother and to prove his mother, right. So that is a noble goal. But when you are doing it to also lift yourself up and and bring glory to yourself, I think that you can just miss things.

Miles was so single-minded in his focus to to create this thing and prove to the world that he was his mother’s son and that he could do this and that his mother was right. He was so intent on doing that, that he missed some pretty glaring red flags.

That was definitely something that we wanted to explore and play around with. And I think that Andrew did an incredible job. Bringing that to the screen, and I’m so glad that you noticed it.

Question: This is an independent film. And how does one have an indie film but have so many, it seems to me VFX shots, because that’s pretty ambitious.

What was the challenge? Because one could have cut corners, and it seems like this movie doesn’t cut corners when it came to the VFX and without giving too much weight. The third act on an action front seems very hard to do as well.

Rose Reid: Thank you. That’s a huge compliment. I often say that we bit off a little more than we could chew for this project, but thankfully we had such an incredible team.

Our executive producers who came in are producing partners who came in Evolve Studios Jen Lewis, Joel Edwards.They were so incredible. They knew how to help us plan everything out when it came to the action sequences. And we really were able to put together this incredible team to be able to accomplish this.

But when it comes to the VFX, that was Tower 33. They are A VFX House and they have worked on some incredible projects. The founders and owners of the company are now friends of ours after this project.

But they really put so much sweat equity into this and really made it their own and came in and said, “Hey, we’re gonna participate on on a bigger level than we’ve participated on other projects.” And we are so grateful for it. We could not have done this without them. It was an incredibly ambitious project to be trying to accomplish as a little indie studio and we certainly couldn’t have done it without them.

We’re so grateful for the VFX artists who came on board and we had countless VFX artists that got to come to the premiere and get to see their work on screen pretty recently, which was so cool. They’re all so talented and that whole world is just wildly underappreciated and and deserves way more credit than they get because I can’t imagine the kind of work that goes into these sequences that are in this film in particular.

Question: Where was this film shot? I was gonna say Nashville, but I’m probably wrong. Where was it shot?

Rose Reid: No, good guess. Yeah, it was shot in Nashville.

When when most of your crew and your team and your production team all live in Nashville, it just makes the most sense to shoot it in Nashville. So we’re really grateful to the Nashville film or the Tennessee film incentive for helping us out with that.

Question: In laymen’s terms, because I have no idea what it’s like to shoot an indie or a movie in Nashville.

You have the bird’s eye view, you have the experience. What was it like to shoot in Nashville?

Rose Reid: Yeah. I, that’s a great question. I actually haven’t had that question before.

I think that we shot all over Nashville. We shot some in th outskirts of Nashville. We shot some in Franklin, we kinda shot around. But yes everyone over at the film commission is lovely. I think that obviously we don’t have one of the best film incentives in the country, but we make up for it with a really talented crew.

Everyone’s really hungry for work in Nashville and they’re really hungry for good work. And a lot of them are coming from Los Angeles after the pandemic.  A lot of filmmakers left LA and came to Nashville . . . maybe seeking the whatever they were seeking and maybe the green Rolling Hills.

I don’t know what they could have gotten in Nashville that they weren’t getting in California, but they came to Nashville. So we have this incredible crew base that’s so talented and eager to do some incredible work. That’s something that people don’t realize when when we say we shot in Nashville, you don’t think of Nashville as like this big film hub or anything like that.

So you’re probably thinking like, “How in the world do you get the equipment? How do you get the team?” There’s so many talented crew members in Nashville and great camera houses, great G&E (grip and electric) houses for like lights and electro. There’s challenges in some ways because it’s not, it’s not inherently a film friendly city.

The locals aren’t as familiar if they see a camera rolling instead of in LA you just walk right by. In Nashville, people are like, “Oh look at that.”

You might see someone in the background going oh, look at this. So it’s not like inherently a film Conscious City, but we make up for it with an incredible crew. Everybody who lives there is just wonderful and nobody complains about us taking over their street or anything like that.

It’s really a great place to shoot and it’s great food, great hotels, so can’t recommend it more.

Question: Are you surprised at where you are right now as a screenwriter and as an actress, or did you have that plan in place maybe a decade prior? If you are not surprised, why are you not surprised where you are right now?

Rose Reid: I think that that’s a really good question. I think that in some ways, yeah I’m very surprised. I, particularly with screenwriting, that was always my goal was to be a screenwriter. I was a 14-year-old screenwriter and was like, “I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be huge.”

As I got older and I realized how difficult it was to be a screenwriter and how hard it was to break in. At the time I was primarily acting and really trying to become a screenwriter through acting and gained some credits there as well as some contacts.

And there have been several years in between. Me being a 14-year-old screenwriter and now that I just was ready to throw in the towel on being a screenwriter because it was just so hard to even get your foot in the door.  But I will say that there has been a plan and we’ve been very strategic, whether it’s my team and or now my dad and my brother, and we really want to (make more movies).

Hopefully someday be able to work on projects together. My brother Andrew, he’s very talented. He’s a great actor. He goes and works on his own things. My dad is an executive producer now, and he goes and produces his own projects. He’s got something this summer. And then I have my own things that I go and do, and then hopefully eventually we all get to come back together and work on a project together.

Yes, it is surprising and it you a pleasant surprise. But also there, there is a plan in place and we’re hoping to continue to enact that plan in the future and hopefully be able to do some more projects together.

Question: This is probably a very bad analogy, but it seems like screenwriting writing and reading is a first love of yours, and then along the way to get these contacts, you became an actor and you’ve become a successful actor in that sense. 

The opportunities you’ve received, has it replaced that first love from when you were 14 or are they just side by side bedfellows now?

Rose Reid: That’s such a good question. I think that they’re pretty much bedfellows right now. I love acting. I’m really happy to have the career that I have.

(I get) to travel the world and I think that’s the thing that I didn’t realize I was gonna love so much about acting.

When it comes to acting, it’s something completely different. It’s trying on different skin and trying on different clothes and seeing if you wanted to be an FBI agent. That’s cool because you get to go pretend to be one and you get to do all this research like you are an FBI agent.

And there’s some of that included in writing as well. I think they’re definitely bedfellows at this point for different reasons. I think that even if I weren’t in film, I would still be writing.

So I’m not really even sure how to fully answer that question. But yeah, I would say 50/50.

Question: Final question is a two-parter. First off, right off the top of your head, can you name one of your all time favorite movies? And what is it about this film that. Still resonates with you. And the second part of that question is from your own resume, whether it be TV show, series or film, can you recommend a project that you’ve done that you feel is underrated and people should watch and go see?

Rose Reid: Yeah, definitely. These are great questions. Oh my gosh, Greg. Yeah. So right off the bat, I already know what my favorite film is right now. It’s “A Quiet Place.” I think that the reason that’s my favorite film is because it has this huge world, but it’s actually about a family. And it’s this very small story about a family.

It’s about a father and a daughter trying to reconcile when there’s grief and misunderstanding between them. And I think that the way it was shot was absolutely stunning. And the way that they were able to convey so much emotion with just looks and hand gestures and sign language, it was absolutely beautiful.

That’s probably my favorite project. And then underrated project of mine, I would have to say “Surprised by Oxford” directed by Ryan Whitaker. It’ss a project that I did I guess back in 2021 and I believe it released in 2023. It’s set in Oxford, England. It’s just a project that’s really close to my heart because I got to play a character that felt very close to home.

A lot of people know me from the rom-com that I did in Ireland (“Finding You”) that was like this very fun, like happy-go-lucky girl and muttered and stumbled over her words and very clumsy. I loved playing her. She will always hold a special place in my heart.

But this project “Surprised by Oxford,” that character just really hit home. And it also deals with some really deep questions and is very intellectual and it it asks some really deep things. So I would say that probably that’s my most underrated, I think, project.

Question: Rose, thank you so much. I really enjoyed “The Lightning Code” but I want to call it “The Tesla Kid.” I wanna call it both, but I really enjoyed the film and again, thank you so much for your time. 

Rose Reid: Thank you so much, Greg. It’s been so great chatting with you. And I hope you become a writer because you already seem to know everything there is to know about writing, so I just feel like you should just jump in and be a screenwriter at this point.

Question: Alright, you take care Rose, thank you so much.

Rose Reid: Thank you!