WATCH: 2025 Wellsville graduates and best friends create a music video for “Coming up Roses” using iconic Wellsville locations
INTERVIEW: Film Maker and Actress take you behind the scenes
By Andrew Harris, pictured are Maddie Muurisepp and Brooklyn Dahlgren
Harry, you gotta see this!!
Set in a small riverside village in Upstate New York, your song “Coming up Roses” is the inspiration for Maddie Muurisepp and Brooklyn Dahlgren’s summer video shoot. These recent Wellsville graduates, now college students, started brainstorming earlier this year about creating a music video while on summer break. Maddie is an acting major at Nazareth University and Brooklyn is a film major at St. John Fisher.
They knew they wanted to make a video, they knew that the film major would do the video work and the acting major would play the starring role. The hard part was to decide on what song to choose!! Maddie explains some of the decision making process:
“Harry Styles had just released Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally, and I fell in love with “Coming up Roses”, I thought it was just the most beautiful song and I really thought we could tell a story with it, which Brooke agreed, and we couldn’t find any other songs that topped it at that point, so we knew this had to be the one!”
Brooklyn agreed that this new Styles song was the one, “Between the deep meaning of the song and its beautiful instrumentals we knew it was perfect to make into a music video.”
The childhood besties, now budding Hollywood stars, approached this video professionally, but with lots of fun and friends. After choosing locations, creating characters, and recruiting friends the vision was ready for filming.
Cast and crew used some of Wellsville’s best locations that really give a great glimpse of small town life, from Island Park to Giant Food Mart to the rolling hills surrounding the village.
Dahlgren gives a shout out to the cast of characters who helped make the project a blast, pictured here at the outdoor premiere event held this summer in Wellsville:
“In addition to Maddie and co-star Gabe Fioretto, our friends Sierra Caruso, Sam Bidzerkowny, Michael Bidzerkowny, Talia O’Connor, and my brother Wheeler Dahlgren were also featured in the video.
Even if it’s just little roles, like friends or other couples, it’s still fun to film with our friends and include them in the video.”
We asked Maddie and Brooklyn a few questions about the project and of course, Why should Harry Styles watch this video!?!?!
What is your favorite part of the video ?
MADDIE: My personal favorite part of the video is the flashback montage, where we see all of the moments between the girl and her past love. I love the contrast between the dreamy dancing scenes and the small, everyday tasks that they did together. In an interview with Zane Lowe and Apple Music, Harry talks about “Coming Up Roses” and basically talks about how not all relationships have to last forever to leave a lasting impact, and I think that this montage perfectly shows that.
BROOKLYN: My favorite shots from the video are the scenes shot in Maddie’s house. The kitchen and stairs are so aesthetically pleasing, as well as her bedroom (shout out Megan Freeman because she’s an interior design queen). It’s a lot of fun filming in there and every room has potential for a cool shot.
What was the hardest part of this video to make?
BROOKLYN: Shooting the final scenes on the little Main Street side street was the hardest part of this video. With cars coming and going it caused some continuity errors between shots. The ending shot of the cars closing doors was also difficult to time correctly. While I was standing in the middle of the road Gabe and Maddie were trying to time the doors shutting in unison. After a few too many tries, I’m very pleased with how the final shot turned out.
MADDIE: The hardest part of this to film was during the scenes around town, like the grocery store and car scenes. We accidentally chose to film during the overwhelming heat wave back in late June/early July, and it was ROUGH being out there for so long in that weather, not to mention how bright it was out.
Your locations were some iconic Wellsville spots. How did you decide on locations ?
MADDIE: As for locations, we didn’t necessarily want to make it known that it was Wellsville per say, we just wanted classic small town locations, like a grocery store and ice cream place. We were also fortunate enough to film in nature on my grandparents property, which made for some unique and beautiful shots.
BROOKLYN: Our video featured some iconic Wellsville spots such as Island Park, Giant Food Mart, the Library, and the general downtown. During planning, we put thought into where we wanted to film and what would look visually pleasing on camera. I think that all of these locations worked well within the video while also showing off our cute Wellsville downtown!
Tell Harry Styles why he should watch this now and immediately have his agent set up a meet and greet ?
MADDIE: We truly made this just for our own fun, and because this is something we’ve loved to do together, but if Harry saw this video, that would be so incredible!
BROOKLYN: I think if Harry Styles watched our video he would love how we interpreted his song, and would of course want to meet the beautiful faces behind it 🙂
Maddie and Brooklyn will be waiting for the call from Harry but even if he doesn’t take notice, the project was a blockbuster success in the eyes of these talented young ladies.
“We are so lucky to get to do this as best friends, and very grateful to our friends for helping us out and being a part of this and for our parents for supporting us and being so proud of us all the way throughout this journey!“
