Summary

• Winter Spring Summer or Fall showcases Jenna Ortega in a new light, telling a love story over four seasons.
• Director Tiffany Paulsen meticulously crafted visuals and music to differentiate each season in the film.
• The movie is ultimately about love and first love, exploring the complexities of relationships and compatibility.

Tribeca Film Festival showed the world a new side of Wednesday star Jenna Ortega with Winter Spring Summer or Fall. Starring Ortega and Percy Hynes White (Wednesday), the movie tells the story of a relationship through the recounting of only four days—one in each season. Ortega plays Remi Aguilar, a brilliant, Harvard-bound young woman, who meets White’s Barnes Hawthorne on accident. Over the course of a year, the two must navigate some of the highest highs and lowest lows of first love.

Winter Spring Summer or Fall was directed by Tiffany Paulsen in her feature-length debut. Though it’s Paulsen’s first time behind the camera for a feature, she is an accomplished screenwriter whose credits include 2020’s Holidate and 2022’s About Fate. Paulsen took care to separate the movie’s four distinct seasons visually and tonally, and handcrafted a soundtrack featuring music by Talking Heads, Judah & The Lion, and more.

Screen Rant interviewed Tiffany Paulsen about her time crafting Winter Spring Summer or Fall. Paulsen reflected on what drew her to the script, how she navigated the changing of seasons, and more.

Tiffany Paulsen Explains The Unique Structure & Story Of Winter Spring Summer Or Fall

Photo: Jenna Ortega in Scream VI.

Screen Rant: How did you find this script, and what was the thing that drew you to it?

Tiffany Paulsen: The early script was sent to me by my great friend Josh Shader, who is also a producer on it, and he had a relationship with Dan Schoffer, the amazing writer. Dan had had this idea he’d been kicking around, and so there was an early draft. I read it and instantly felt this emotional connection to it.

It was the first thing I ever read—I'm a writer first and foremost—where I thought, “This feels like something I could have written myself.” I instantly fell in love with it. We all got together for lunch, Dan was so open to my thoughts and ideas, and it just became this amazing collaboration.

Where was the script when you first saw it, and what was the thing that you wanted to work with the most?

Tiffany Paulsen: It was always the hook that I loved. I think it was a little wink wink for me to Holidate, which is a movie I had done for Netflix that follows a relationship over the course of very specific days. Full credit to Dan Schoffer—he had the idea of touching [on] this relationship for this young couple really on the cusp of adulthood and checking in with them over four days and trying to tell a full relationship story [over] one day in each season. I thought that was genius. I definitely had a lot of thought and ideas, but it was Dan's story. I would say we really worked well together.

How would you describe the core relationship of Winter Spring Summer or Fall, and do you think it’s a movie about people who are compatible or not compatible?

Tiffany Paulsen: I think it's a movie about love. At its core it is a movie about love, and first love. Compatible or not compatible, I think you can't help who you fall in love with. Maybe they're right for you and maybe they're not, and maybe they're right for this time in your life. You never know. To me, that's ultimately what it's about. It's a love story.

Visuals & Music Were Key To Navigating The Movie’s Seasonal Story

Photo: David Byrne of Talking Heads, whose music is featured in the film.

As a director, how did you want to lean into that in of not only visuals, but with music and editing?

Tiffany Paulsen: First and foremost, it was the visuals, but that’s because we only had these very four specific days to tell this whole story. Each day in a season, we really are only in one day from morning until night. Everything had to be very methodically chosen and specifically planned, so I knew instantly I wanted the color palette to be different for every season. The wardrobe [also] had to be very specific because you have very limited opportunity to tell the story and paint the picture when you're just focused on that one day per season.

Music is something that has always inspired me in my writing. I'm always writing to music. I'm a child of the ‘80s and the ‘90s and [love] those John Hughes and early Cameron Crow [movies and] those iconic songs. One in particular that is a focal point of the movie is the Judah & the Lion song. I was writing to that, [and] working to that song, and I created my director’s sizzle to that song. I’ve been living with that song in my office for two years, and I was like, “This is a must-have.” It was a dream come true for me that that Judah & the Lion song ends up the movie.

The whole soundtrack is amazing, and I know you chose everything yourself. How was that process, and what was it like putting all of that together?

Tiffany Paulsen: I like to think I have really good musical taste. I give a lot of credit to my dear friend Michael Turner, who's our music supervisor. He was also the music supervisor on Holidate. He has some great connections and was able to make a lot of calls and do a lot of begging. Talking Heads and David Byrne are a very important part of the story and the character of Barnes' story and his journey. [Michael] got me back-channeled, and I got to get in touch with David Byrne, plead my case to him, and beg him to let us have “Burning Down the House for that.” He really did us a solid in allowing us to use that. Without that song, that whole storyline would've had to be changed.

Then, I have to give a shout out to Evangeline, an original singer in the film. Michael introduced me to her. The first time I got on a Zoom with her, she was luminous and I loved her music so much and she had been working on a song. He actually sent me a clip of the song, which is our finale song, and as soon as I heard it, I was like, “This is the finale song of the movie.” And it just turned out that she was game to play herself in the movie. We have a lot of her original music.

Your composer, Zac, is in Death Cab for Cutie. He's a rockstar and perfectly on theme with the soundtrack. How was it working with him on weaving that score in with the songs?

Tiffany Paulsen: Zac Rey is a genius. Again, it was the magic of Michael Turner having these relationships. Zac was on tour nonstop—he was all over—so to have a window where he was able to do it was a miracle. He watched the movie and he really got it [and] the inspirations. There was a temp track in there, but [with] a lot of our inspirations, he was already ahead of me on what I wanted to do. It’s tricky because the music in the movie is so strong and it is such a character in itself. You want the score to contribute, but you don't want it to be distracting. Zac is such a talented musician, so getting to sit in the studio and have a musician that welcomed having the director next to him, would just blow my mind. It was a dream to get him. I can't wait to work with him again.

I knew for sure that I wanted a real musician. I didn't want a synthesized score. That works for some movies, and no disrespect to the composers that work that way, but I wanted somebody to sit on their gritty piano and [play] their gritty guitar, and he's surrounded by 50 different instruments, but they all play a very unique sound, and they're like his children and he knows exactly which one's going to make what. I definitely wanted an indie street cred musician on that score.

Jenna Ortega Signed On Before Being Known For Darker Projects

Jenna Ortega is so well-known for horror or "dark" projects like Scream and Wednesday. Can you speak to what drew her to this, and why she felt like the right person to you?

Tiffany Paulsen: She's so great in it. Wednesday hadn't come out, nor had Scream, so I was familiar with her from her earlier films [and] watching her on Disney Channel, and she was just always our first choice. I think she's such a dynamic actress. She has such range. It just so happened that those other darker roles came out after our movie was well on its way. I think she's brilliant in the movie. I think it's a side of her that her fans haven't seen yet, and I think everyone's really very excited to see her in a role like this—in her first romantic role.

Paulsen Is Ready To Direct More Stories

Photo: Holidate, written by Tiffany Paulsen

What was the biggest surprise you had during the making of this?

Tiffany Paulsen: The surprise was how, even with the enormous set of challenges we had—and there were many—it was beyond my wildest dreams. I would literally direct movies 365 days a year if they would let me. I know that sounds cliche, but it really was such a fantastic experience. I loved it so much. I loved getting to be the boss and make those decisions because as a writer, you become so invested in your story and your characters and then you hand them over to somebody else and it's their visual interpretation from there on out. Sometimes it meshes with what you envision and sometimes it doesn't, and getting to see that through was beyond.

You clearly know how to tell a love story. Is there another genre you’d like to take on next?

Tiffany Paulsen: I'm really interested in unique, fresh, original stories. I know that that is probably a common answer. I mean, I am romantic comedy girl. I think everyone would think, “Oh, she's going to do romantic comedy,” but there are just so many amazing filmmakers out there doing really original projects that I ire and aspire to—looking at what Emerald Fennell is doing, and what Greta Gerwig is doing and what Sarah Polley is doing. So [no genre] specifically—I'm probably not looking to do my Western right away-but it's not out of the question. There will be a love story in it, no matter what it is.

About Winter Spring Summer Or Fall

Following a chance encounter, wunderkind Remi (Jenna Ortega) and music-obsessed slacker Barnes (Percy Hynes White) become inexorably entwined in each other’s lives. As winter turns to spring and spring turns to summer, the two find themselves falling in love. But with Remi heading to Harvard in the fall, the young couple are forced to reevaluate what’s truly important to them.

Winter Spring Summer or Fall premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2024. It can be seen June 7 at Village East by Angelika (2:30 pm), and June 15 at Village East by Angelika (8:30 pm).