Arts and Entertainment

Dufferin Film Festival founder reflects on the art and challenge of shooting short films

April 17, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The Dufferin Film Festival will return this year, showing a collection of short films at the Orangeville Town Hall Opera House from Aug. 15 to 17.

To appreciate the complexities of creating these brief masterpieces in film, the Citizen had the chance earlier this week to talk to Kelly McDowell, along with her husband Nick Rose of Rose Digital Media Group, founders and organizers of the Dufferin Film Festival.

The Citizen heard all about the challenges and craft that make a whole movie into a seven-minute film. Conceived, filmed and produced in just 48 hours, she assured us, they are not only short of time, they are short of minutes!

“You have to be crazy enough to want to do it,” McDowell told us. “You just keep going, get along with each other: you have to get along because there’s no sleeping.”

Here is how it works, going back as a demonstration, to their own creation, “Three Graves Deep.”

McDowell and Rose entered that short film into the 48 Hour Film Project Festival in Toronto last year and won in the “Best Film” category.

After that, they showed the film at the 48 Hour Film Project Festival’s Filmapalooza in Seattle.

“There were films and filmmakers from all over the world,” McDowell said, “It was an incredible experience.”

The 48 hours means exactly that: they had from Friday at 7 p.m. until Sunday at 7 p.m. to produce their short film. Actually, 48 hours in October were the specifics, which was a great time of year for filming and the weather was perfect.

“As if it was all meant to be,” McDowell affirmed.

They go into the festival “blind,” with a choice of two genres, all different, the name of a character, occupation and one line that has to be said in the film. They had a choice of dark comedy or dance and they chose dark comedy.

“The only thing in advance was our team,” McDowell explained. 

They had a potential location ready, a horse farm just east of Orangeville and they knew generally that they had access to a group of 10 people; also they had to get a lot of food together.

Immediately, they started drawing a concept, which could be like an old war film or with access to horses, which made the concept very limited: drawing 10 to 15 concepts, they then just said no to them until they landed on the right one.

“Once we had the western concept,” she continued, “we made a rough call sheet.”

What time they had with the horses roughly mapped up such details. 

McDowell was getting wardrobes, her own expertise, ripping bed sheets to make scarves.

The sleeplessness begins: “I’m doing costumes every night until 2 a.m.” 

Writing the script between them, were Nick Rose, who owns Rose Digital Media Group, and Alex Caucean, owner of Filmmetry. He has been with them for seven years. Together they did a concept for a crew of four who had been with them for some years, while other crew members were on deck for their first time.

The script finishes were done by 6 a.m. on Saturday, which in the 48 film festival world, we were told, is normal.

They were gathering equipment, and moving to the location; the actors were coming and also using the crew as well. Time to fit the wardrobes, when the sizes might not necessarily be right but “it worked out.”

The concept is the hardest part of the creation. It can make a great script and by now, the pressure is fun: they are definitely running on adrenalin.

Some team members stay awake; they stay up while others are sleeping and wake them with food and coffee and then, they get to sleep but no one sleeps for long!

“You can’t miss what you have to do by a minute,” McDowell emphasized. “The newbies, talking to working with them, we made really good decisions. This was the strongest team ever, for sure,” was the praise.

Filming all day Saturday to 6 p.m. was followed with editing, colour grading, sound mixing and the special effects for guns. Rose did the editing; he is very quick, and has a great talent for making good set pictures, McDowell told us.

The concept is basically about a grave plot in the Old West that is one of the characters’ favourite spots for burying the people they kill. Two other people show up to fight about burying other people they’ve killed and there is a war over a burial plot.

“It ended up being very funny, a take on Quentin Tarantino,” was the summation, adding that the tagline is “everyone’s dying for the plot.”

They submitted their film at 6:58 p.m. on Sunday.

Two of the actors are union actors, Reese Presley and Sam Asante. The 48 Hour Festival has an agreement to let the actors participate without being paid.

Working with them really puts that bar high for quality because performing to their skill “is exciting – to have that pressure on me,” McDowell admitted. “We have to set a certain bar too for their own reputations.”

No one is paid to partake in these ventures. No one gets enough sleep. Everyone digs in and has an amazing time of it.

McDowell reckons she and Rose and Caucean will keep doing this every year, so we were promised and here is why: “I think it’s because one time a year, we get to be absolutely creative. The looks, sounds, feels are not dictated by a producer or clients.

“One time a year,” she said, “we are free. There is also the rush of the contest – can we do it?”

Like any artist, this is a welcomed opportunity to delve into their creativity in film because they like creating.

Stating it flatly, there is “no benefit, no money but our own budget and we do this just for the film. It’s what keeps us going. The day of, I get very nervous – Desmond Baxter is in it too.”

The 48 Hour Film Project Festival started in Seattle years ago.

McDowell and Rose said it was an incredible experience to show their films and experience the festival.

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