A local part-time filmmaker has won an award from the Edmonton Short Film Festival for the second consecutive year.
Darren McInnes from Olds has once again won the ESFF’s 48 Hour Mobile Device Filmmaking Challenge. He points out it included three secret elements you have to include into your story and you have two days to film, edit, and submit a short film that is two minutes or less in length. McInnes says “The secret elements were: one character has to hold a form of media, so like a VHS tape, a DVD, something like that. The other element is one shot has to be shot through something, so through a window, or a tunnel or something like that. Then somewhere your film you have to hear the phrase ‘through the indie lens’. So you have to just hear that someway, somewhere in your film.”
McInnes explains who he worked with to make the short film. He says “I worked with my friends. His name is Bayden Fox and the other one is Dave Klatt. They’re actually the same people I grew up with and we’ve been making little skits and stupid little things. You know, we started as teenagers in the local arcade way back when. So they were actually in this one as well, and then my wife Trish helped out with all the other stuff that has to be done as well.”
His main idea for the film was basically a guy having a conversation with his shovel as he digs a grave and the shovel is telling him it is too shallow. He says “It is kind of hard to explain how I incorporated the elements but I just had a shot through the window of a car we had there. I had him find a VHS tape as he was trying to make the grave deeper and then there was a horse race playing on the radio and the name of the horse that wins the race is ‘Through The Indie Lens’. So I guess it’s not that hard to explain. It just doesn’t make any sense if you are not actually watching it.”
McInnes says the award comes with small cash prize, plus the recognition as a winner to all the other competitors, and the main prize is your film gets screened at the Edmonton Short Film Festival in October. He adds, the fact you get screened there with all the big films that get sent in from all over allows you to get lots of eyes on your product that you wouldn’t normally otherwise.
McInnes says this year there were about 35 other submissions for the Challenge.
Check out his YouTube channel Dogpatch Moving Pictures, and you can also see his work – along with this year’s other submissions for the contest – on the Edmonton Short Film Festival website.
Listen to 96.5 CKFM’s conversation with Darren McInnes.