Dates: June-October

The Providence 48 Hour Film Project is a filmmaking competition where teams write, shoot, and finish a short film in just 48 hours.

If you're new to filmmaking or film festivals, think of it as a weekend-long filmmaking challenge rather than a traditional film festival.

How it works

At the beginning of the weekend, participating teams are given a few required elements—typically things like:

• A character

• A prop

• A line of dialogue

• The challenge is to incorporate those elements into an original short film.

• Then the clock starts.

Your team has 48 hours to:

• Come up with a story based on the required elements.

• Write a screenplay.

• Cast actors and find locations.

• Shoot the film.

• Edit the footage.

• Add things like music, sound effects, titles, and credits.

• Turn in the finished film before the deadline.

The tight deadline is the point: you're not expected to make a polished feature film. You're trying to make the best complete short film you can under extreme time constraints.

But people often wear multiple hats. One person might write, direct, and edit, while friends act and help with camera and sound.

You also don't need Hollywood equipment. A camera, microphone, lights, editing software, and a group of enthusiastic people can be enough. A phone can even be used as a camera.

What happens afterward?

Once the films are submitted, they're screened for an audience as part of the project's festival event. Films can be eligible for various awards, depending on the year's categories and rules.

The really fun part for a beginner is that you're not just watching movies—you've made one and get to see it on a festival screen alongside other local filmmakers' work.

Why do people do it?

The 48-hour format forces you to stop worrying about making the "perfect" movie and actually finish something.

It's also a good introduction to the filmmaking community. You meet actors, writers, cinematographers, editors, directors, and other people who are interested in making films locally.

If you've never made a film before, the basic experience is essentially:

Friday: "We have no idea what we're doing."

Saturday: "We have to shoot everything today."

Sunday: "Why is the export taking 47 minutes?!"

Deadline: "WE MADE A MOVIE." 🎬

For someone new to film festivals, that's probably the most useful way to think about it: a friendly but intense filmmaking sprint that ends with a real public screening.

SIGNUP HERE: https://48hourfilm.com/providence/48hfp

Dates: Spring and Fall

Imagine you're interested in filmmaking, but there are parts of the process where you think:

"I don't really know how people actually do that professionally."

KITs is designed to help fill in those gaps.

It's a day of workshops where working film and animation professionals explain how they approach their craft and how the industry works. The organizers specifically describe the goal as helping people develop skills so they can become more capable filmmakers and participate in the filmmaking workforce. 

So you don't have to arrive as an experienced filmmaker. Beginners are welcome, and the event is intended to be useful to local filmmakers at different experience levels. 

What would you actually learn?

If someone says they're learning a filmmaking technique, they're basically learning a particular way of creating an image, movement, sound, or storytelling effect.

For example:

• Stop motion:
  You physically move an object a tiny amount, take a picture, move it again, take another picture, and repeat. When the pictures play rapidly, the object appears to move.

• Mixed-media animation:
  You combine different materials or techniques—perhaps drawings, photographs, live-action footage, physical objects, digital animation, etc.—within the same film.

• Sound design:
  Instead of simply putting music underneath a movie, you deliberately create or manipulate sounds to affect how the audience experiences what they're seeing. Kamentsky's work, for example, uses field recordings, sound collage, altered instruments and synthesized sound. 

The benefit is being exposed to how professional filmmakers think about them and when they might be useful.

KITs is more the classroom/workshop side of filmmaking.

And that's why they make a natural pairing: you can learn a technique at KITs and then eventually try applying it when you make something yourself.

Do you need to know anything beforehand?

For someone completely new to filmmaking, I'd think of KITs as an opportunity to sit in a room with people who have actually worked in the industry and hear them explain how they make things.

You don't need to know what "rotoscoping" means before walking in. In fact, discovering things like that is part of the point.

The event is also designed to be accessible: these events are free, and all day events include coffee, water, and lunch.