The community of Deloraine came out in droves for the red carpet premiere of a short film made by a few of their own.

On July 23, “Whitetail” a film by Nick Dietrich and Laughlin McKinnon, made its debut at the Deloraine Theatre. The cast, crew and much of the town were out in full force to see a locally made movie. It was everything they were looking for, McKinnon said.

“It was awesome,” he stated. “We hoped to have a full house and we did. You couldn’t ask for more. That was the dream, to have a premiere of a movie in Deloraine, raise some money for the Ag Society, and we met those goals.”

As McKinnon explained, the venture started when Dietrich, a Deloraine native who is a filmmaker in BC, was on the cusp of a larger film project. He wanted a smaller one to practice putting all aspects of it together. He asked McKinnon if he would help with it, to write a short film.

“We were thinking maybe three to seven minutes. He has an impressive career in videography, but he was going to be looking after everything, editing, directing, cinematography. He wanted to try something short, low stress, before he moved on to something bigger.”

McKinnon said it caught him off guard, as he had not done anything like that. He got a skeleton of what Dietrich was looking for, and a story including a storm-stayed drug dealer, a deer hunter and more came into focus. There was an immediate desire to have a local feel with local place names used. There would be a hunting cabin, a gun, some tension and what McKinnon referred to as a “twisted re-telling of the Hansen Buck (world record typical whitetail shot) story.”