Earlier this year, Economic Development Officer Karen Palmer hosted an information session for people interested in listing a business or residence on a regional film location database. That will help production teams find places to shoot. Another method, of course, is driving around, or looking online for interesting rental accommodations. There’s also a new Bay of Quinte Film Office, part of a larger push to bring new productions to the region — but filming in the County is nothing new.

We are hardly an ingenue making a cinematic debut. In the past five years alone, two indie movies, a Netflix production, and a Hallmark romance have set up camp here, using the plentiful rural and small-town backdrops to different ends. 

Good production design and visual effects can transform a place into somewhere completely different for the screen. It’s no stretch to imagine the dunes of Sandbanks looking like another planet, or a small farm subbing in for middle America.

But in recent productions, the County has simply been itself. Two Canadian indie films, Jump, Darling directed by Phil Connell, and Drifting Snow, directed by Ryan J. Noth, were not only shot here, but set in Prince Edward. Both films were made well before the County began pitching itself as a fresh and cheaper alternative to the well-trodden Greater Toronto Hamilton Region. 

The County is almost a character in both Jump, Darling and Drifting Snow. 

In the first, a young drag queen, Fishy Falters (Thomas Duplessie), reconnects with his aging grandmother, Margaret (the late Cloris Leachman), while staying in her County home.

Montage sequences take you from The Regent Theatre to the Mustang Drive-In, with a stop at the Giant Tiger. MacCool’s Re-use appears in a few scenes. 

Jump, Darling’s director, Mr. Connell, has had a family cottage here since 1999. That made location scouting easier. Much of his film was shot in an old farm house on White Chapel Road, a former artist colony. The cast and crew enjoyed various outbuildings for lunches and down time. 

“A friend of mine who is also a County person was like, ‘have you looked at this place?’ and that’s how we found it,” Mr. Connell said.  

With other locations, though, the crew had to get creative. A bar called Hannah’s Hovel is one of the film’s primary settings. Exterior scenes were shot at a restaurant on Picton Main Street (Portabella at the time, now Coaches).

The interiors and back of the bar were shot in Toronto for logistical reasons, one being that it’s easier to cast extras in the city. 

“That location in the movie was actually three different locations,” Mr. Connell noted. 

Things were similar at the beach. The production got establishing and POV shots at Sandbanks, but seasonal flooding prevented them from filming entire scenes there.

“That was the year of the really high water, so we actually postponed the beach shoot until later in the year — and then ended up shooting it in another place,” Mr. Connell remembers.

At the film industry information session, Ms. Palmer noted that one barrier to drawing in larger productions is the absence of a hotel large enough to capture cast and crew. 

The Jump, Darling production chose to stay at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Belleville, just a twenty minute drive from set most days. 

“It ended up being really great,” Mr. Connell noted. “Driving in the County is amazing. Nobody really minds that.”

While it helped that much of Drifting Snow’s cast and crew were local, producer and cinematographer Tess Girard notes her friends’ AirBnbs came in handy in the off-season.

Ms. Girard and Mr. Noth moved to the County from Toronto in 2012, drawn by a cost of living that would allow them to work as filmmakers. 

“The County really was a place of opportunity then, and it still is, it’s just a different landscape now,” she noted. “We were really welcomed with open arms into the community.”

Drifting Snow follows Chris (Jonas Bonnetta) and Joanne (Sonja Smits), two strangers who meet when their cars collide on an icy County road. Both are experiencing periods of grief and their forced encounter offers a moment of connection. 

When Mr. North received a grant to direct Drifting Snow,  the pair had already been established here for years — meaning they could call on local talent. 

“We worked very hard to bring local people on board,” notes Ms. Girard. “My camera assistant was my neighbour. She’s also in the union and she’s good at what she does.”

Residents allowed the crew to shoot in their homes, or donated props. 

Actor Sonja Smits connected Ms. Girard and Mr. North to talented ACTRA members who live in the County.

Every production relies on local support in some form. The Jump, Darling sets were catered by the Vic Cafe. They also hired local production assistants and performers. 

If enough filming comes here, the talent and resource network will be sure to grow. 

Ms. Girard noted that one thing that could benefit the County in its push to attract film production is access to rental gear.

“It would be helpful to have, if not a rental facility, some sort of shuttle to bring the gear that’s needed because you need different gear everyday,” she said. 

Ms. Girard continues to live and work in the County and is currently at work on a short film called The Ballad of Annie Londonderry.

“It’s a short film about the feminist history of the bicycle told through the story of the first woman to ride her bicycle around the world in the 1890s,” she says. 

Ms. Girard shot miniatures for the film at Base31 and inside barns around the County. She’s hopeful that the effort to attract more film work will have a positive impact on the community.

“Similar to the duality of a bustling social life and simultaneous isolation we all experience living here, there also exists a duality of our community identity within the County. There are the people that visit, are newcomers or are seasonal and part-time, then there are the community members that have been here for years and generations. I feel initiatives like these can help bring those two identities together and remind us that we are all one community,” she notes. 

Mr. Connell has written two more projects set in the County. “It wasn’t a strategic choice to write a bunch of stuff set here,” he says, “but I guess I’m inspired because it keeps happening.”