GREENSBORO -- A group of Greensboro filmmakers are nearing the end of a long journey.

They started with just 48 hours to create a film. Seven months later, that film took them to San Jose, California for Filmapalooza 08. It’s the final step in a competition that will bring the best of 55 cities and hundreds of filmmakers to the Cannes Film Festival.

For The Keene Collaboration, things started in the early hours of an August morning, when Dustin Keene and a group or writers finally had an idea for a film, and less than 48 hours to finish it.

The rules for the 48 Hour Film Festival are straightforward. You have 48 hours. You chose a genre at random, and have a prop and line of dialogue that must be included.

The film “JoBeth” beat out 45 Greensboro teams to go on to the regional round, where it also won, sending it to the national finals in San Jose.

"It’s a really riveting tale of a girl who's going through tremendous struggles in her life,” said Keene, executive producer.

For editor Tim LaFollette, it’s an experience he doesn’t think he could handle more than once or twice a year.

"After the first one it was so excruciatingly, painfully bad, that, we just kind of learned to laugh it off and say we're just going to go into this next one with a lot more time management skills,” said LaFollette.

Learning what not to do gave the team the perspective they needed to see what they could do.

"Don't overcomplicate the story; don't overcomplicate your shots,” explained LaFollette. “Do something that you can actually reasonably expect to do in such a short period of time."

Keene said while he’s proud of his team and the film they made, the real honor is in representing the state.

“I think that North Carolina and the Triad has all of the resources and all of the talent to be producing major motion pictures [and] television series,” said Keene.

It is not yet clear who will be taking their film on to Cannes. For more information on the 48 Hour Film Festival, click HERE.