"An Event So Fast" is an experimental documentary about a family's failed invention. In Ralston, Alberta, a town for families of the military, a father works for the Defense Research Board as an explosives researcher stationed at Suffield Experimental Station. His work leads him to pursue a life as a professor researching shock waves. Soon he devises a new kind of bulletproof material and employs his grown children to assist in experiments and promotions in order to get his invention to market. Through home movies and archival film, the family recounts how a belief in ideas becomes the greatest obstacle to success.