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Salty Horror Film Festival: Bringing the scary stuff to Salt Lake City
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Utah's First Film Festival Dedicated to Horror
It’s no secret that Salt Lake City isn’t known as a hotbed for the horror community. In fact, when Bruce Campbell visited the Broadway Centre Theater promoting his film directorial debut, Man with the Screaming Brain, and was asked the best way to get into “B” class horror films, he responded, in his typical snarky tone: “First thing to do is move out of Salt Lake City”.
However, this sentiment may not last much longer. There are a few people that hope to change this fact and start bringing some “horror cred” to SLC. One of these people is named Mario DeAngelis and he is bringing the Salty Horror film Festival to Salt Lake City in 2010.
I contacted Mario about his film festival and he was willing to answer some questions regarding the plans and status of this project:
Q. So, what is the Salty Horror Film Festival?
A. The Salty Horror Film Festival is a unique film festival only accepting short films and features in the horror and science fiction/horror genres. To my knowledge, this has never been attempted in Utah. The date for the festival is October 21-24, 2010.
Q. What made you decide to take on the huge project of bringing a horror film festival to SLC?
A. There is a market for horror films even in Utah. Some of the top grossing businesses in October in Utah are haunted attractions. There is a desire to be scared. Also, horror films are relatively inexpensive for the independent filmmaker. This festival is favoring the Indie filmmaker due to the lack of true independent film festivals. Horror festivals generally stay towards the low-budget, indie level of accepting work from many different skill levels.
Q. Have you had any experience with organizing events such as this?
A. Yes. I was a contributing producer on another Utah indie film festival, the Park City Film Music Festival run by my friend Leslie Harlow. She was instrumental in showing me simple ways to run a festival at low cost and low risk.
Q. Are you, yourself, a filmmaker?
A. I am a filmmaker. I have made four feature-length documentaries, short horror films, commercials, music videos and am a film production teacher at East Hollywood High School.
Q. Would you be organizing this if you lived outside the state, or is this something you’re doing specifically to bring more horror events to SLC?
A. I think there is a market in Utah. It may not be a hot bed, but more horror movies are being made here and screenings of cult horror films and original horror films do well. I think I am doing this to offer it up to Utah and see if there is enough interest. One test for the festival is a 72 hour film making contest called the Bloody 72 that I'm doing this year to help promote the Salty Horror Film Festival.
Q. What kind of tie-ins have you been able to schedule in conjunction with other local horror-themed groups?
A. There will be running tie-ins with the Castle of Chaos haunted attraction in South Salt Lake. It is not locked in but hopefully there will events in the Broadway Theater and the Tower Theater. Most events will be held in the Tower Theater but that is still not 100 percent locked in.
Q. On your website, it states that there will be events that will run in conjunction with the Salty Horror Film Festival. What kind of daily events have you been able to schedule?
A. There will be screenings of contest films, screenings of classic horror movies late at night. On Saturday of the festival will be the Miss Salty Horror reveal and surprise guests. Sunday will be a one day Horror Film Music Festival with guest film composers. Composer Harry Manfredini has expressed interest in being a judge for our event. Other judges are not confirmed.
Q. What is Miss Salty Horror?
A. The first Miss Salty Horror has been chosen. She will be the face of the Salty Horror Film Festival and help choose the next Miss Salty Horror. The next Miss Salty Horror will have to go through an Internet reality series produced by the festival called "Scare Me to Death." Whoever survives a series of scare tactics will become the next Miss Salty Horror. That will run next year as more promotion for the Salty Horror Film Festival.
Q. What should everybody know about the Salty Horror Film Festival that we haven’t discussed yet?
A. Teaser trailers will be popping up on www.vimeo.com. Search for Mario DeAngelis to find the Salty Horror Film Festival teaser trailers. The website www.saltyhorrorfilmfestival.com will have links to the trailers as well.
As far as the entry fees are concerned, there are three different entry periods that have a different entry fee associated with it. All of the dates and prices can be found on the Salty Horror Film Festival website. Currently, the website shows all dates with the year 2009. This should actually read 2010.
Mario also told me that he is currently in the process of setting up the management system that he is going to use for the festival, Withoutabox . Currently, the system hasn’t been setup to accept film submissions yet, but this will change soon.
I will definitely be keeping up with Mario and reporting frequently regarding updates and happenings with the Salty Horror Film Festival. I just want to thank Mario for his willingness to answer my questions, but more importantly, thank him for bring some of the scary stuff to Salt Lake!
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