Kickstarter

Our Story...

Hello, my name is Joseph Hardin. Thanks for taking the time to learn about my project, “The HorrorQuest Film Festival”!

Some background on HorrorQuest: The idea for HorrorQuest started in 2009 as an idea for a, “Moive Night” that was going to be held at a local comic book store in the Atlanta area. The plan was to invite local filmmakers to come in and show their horror and genre films. While I was planning for the movie night I had a conversation with a friend, who is a local filmmaker, he was telling me about how much it was going to cost him to submit his new film to all the different festivals. The cost was almost as much as the film itself, plus you can never really be sure a film festival is even really watching your submitted film. I started to wonder why film festival charge a submission fee when many of them have sponsors and sell tickets and VIP passes.

I looked around the internet and only found a handful of festivals that had free submissions, but I could only find one that was free to the public. It was around this time the whole, "movie night" idea fell through, I figured, "Why not start a free film festival instead?". I figured I could get a few films together and have something ready within a few weeks, well, I was wrong. I spent the next year learning how to set up a festival, talking to lawyers and learning about fiscal sponsors.

Making much of it up as I went along and with no money, I put up a simple website in early 2011 and made a few posts on filmmaking forums that the festival was seeking films. I figured I would only get in a few submissions, if any at all. About a week after making the post I checked the festival mailbox for the first time. I was surprised to find it packed full with submissions from all over the world. Each week was the same, until it got to the point where the mailbox was overflowing, so much so that I was forced to upgrade to a much larger mailbox… In total I got in over 350 submissions.

Because this was the festivals first year, and not to many people knew about it, the job of watching all of them fell to me. I thankfully had a few friends who were kind enough to help out, but many of them I had to watch all by myself.

It was also around this time it hit me, “I’m getting in submissions, I have to find a place to show them”. After looking around and talking to a lot of local theaters I found a student ran theater called, "Cinefest".  Thinking it would be a hole in the wall, I was surprised that it was just like every other movie theater I had been to. They loved the Idea of HorrorQuest and were willing to work with me.

Because it was our first year, sponsors were hard to get, so I paid for everything out of pocket. Because of this I could only afford to pay for the theater and didn’t have the funds to advertise the festival, except for a few posts around the internet… Opening night I was terrified that no one would show up, but they did! While we never, “Packed” the place, every screening had a decent attendance. My favorite was a little old couple, who looked like they were in their 70’s. They came out on a cold Sunday morning to watch horror movies together. After the screening I talked to the old lady and asked if she enjoyed the movie. What she said made all the hard work and stress worth it, “It was good, but there was not enough gore.”.

HorrorQuest is now looking forward to 2012… We just posted open submissions for this year and are looking for help keeping HorrorQuest going. I want to keep it FREE and keep it running for as long as I can. Supporting HorrorQuest doesn’t only fulfill my dream, but the dreams of the filmmakers who submit.

The Impact...

I get to see the impact HorrorQuest has made every day. We have gotten many emails from the filmmakers on how different we are from other festival. The biggest one being how we interact with the filmmakers. We try to keep all of the filmmakers informed about the status of their film, ask them for input, and apparently something other film festivals don’t do, answer their emails. Getting this project funded will help us do more and allow us to make it even better.

It also seems HorrorQuest has become a bit of a lucky charm for the filmmakers selected. Many of them have been picked up for distribution not long after being selected or screening at HorrorQuest. The most notable was the film, "Stained", which was picked up two weeks after being selected by HorrorQuest and got into the top 50 on ITunes with no marketing.  

HorrorQuest also has a bi-weekly podcast which we do in order to give the filmmakers a chance to talk about their films. Many of them never really get a chance to talk about their art and we are happy to provide them with that opportunity. Past guests include Lloyd Kaufman from Troma Entertainment, Christoper Witherspoon, Director or Rage, Jason Christoper, Director of Down The Road and Karen Lam, Director of Stained".

If HorrorQuest is not funded there is a good chance we may have to pull the plug. Over the past year HorrorQuest has started to grow into a little community, I would hate to see it die.

Where The Funds Will Go...

Let others know about us… Follow us on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter or listen and comment on our podcast. Little things like this are free and help us grow. Even if you don’t want to help fund us, maybe someone on your friends list does.

www.thehorrorquest.com