I’m quite happy with the way things are working out. I came up with the idea of doing a Launch Party shortly after coming up with the idea for the festival and I tried to keep fairly quiet about it. This meant that there hasn’t been much news about what I’ve been doing to get the festival off the ground. First off the boring stuff like figuring out how to become incorporated, securing a name and all that stuff is underway. I’ve got some people here in Saskatoon who are willing to help out and I’ve contacted a few people who know a bit about running a festival and asked if they want to help out in an advisory role and pretty much every single one agreed. Either I’m just a really charming fun guy to chat with or else festival people are just good people who want to help out. I’m guessing it is the latter but I like to think the first. While this was all going on I started up the facebook group, set up a youtube channel and started the website which will go live around midnight Thursday.

So back to the Launch Party thing. I decided that Saskatoon needed to see two of the movies from Toronto After Dark, okay I actually decided that I want to see them with a crowd in a theatre atmosphere but everyone gets something out of it also. The two movies were Grace (Our Review) and Trick ‘r Treat. The only problem is that the festival group has no money. I talked with the Roxy Theatre and they agreed to cover the costs and I’m setting up the posters and bringing in prizes and such. All was good until we discovered that it was going to be a pain in the ass to bring in Trick ‘r Treat. Fortunately a few days prior to this I was put in touch with the director of a small indie flick that is getting amazing buzz after a few showings. I figured this was too good to be true but I chatted with the director a bit and Dark Bridges ended up with the Canadian Premiere of Ink. I can’t tell you how thrilled, first off to just be able to see Ink in the theatre but to also have it be part of Dark Bridges Launch Party.

In addition we have decided that any good festival must also have shorts so we’ve lined up Dead Walkers, Road to Moloch, Fallow and Elder Sign. We’ve set up prizes from both Anchor Bay Entertainment and also Evokative Films.

So, overall things have been pretty hectic but really good. There is some other stuff happening but I’m not going to talk about it till I get things a bit more finalized. I learned my lesson after having told a few friends about Trick ‘r Treat and having it not happen so from now on I am going to be more secretive.

I hope everyone is enjoying the occasional post on setting a festival up. I know that I am having a great (but hectic) time figuring this all out and I really do believe that if I can do this then anyone can.