Teen Horror Film Contest Announced!
UPDATE: We have added a Best Horror Film Screenplay category to our contest. The top three contest winners will be eligible for the same prizes. Submission deadline has been extended to Sunday, October 25 at 11:59 PM.
Cadence Theatre Company & KdentsTV Present The KdentsTV Horror Film Contest
Like scary movies!? More importantly, do you like to make scary movies? If so, KdentsTV wants to see them! Submit your short horror film for a chance to win cool prizes (like a GoPro!). With Halloween around the corner, October is the perfect time for you to make that scary short film you’ve been thinking about!
Rules for Submission
1) 3-6 minutes long (credits included)
2) Cast no larger than 4 actors
3) One of your characters MUST be one of the following:
— Witch
— Scarecrow
— Werewolf
— Vampire
Be creative! Use the above rules as a jumping off point for your horror film. The best scary movies have strong, relatable main characters that your viewer can root for, and spooky villains that give us goosebumps and keep us awake at night.
Of course, we want your film to scare us, but please, keep the content PG-13. No excessive profanity or violence.
Prizes
1st Prize: A GoPro Camera, a $100 cash prize, a copy of The Remaking, by author and filmmaker Clay McLeod Chapman, and your film will be uploaded to the KdentsTV YouTube Channel.
2nd Prize: A Flex Bounce Reflector Package for Film Lighting, a $50 cash prize, and your film will be uploaded to the KdentsTV YouTube Channel.
3rd Prize: A Selfie Ring Light with Tripod Stand, a $25 cash prize, and your film will be posted on the KdentsTV YouTube Channel.
All submissions will be part of a virtual festival October 28-31. Bring your popcorn!
How to Submit
— Send your movie to ckctcinterns@gmail.com. Be sure to put the title of your movie and your name in the movie title file.
— Submission is FREE! But please submit only one film per filmmaker or filmmaking team.
— Filmmaker must be 18 years old or younger to submit (team members may be older than 18).
DEADLINE — Sunday, October 25 at 11:59 PM.
Judges for this year’s inaugural contest include:
Clay McLeod Chapman
Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of The Remaking, nothing untoward, miss corpus and rest area, as well as The Tribe middlegrade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal and Academic Assassins. Upcoming projects include Whisper Down the Lane, a new psychological horror novel from Quirk Books (April 2021), ORIGINS, a graphic novel from BOOM! Studios (October 2020) and Wendell & Wild, a new middle grade novel co-authored by filmmaker Henry Selick, from Simon & Schuster.
Chapman’s story late bloomer was adapted into a short film, directed by Craig William Macneill. An official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, late bloomer won Best Short at the Lake Placid Film Festival and the Brown Jenkins Award at the 12th Annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Their second short, Henley, based on the chapter “The Henley Road Motel” from Chapman’s novel miss corpus, was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It won Best Short at the 2011 Gen Art Film Festival and the 2011 Carmel Arts and Film Festival. The Boy (SXSW 2015), a feature-length adaptation of Henley, co-written with director Macneill, was produced by SpectreVision (Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller) in 2015. Chapman was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.
Michael Duni
Michael is a director and filmmaker who has worked on projects for Netflix, PBS, AMC, Amazon and others. At 28, Michael directed his first feature film, The King of Crimes, and is currently in pre-production on his second. Outside of features, Michael’s short films, casting work, and cinematography have received international acclaim at festivals and mainstream theaters alike. Michael has also directed two stage plays, and has been tasked by distributors to re-imagine how plays are filmed for broadcast. He hopes his unique understanding of both film and theatre can help create storytelling experiences that elevate and combine both art forms.
Sasha Waters Freyer
Sasha Waters Freyer is a moving image artist who has produced and directed 17 documentary and experimental films, 13 of which originate in 16mm. Embracing a personal, artisanal approach to craft, she served as the cinematographer and sound editor on ten of them, and as editor on all but one. Her feature film, Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable, won a Special Jury Prize at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival, was released theatrically in the U.S and Europe, aired on the PBS series American Masters in 2019, and was called one of the year’s best films by Richard Brody in The New Yorker. Waters Freyer has received three Media Arts grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and was nominated for the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman Award. She is a 2019 recipient of the Catapult Film Fund for her new project about American artist Bruce Conner and the gospel group the Soul Stirrers. Sasha has screened and exhibited at film festivals, museums and galleries around the world including the Telluride Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kassel Dokfest, IMAGES in Toronto, the Brooklyn Museum, SF MoMA, LAXART, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco, Microscope Gallery, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and Film Forum, NYC. Sasha earned her MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, and her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Louis Handler
Louis Handler is a video producer and editor. He started shooting and editing skateboard videos in highschool and has never stopped. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in painting and printmaking and enjoys making collages. He has been working for non-profit organizations since 2012 and currently works at Richmond Ballet creating video content. He loves movies of all varieties and hopes to one day write and direct a feature film.
Sam Page
Sam is a recent graduate of the Theatre for Social Change program at Emory and Henry College, and is a multi-medium visual artist specializing in comics, digital illustration, and lino-cut block printing. Their experience includes interning for Project Real, Micah Program, and teaching at the SWVA 4H Educational Center, GATE, and Summer Camp on the Hill. Sam quickly took an active role utilizing their background in theatre at the local nonprofit Oakwood Arts as a volunteer assisting withevents, including support in stage direction and props for Ms. Sweet Lady Play with Peter Paul Development Center.
