The Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival 2011 begins in just 11 days, and I can't wait! 

Putting on a film festival is a lot of work: you obviously have to watch a lot of films; you have to stay in communication with filmmakers; you have to worry about other events in the area competing for people's attention during the same time period; select which films to show (which is sometimes painful, because not every film you like makes the final cut); find a way to cram numerous films (48!) into a stretch of less than a week (5 days!); and then there's the promotion of the event itself.  It's a lot to deal with. 

But planning an event like ours is great fun when you love what you're doing, and the Buffalo Screams crew loves what we do.   You'd think it would be easy to watch films for six months of the year, but free time is hard for most adults. parents, and grandparents to find, especially when they're toiling on other creative projects at the same time. I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the Buffalo Screamers who are working so hard to make this festival even better than last year's, and last year's was pretty damned awesome.  All of us serve as judges for most committees.

Emil Novak co-founded Buffalo Screams with me.  In fact, it was his idea last year to revisit earlier, abandoned plans we had for a horror film festival.  He and I act as a pre-screening committee; he handles all of the graphics related to the festival; and he tracks the submission payments, which can be cumbersome.  This year, he did all of this while working hard to complete Decayed, his feature length zombie anthology which has its world premiere at Buff Screams on Friday, Oct. 28th (all of our board members are filmmakers, and when we screen our own projects they are ineligible for competition).

Chris Scioli is our drector of online marketing, and he's done an amazing job, which lasts 365 days a year.  He's the mad genius who sits behind a keyboard all day long, Tweeting about not only the festival, but anything under the sun related to horror.  This kind of marketing builds tremendous marketing among horror fans and filmgoers, and when I look at all the people from around the world tweeting about Buffalo Screams, I realize that awareness of the event, and appreciation for it, is preading like wildfire; it's better known "out there" than it is here in Buffalo, and that's a great place to be; it's also largely because of his efforts.

Nick Anderson - also known as Nicholas John Morgan Anderson - is our resident webmaster.  He hosts the Buffalo Screams website on his personal server, and he posts our graphics, announcements, etc.  He also makes copies of all the films we need to consider, which is a daunting task.  I know we've reached the home stretch when Nick comes over to my house and the two of us organize all the DVDs and BluRays for screening.  We're almost there... Nick is a big biker/sports guy and a computer tech, and I love when he sits on my sofa and makes it look small and offers spot-on filma analysis.

Michael O'Hear was the recipient of our first "Local Hero" award last year; that one, like the "Filmmaker to Watch" award, is chosen by me and Emil.  We chose Michael for this award because he acts in almost every local horror film made in this area - and there are a lot of them - and he does so without any ego and without making any demands.  I call him "Buffalo's own Donald Pleasance," which seems to have stuck.  Michael is often the voice of reason at our meetings, and he sits on some smaller committees in addition to the overall selections/nominating/voting committee that we all sit on.

Chris Wroblewski - also known as Christopher Lee Wroblewski - rounds out our board of directors.  Like Michael, he acts in a lot of local productions.  When I made Slime City Massacre here in Buffalo, Chris showed up to be an extra every day we needed one (he's the guy in the blue hospital scrubs, who becomes "Pink Slime" at the end).  That's the kind of reliability you want when you're looking for people to take time away from their family to discuss movies and logistics every week.  Chris brings something else to the table, which is a sensibility different from those of the other board members: he doesn't like "quiet horror," he prefers visceral, gory, in-your-face horror, and that's absolutely a core ingredient of our festival.

That's the crew.  You can find them all on Facebook, and you can follow Buffalo Screams on Facebook -

https://www.facebook.com/people/Greg-Lamberson/1521038328#!/buffaloscreams

- and on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/#!/BuffaloScreams 

The next time I blog here will be iun just a few days, when we announce the nominees for the Buffalo Screams awards, which will be given out at our dinner on Sunday, Oct. 30th!