Dead By Dawn - Scotland's international horror film festival
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Dead By Dawn started in 1993 in Edinburgh's Filmhouse cinema on Lothian Road and is the brainchild of Adele Hartley, It has shown hundreds of films in its history, from independent films, shorts, animations, big new releases and much-loved horror classics, all carefully chosen and curated by Adele, whose reputation has attracted the likes of legendary horror guests at the Festival, including Fred Dekker, John Landis, Frank Henenlotter, Jeff Lieberman, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Robert Englund and Tony Todd.
I've been lucky enough to attend the four-day festival since 2008, going with friends and then making lots of new friends whilst there over the years. Adele makes everybody welcome, and the Special Guests quite often mingle and chat among the attendees in the Filmhouse cafe bar between, all horror fans united.
It was down to Adele's tight-running of the Festival that a couple of my friends and I thought it would be nice to show her our appreciation by putting together a boardgame themed around Italian horror director, Dario Argento. Adele loved the gesture, and we were then asked if we'd like to be involved in the festival's 20th Anniversary celebrations in 2013. Of course, we jumped at the chance.
The idea was that there would be two full-size boardgames - one for short films and one for features - as well as 40 'mini-boards', measuring a compact 300mm x 300mm featuring a mixture of both. The mini-boards would be on sale at the festival, with the full-size boards as one for display and the other as a prize to be won in a giveaway.
All the films featured on the three designs had been shown at the Festival in its twenty-year history. Adele sought approval for each and every film appearing on the game, and even had requests from some of the directors involved for their own copy of the game, including Stuart Gordon and Richard Stanley!
A real pleasure to be involved.
