u/ArkhamDreamerZero

Hi everyone,

I’m primarily a filmmaker, currently in post-production on a cosmic horror short called Static Zero. It’s based on declassified 80s sensory deprivation experiments. I'm planning a Kickstarter this summer to fund the final stretch.

For one of the rewards, I wanted to do a short interactive epilogue. Something small. Maybe 15 minutes. A little bonus for people who backed it. However, I’ve been working with a developer, and the scope has naturally expanded. It’s now a ~60-minute lofi narrative experience where you explore the facility from the film to piece together the aftermath of the experiment. And now I'm kind of stumped.

How do you market something like this? Specifically:

1. What do I even call it? Interactive epilogue? Game? Narrative experience? Multimedia experience? Does labeling matter this much, or am I overthinking it?
2. Should the Kickstarter be a hybrid pitch? Like, do I sell the film and the game together as one multimedia project? Or keep them separate and let the game be a reward tier? I worry that pitching both at once muddies the message, but keeping them apart feels like I'm underselling what this has become.
3. Social media strategy: Do I post about them together always? Or does the game get its own presence? I don't want cinephile followers to tune out if I go too game-heavy, but I also want to actually reach people who play games because they might be just as interested, if not more, in the project.
4. Genuinely curious: If you stumbled across this on social media (cosmic horror, grounded in real Cold War-era experiments, short film + companion narrative game) what would actually make you stop scrolling and care? What's the hook for you?

Here's a short WIP teaser for the film and some VERY EARLY build screenshots from the game if that helps give you a sense of the aesthetic.

WIP TEASER: https://youtu.be/P_LspAUn7Mg?si=OInUOW0Op_JyBmbo

GAME SCREENSHOTS: https://imgur.com/a/WgjfxbX

Thank you!

Beyond excited to share the trailer for REMANENCE! We went from a spark of an idea to a finished film in record time, and I couldn't be more stoked with how it turned out. It's coming out this summer in your nearest genre film festival!

So here's the backstory: we had just wrapped FRAGMENTS, a short we made with a grant (shoutout to Quebec's arts funding ecosystem, genuinely life-changing for indie filmmakers). We had one full day left on our equipment rental and thought... why waste it?

REMANENCE was born from that leftover day. Script written in a weekend. Skeleton crew. No sound team on set, everything was handled in post. And we shot the whole thing on an Arri Alexa XT.

We're really proud of how it came together, especially considering how chaotically fast the whole thing happened. We usually take our sweet time. This was the total opposite, and honestly it taught us a lot.

The biggest takeaway from this experience: use what you have, and don't be afraid to take risks. Sometimes constraints push you somewhere you'd never have gone otherwise.

Happy to answer any questions about the shoot, or the Canadian grant landscape if anyone's curious. And if your festival programs genre shorts, my DMs are open 👀