Seattle shambles back for more braaaains on July 6th

It is here folks, we have officially decided on our 2013 Zombie walk dates scheduled for Saturday, July 6th at 5pm. This year will have significant changes to the planning and activities in an effort to release the festival back to the horde once and for all.

Unlike year’s past, this 2013 Zombie Walk will be only a walk, with no additional activities planned for this year. We invite local organizations to get involved and add to the activities and program.

Despite adding more staff and improvements to expedite the registration, the long lines and process simply delays participants to enjoy and celebrate. Besides, we know  who is the Zombie Capital of the World truly is, even without a Guinness World Record count.

Admission will be free to the general public and ZomBcon will no longer serve as the producer of the event in 2013. Walk organizers, Eric Pope and Ryan Reiter will remain involved to help ensure its future in Seattle for years to come. Much like in the way of Santarchy and other flash mobs and crawls, this will allow the event to be a community organized event.

In 2012, the City of Seattle Special Events Committee decided to make our Zombie walk a sporting event, due to the number of participants walking on the streets, requiring stronger permits, security, insurance and police presence to ensure it met their requirements. With little to no sponsor support, this event in the past has used ticket sales to fundraise and offset the hard cost of the six months of planning and production to make this festival happen.

Since 2009, the cost of the event has risen 300% (originally cost of the zombie walk $7,000) and now costs over $35,000 just to get it approved by the city for the one day event. Our hope is that by releasing it back into the community and making admission free, it will renew the audience, increase the total # of participants, and remain a long time tradition in the Northwest.

Our goal is to keep this undead tradition alive and offer support to create  a fun, community-spirited gathering for our fellow Zombies. This coming year, we will not be returning to Fremont and currently looking to bring the event to a larger space that can host the event for this massive gathering. More updates to come and be sharing that news in early 2013.

Thank you fro all your support over the past four years and we wish you all a very horrific holiday season.

Braaaaaains,

The ZomBcon Staff

After the December 2nd deadline, we reached 314 total advance ticket sales through our first campaign, an impressive number, but not nearly enough to move to helping us secure our first media guest and hotel for 2013. We delayed the announcement, due to sudden interest by a third party to possibly invest to reach our $25,000 goal and support to help produce the convention as early as 2013.

After a set of meetings, it is clear that the investors see the potential, but have expressed  interest to take it to a new city like Las Vegas or Los Angeles. However at this time, there is no contract and the conversation continues as we speak. Not all hope is lost for our Zombie horde and the ZomBcon convention in the near future.

At this current time, our organizers are currently in Los Angeles meeting with a number of people to secure a new home for 2014. By having the convention closer to the industry, it would allow us to invite media guests at little to no cost, simply due to being closer to Hollywood, as well as reduce our operational costs.

Our organizers want to Thank all of you for your ongoing support and enthusiasm in the great Northwest, it has been our home and continues to be our home starting with the annual Red, White & Dead Zombie Walk in Fremont.

REFUNDS

For those of you who purchased advance tickets, you will receive a full refund within 5-10 business days directly through Eventbrite ticketing by December 15th. Ticket refunds may be issued earlier, but we have notified Eventbrite as of today that we will not be moving forward with the event as scheduled and to issue the refunds to all current ticket holders.

Any further questions, lease send to brains (@) zombcon.com and you will receive a response within 48 hours.

Sincerely,

The ZomBcon Team

SUPPORT THE KICKSTARTER FUNDRAISER HERE

As a direct result of this unprecedented social explosion, the Zombie Apocalypse seems to be on everybody’s lips these days. Should we categorize it as fiction, dismiss it as far-fetched paranoia, or speculate about it as a plausible scenario..? We, at Exhibit A Pictures, believe there’s never been a better time to release an epic, comprehensive, and contemporary cinematic celebration of Zombie Culture. And a look at our previous films (trailers provided below) will tell you why we’re the right team to tackle this enormous task!

Brought to the screen by the creators of the groundbreaking participatory docTHE PEOPLE vs. GEORGE LUCAS, and co-hosted by Geekscape’s own Jonathan London and Red Letter Media’s infamous Mr. Plinkett, DOC OF THE DEAD will delve deep into the myriad crevasses of zombie culture to deliver the first-ever in-depth look at a contemporary social pandemic of global proportions. Shot and edited in a cinematically edgy, high-octane style, DOC OF THE DEAD will host a rich and entertaining dialogue with zombie experts and celebrities, seek participation from YouTubers and indie filmmakers, and examine viral cultural trends to explore the possibility and ramifications of an actual zombie outbreak with sociologists, virologists, chemists, and members of the Zombie Research Society.

Concurrent with the release of DOC OF THE DEAD the movie, DOC OF THE DEAD the online experience will present a comprehensive repository of zombie expression and fandom—the equivalent of a virtual museum, where zombie art, videos, no-budget films, extended interviews, rants and critical essays will be uploaded on a regular basis. Look at it as a collection of supplemental features, directly available from our website, leading up to the film’s release.

More than just a movie, DOC OF THE DEAD will be an epic narrative supplemented by an ever-expanding transmedia catalogue of hundreds of hours of special features, and the most ambitious celebration of this extraordinarily rich, singular, and important culture ever committed to film.

There has been plans to revisit the early years and sell a limited poster for the first yearIn an effort to celebrate the first two years of ZomBcon International. Then man behind the popular, one of our favorite artist, Stephen Romano who designed the Evil Dead screening poster and the iconic King Zomb poster in 2010 is back and bringing fans a limited-edition poster for fans.

Ryan Reiter, Founder & Artistic Director for ZomBcon recently spoke with Austin-based artist, Stephen Romano about plans to team up again and work on a commemorative 2010 poster for a limited-edition that would include Bruce Campbell, George A. Romero, Max Brooks, Ted Raimi and the Ladies of the Evil Dead.

“We always had plans to design a poster each year starting with the inaugural 2010 convention with our media guests, after seeing his work on the 2011 that he did, we realized it was a must-have for us and our beloved horde of fans” says Reiter.

In an effort to encourage advance ticket sales for the possible 2013 convention and survival expo, our hope is to provide a complimentary (1) 11×17 poster for the first 1,000 pass holders that purchase advance tickets of the new artwork for helping us reach our goals and reviving this great horror/pop culture con in 2013.

Interested in attending or supporting ZomBcon 2013? You can purchase advance tickets now online for just $25 for a three days Zombie (Single) pass or  Horde (2 People) Pass for only $49. Tickets are limited and will not be offered for this price again. Deadline to reach the first goal of 1,000 advance tickets is December 1st. The first 1,000 people will receive a free 11×17 2010 limited-edition poster for their support.

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE 

STEPHEN ROMANO is an acclaimed multi-media artist, whose unique jack-of-all-trades approach to the genres of horror, crime fiction, sci-fi and exploitation has produced innovative, award-winning work. He is an accomplished author, screenwriter and illustrator. His short stories, novels and comic books have garnered critical acclaim from some of the most respected authors and media sources in the world.

He is the author of RESURRECTION EXPRESS, a high octane thriller novel from Gallery Books at Simon and Schuster. He is also the co-author of BLACK LIGHT, a supernatural suspense novel from Mulholland Books at Little Brown and Company, on which he collaborated with top Hollywood screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan.

BLACK LIGHT is currently in pre-production as a feature film, under Oscar nominated producer Michael DeLuca, on which Stephen served as co-screenwriter. Stephen was also the writer of INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD for Showtime’s Emmy Award-winning MASTERS OF HORROR cable series in 2005, directed by the legendary Don Coscarelli of PHANTASM and BUBBA HO-TEP fame.

Romano’s well-documented passion for sleaze cinema and exploitation film culminated in the ground-breaking illustrated novel SHOCK FESTIVAL in 2008, and placed Romano highly in demand as an accomplished visual stylist in the mode of exploitation film art. Since the book’s release, Romano has designed film campaigns for theatrical releases, DVD covers and promotional artwork. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Photo Courtesy of Seattle Met Magazine

THEY’RE COMING. You can smell them from a mile away. An army of hunched figures stumbling over their own feet, with rotting, putrid flesh hanging off their dilapidated bones. They moan desperately for brains . . . more brains.

Call 2010 the Year of the Zombie. Since reclaiming the Guinness World Record for the largest zombie walk—4,233 people smeared in fake blood in Fremont over the Fourth of July weekend—Seattle’s love of the living dead has officially surpassed this once-a-year event. Time to introduce ZomBcon, the first-ever zombie-culture convention, taking place—when else?—over Halloween weekend. And who better to plan it than the guys behind the annual Red, White, and Dead Zombie Walk.

The convention “was about as close as you could get to a 360-degree movie or fan experience,” says artistic director and producer Ryan Reiter, who also organizes Fremont Outdoor Movies every summer. “People here love zombies so much. We wanted to find a way to celebrate that.”

But why? Why so many rabid fans of the undead? Filmmaker Kevin Hamedani—whose 2009 creature feature Zombies of Mass Destruction levels tiny waterfront town Port Gamble with a zombie virus—draws parallels between Seattle and England, the country that beat our previous record last year with 4,026 zombies at the Big Chill Festival. “They’re both gray and overcast,” says the UW grad, now living in Los Angeles. “Maybe there’s something to do with the gloom of the weather.”

Reiter agrees that our dreary climate is to blame: “In the wintertime, Seattle is the zombie capital because everyone is so damn pale.” Poor Mother Nature, always taking the blame for our eccentricities.

ZomBcon boasts an impressive lineup for its fledgling year, including special guests like director George A. Romero, maker of Night of the Living Dead and unofficial godfather of zombie movies; actor Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame; A Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell (also appropriately creepy); and World War Z author Max Brooks, whose “oral history of the zombie war” has been adapted for the big screen and is set to star Brad Pitt. Throw in a “Prom Night of the Dead” launch party at Neumos and honest-to-god lectures on “zombie neurobiology” by a Harvard PhD and UC Berkeley neuroscientist, and you’ve got one weekend to die for.

Even if ZomBcon is a hit, will our zombie obsession live forever? Vampires have ruled the entertainment world lately, but Reiter says brain-munching beasts have always held their own. Consider the success of films reinterpreting—or ripping on—Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (Shaun of the Dead, anyone?). Not even Jane Austen is sacred; Natalie Portman will star in the film version of the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, currently in preproduction. Looks like zombies refuse to be buried anytime soon.

ZomBcon International

It’s the world’s first fan convention devoted to the undead, and it started right here. Organized by Ryan Reiter (of the Fremont Outdoor Movies series), last Halloween’s inaugural ZomBcon drew undead royalty, including director George A. Romero (who started all the zombie fuss in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead) and cult hero Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead). Highlights for ZomBcon 2011 include cast members from AMC hit show The Walking Dead, Grindhouse star Rose McGowan, and original Night of the Living Dead star Judith O’Dea—whom you can torment by repeating, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” 10/21–10/23. SeaTac Hilton. zombcon.com

Undead Labs

Located in Pioneer Square and staffed by the brain trust that was previously behind such video-game hits as “Guild Wars” and “World of Warcraft,” Undead Labs will soon hatch a zombie apocalypse. Currently known only by code names “Class 3” and “Class 4,” UL’s two highly anticipated new games promise an open, evolving, realistic world of zombie mayhem and online play with other survivors. Microsoft will release the titles—and you will not have been the first to make a joke about the appropriateness of that. undeadlabs.com

Plants Vs. Zombies

If you have kids, you have Plants Vs. Zombies, the infectious video game from Seattle’s PopCap Games. Bring your own zombie to “life,” then battle through 50 different levels of undead adventures. Watch out for the zombie-zapping plants! Impress your friends: Build your own “Zombatar” and use it for your Facebook profile picture. $19.95; popcapgames.com

Red, White & Dead Zombie Walk

If anyone uninformed about this annual event ventured into Fremont on July 4, they might have required a change of pants at the sight of thousands of marauding zombies. Make that 4,522 people in zombie drag, thereby officially recapturing the world zombie-walk record (ripping the title from the clutches of Asbury, New Jersey). The walk is organized by ZomBcon’s Reiter, who explains, “Seattle has been at the forefront of coffee, software and grunge—and now as the zombie capital of the world.” July 4 weekend. Search “Red, White and Dead Zombie Walk” on Facebook.

Undead Radio

This podcast by KISW’s “BJ Shea Morning Experience” radio personalities The Rev, Mono Nick and Topshelf discusses all things zombie, and has been doing so for three years. (It just won’t die.) Monday mornings. Free on iTunes. KISW-FM 99.9. media.kisw.com/undead-radio.htm

Zombie Research Society

In short: These guys are way into it. One of 36 Zombie Research Society groups spread across six continents (motto: “What you don’t know can eat you”), the Seattle chapter is mainly a “survival-based group,” says chapter president John Farrell. At monthly meetings, a couple of dozen or so members plan communication strategies, shelter possibilities and the like, all in preparation for the apocalypse. The local group doesn’t necessarily believe in shambling zombie hordes, but rather that a virus or engineered pathogen (“more along the lines of 28 Days Later or Quarantine,” says Farrell) is possible. “We figure if you’re prepared for zombies, you’ll be ready for any epidemic, disaster or civil unrest,” he adds. If you want to live, visitzombieresearch.org.

Crypticon

Held on Memorial Day weekend (which actually is sort of appropriate), the Pacific Northwest’s largest horror festival features films and discussions on every aspect of horror and zombie culture, plus beloved zombie stars, such as Bill Mosley of House of 1,000 Corpses. May 25–27, 2012. crypticonseattle.com

Night Zero

This comic book—which, instead of drawings, uses highly processed photographs—about the aftermath of a deadly viral outbreak began in 2009 and is still shot on location in Seattle with local actors. Purchase the three trade paperback collections (Night Zero volumes one, two and three) or view current installments (free) online at nightzero.com.

Rotten

This acclaimed comic-book series is the brainchild of former Seattle Times reporter Mark Rahner (who—by creepy coincidence—wrote this story). Cowritten by Everett Herald critic Robert Horton, with art by Chicago illustrator Dan Dougherty, Rotten’s satire of current events offers a new wrinkle amid the glut of zombie miscellany. Set in 1877, it follows a Civil War veteran stop-lossed back into service to investigate reports of living dead manifesting in unpredictable new species. The first six issues are collected in Rotten Vol.1: Reactivated, and the newly released Rotten Vol. 2: Revival of the Fittest covers issues 7–12. rottencomics.com

Article Written by journalist, Mark Rahner

Why: John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink meets Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for the hottest Halloween Costume party in Seattle. Seattle’s premier cover band 80′s Invasion brings the irrisistible sounds of The Brat Pack back to Seattle followed by top DJ playing the latest in dance smash-ups to keep the living dead dancing all night long!

It was a zombie wedding, held at the first annual ZomBCon Saturday night at Seattle’s Experience Music Project. The “zombies” weren’t the actual living dead. But the ceremony was the real thing. Cult movie star and newly ordained minister Bruce Campbell officiated at what was called ‘Evil Dead’ wedding – named after the movie trilogy.

“You know that things will not always be easy in your relationship … you will occasionally find yourself stumbling on your path together unsure of what lies ahead,” Campbell told the couple, as he administered the vows.

“But there will always be one thing in your life that you can count on, one thing you will both seek out relentlessly, and one thing that will consume you both, and that one thing is – brrrains. … Ah, I’m sorry, I mean love.”

The zombie bride and groom called the experience a “dream come true.” They came up with the idea after discovering that both have an interest in zombies. After the wedding, Campbell presided over a renewal of vows for 40 other couples dressed up as zombies.

“It’s a pretty good deal for them. It’s so benign. It’s very safe. Everyone looks scary, but they’re not,” Campbell said.

]]> http://zombcon.com/2012/10/16/celebrate-your-inner-zombie/feed/ 0 evildeadwedding zombcon http://zombcon.com/2012/10/16/big-names-big-fun-all-weekend/ http://zombcon.com/2012/10/16/big-names-big-fun-all-weekend/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2012 05:25:32 +0000 zombcon http://zombcon.wordpress.com/?p=252 ]]> In the last three years, Seattle has risen to the be called the the “Zombie Capital of the World” with two Guinness World Record-breaking Zombie Walks and the largest Zombie culture convention known as ZomBcon International.

In our first year as a international convention, we hosted the biggest names in Hollywood and Zombie culture like Bruce Campbell, Max Brooks and the grandfather of the horde and culture, George  A. Romero

In 2011, ZomBcon played host to Master of Splatter, Tom Savini, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley with newcomers from popular tv shows like The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus and True Blood’s Sam Trammell,