2025 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival - Film Media Form for Portland

Congratulations on your selection! This is the deliverables form for screenings taking place at the historic Hollywood Theatre September 19-21st, AND streaming on Eventive the weekend of December 5-9th

This form is to streamline film traffic and make sure we have all the pertinent information for your film listing, including download links. Please help us by completing this form as soon as possible, ideally within 24 hours, with your film assets coming no later than the end of day Sunday, September 7, 2025 (We have a lot of films to process to get everything ready for testings, but we can work with you on this if the deadline will be challenging for you, so let us know in the form if you can't make that date with the formats requested).

Please read this all carefully. The form is simple, but there is a lot of information to help you accurately provide the info and files we need. We want to showcase your film in the best way possible, and getting the right kind of file is key to doing that! If you get lost, or you have questions, we're here to help, and we can do a lot to help, so please reach out.

After you hit the "submit" button, please wait for the page to refresh. You will be be redirected to a page where you can download your Official Selection laurels (if you haven't already gotten them).

While we can get much of this information in one way or another, this helps us put it all in one place, and gives you the opportunity to give us the fully-vetted and proofed information, exactly as you'd like to see it on our Web site and program.
Upload up to 3 full size frame grabs from your film, with no overlaid text or logos (this should not be your poster, it should be action shots from your film). Exciting moments that feature foreground closeups of a character (or monster) work the best at large and small thumbnail sizes. We find that we must brighten and increase contrast for most film screen grabs, for them to look right, so you should send us striking “Instagram-worthy” images that are already bright, contrasty, and great looking at a variety of sizes.

Be sure to click to the "upload" button before submitting the form.

If the uploader is giving you trouble, try uploading just one image (you can email others to us at the submissions@hplff.com email)


Files must be less than 5 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg png.

Files must be less than 5 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg png.
Files must be less than 5 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg png.
Link to a trailer on YouTube or Vimeo, if you have one
Enter a round number of minutes (so, 5:05 and 4:25 would both be just 5).
The year your film was completed.
Country where the film was made or produced. Please designate only one country.
What is the main language that is spoken in your film?
(LIMIT 300 CHARACTERS). Keep it a short teaser, avoid spoiling your film for our audience. IMPORTANT: If you paste a longer synopsis, it will be cut off in our system. Check your character count before submitting.
Please provide a 2 line synopsis for our program. This should be no more than 65 characters.

Please confirm that your film is not available publicly for free on streaming sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Tubi, Vudu, (etc) or on commercial home media or VOD (such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc.). You understand if your film IS available in these ways, your film selection status may be changed. While some exceptions may be made, with so many excellent films that do not have the exposure they need, and not enough screening time to show all of them, we prefer to fill our limited theater time with films that our audience can't see at home, so that we can do the most good for the most independent filmmakers who have yet to secure distribution.

Is your film playing for the first time in any of these regions on our festival dates of September 19-21, 2025?

Normally, people travel from all over the world to take part in the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Unlike other Horror Festivals in the US, we have an international following of Lovecraft and Cosmic Horror fans, and we are the only festival that streams this specific genre to these particular kinds of fans worldwide. Our streaming edition is a highly anticipated event, not just for US fans, but those in countries as far away as Japan, Australia, and Sweden.

This year we are offering a curated streaming event December 5-7th, with access through December 10th. Streaming will take place on the secure Eventive platform that supports full studio-grade DRM (Fairplay, Widevine, forensic watermarking, etc.) for the safety of your film, and only ticketed audience members of our festival - all enthusiastic Lovecraft and Weird horror fans - will have access during these dates.

As with many film festivals, streaming lets us provide the festival experience to people with mobility and other health issues who can’t attend theatrical screenings, and brings your film to a wider audience who wouldn’t otherwise see it. Since only attending filmmakers can take part in Q&As at the in-person event, the streaming event allows us to host livestreamed Q&As with all filmmakers (whether attending in-person or not), to give you the opportunity to talk about your film and take questions from our audience.

Please note that while we can technically "Geo-Fence" full short film blocks and feature films, we cannot effectively restrict regions on individual short films inside of blocks. For most shorts, if geo-blocking is absolutely required, we wouldn’t be able to include your short in our streaming program.

23.98/24fps is the international exhibition film standard.

Files for Theater Screenings

At the Hollywood Theatre, we exhibit from DCP. If you do not have a DCP, we will make one for exhibition from your ProRes file, and can supply it to you on request after the festival for any future screenings you might have.

A DCP that you provide must not be locked or require a KDM.

For the best projection experience we recommend 2k or 4k DCP with 6 channel (5.1) audio. This is a big theater and stereo DCPs with only L and R audio will not sound as good without the center channel.

Mbps
Please enter an accurate number as Mbps (1000kbps = 1 Mbps). To check your file, open in Quicktime or VLC and use Cmd-I or Ctrl-I to check bitrate. Also, in Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, and look on the Details tab under Video. Bitrate is an important indicator of quality for exhibition on a big screen. We need a film file with a bitrate of 20Mbps or more for successful projection.
Files for Streaming
The Eventive platform requires H.264 mp4 or MOV at 1080p, with a bitrate of 10 - 20 Mbps, STEREO ONLY.

Bitrate is an important indicator of video quality and needs to be high enough for quality streaming, so before you choose "yes", please ensure that it is between 10-20 Mbps. To check your file, open in Quicktime or VLC and use Cmd-I or Ctrl-I to check bitrate. Also, in Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, and look on the Details tab under Video.

Mbps
Please enter an accurate number as Mbps (1000kbps = 1 Mbps). For quality streaming, your video file should be at least 10 Mbps. Less than that will look fuzzy or blocky. To check your file, open in Quicktime or VLC and use Cmd-I or Ctrl-I to check bitrate. Also, in Windows, right-click the file, choose Properties, and look on the Details tab under Video.
Download Links

Please use Google Drive or massive.io, if at all possible. Google storage is inexpensive and both upload and download speeds are significantly faster than services like Dropbox or WeTransfer. Massive.io is a paid service but it does not throttle uploads or downloads at all and is significantly faster for you and for us. Mega.io and Vimeo downloads are NOT accepted, Vimeo compresses your film too much and it will look bad on our big screen.

If using Google Drive (recommended) or Dropbox, set your sharing options to "link" sharing that allows anyone with the link to download the file (in advanced sharing options), and paste that link below.

You can absolutely trust the security of this form, which is only seen by the directors of the festival. We use a number of different email accounts for different services to download your files to our system, so making files downloadable only by one Google or Dropbox login will typically not work, and just waste time.

If using WeTransfer or similar service, use the "get transfer link" option and paste that here.

Most file transfer services allow you to get a shareable link; that's what we need here. You can usually find this option by poking around their interface, or googling it.

If you can supply download links below for your film files now, that greatly simplifies our film traffic management and is highly recommended.

If you don't have download links ready, choose the "I'll email them later" option below and complete the rest of the form now. Email the download links to submissions@hplff.com, no later than Sunday, September 7th.

If you're not able to send your files by that date, please let us know when you think they might be available in the Comments box, so we can make arrangements with you.

Links
Paste the download link here (NO VIMEO DOWNLOADS, please read above recommendations):
Download links should remain active through October 6, 2024. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes technology fails and we need to download your file again at the last minute, without notice. If this is not possible, please note the link's expiration date:
Paste the download link here (NO VIMEO DOWNLOADS, please read above recommendations):
If this link expires, please note the expiration date here:

If you are interested in attending our theater screenings in Portland OR, we would love to have you take part in a short group Q&A session after the block your film appears in. If you can come you will receive a Filmmaker pass for each day that you'll be there so that you can watch films, experience the festival, and take part in your Q&A.

If you'd like to attend in person, please make your travel plans and let us know below, so that we can schedule your film and Q&A appropriately. We won't know yet when your film will be scheduled until we hear back from all attending filmmakers, and this takes some time, but if we know when you're coming, we do our best to ensure you can take part in a Q&A after your film block.

We are not able to do remote Zoom/Skype Q&As at the theater event.

Lodging: There is information about Travel & Venues after you submit this form. Please note that we are not able to assist with travel & lodging expenses, but we do provide up to two complimentary filmmaker passes.

Choose all that apply and we'll follow up with an RSVP form later

Each year, we curate a Blu ray collection of the best short films of the festival. (This is a limited edition release of 1000 copies only and filmmakers on the collection are paid a royalty.) We understand that sometimes short films are not able to participate in this due to music rights, SAG agreements, or other commitments. When the time comes, if we were interested in selecting your short film (this usually happens in Spring or Summer of the following year) for the collection, would you be able to participate?

Questions or comments about the festival, Q&As, or other information we need in order to download your file or exhibit your film (like file availability dates or a format that wasn't listed)? Let us know here: