The Season Pass Podcast looks into the Scare LA Halloween convention, August 9-10, 2014, in Downtown Los Angeles. Doug Barnes and Robert Coker had the chance to sit down with the creative team behind Scare LA, David Markland, Lora Ivanova, Rick West, and Johanna Atilano, who shared the inspiration behind the event, and what makes it quintessentially LA.
Co-founder, Lora Ivanova, on the motivation: “The vision was to celebrate what is here, uniquely West Coast about Halloween, and how we celebrate that season; [and] also to showcase all of the unique characters and talent that we have. This is the entertainment capital of the world, and it seemed like there is just not enough of a stage, especially when it comes to…scary-cons, if you will. You know, the East Coast and Mid West, they really take the big piece of the pie, so our voice gets lost in the shuffle oftentimes. Going to any of those conventions, you rarely see people making a trip out from the West Coast, so I thought it was really important to share their story and to, really, get together, exchange ideas, get inspired by each other, and also share with the fans at large. Ultimately, a lot of the…creative professionals and haunters that I’ve been most inspired by started as children or young adults. Offering a forum where more young people can learn about how amazing and creative this field is, and get inspired and become the future of the haunt industry, was very interesting to me, and was something that I got very excited about.”
Co-founder, David Markland, on the serendipitous timing of the ScareLA convention, and the resurgence of Halloween culture in Southern California: “I selfishly…seriously…I wasn’t thinking about timing, you know…I kind of…when I go into making an event, I kind of look at it as, ‘What’s an event that I’d want to go to,’ and ScareLA…I want to make just that. I want to make the Halloween event that I would want to go to and I’d really enjoy, which would just be, I don’t know how you’d put it, a cornucopia of madness, you know, with the haunters, the pumpkin carvers, just everything that’s great about Halloween. Let’s just throw it all together and sort of see what happens, let’s make it fun. In terms of the timing, I don’t know, I think it was there, but, I don’t think we ever thought that for a second. We just, you know, talking to people, we heard people were really excited about it when we started telling them our idea for what we wanted to do, so I think that only let us know how big to go. But, I think, even if we were only a couple of Halloween fans in LA, we still would do something, it would just be smaller. But [there] turned out to be a lot of enthusiasm for it, so we ended up drawing about 4,000 people in our first year…we’ve barely scratched the surface, we can get a lot bigger if we need to.”
To hear the interview in its entirety click on the window below. If you plan to attend Scare LA on August 9-10, 2014, be sure to go to www.scarela.com to buy your tickets, and use SCARESEASONPASS as your discount code to receive 20% off your purchase (does not include VIP packages). Also, Season Pass Podcast and Micechat Podcast Co-Host, Doug Barnes, will be on the Garner Holt: I Was A Teenage Haunter panel on August 10.
Who’s ready for a little bit of Halloween this weekend?!