Night Mind’s Candy Bowl 2025 (October 30, 2025)
“A short film festival composed entirely of viewer submitted material premiered on Night Mind for Halloween, celebrating the power of self-propelled creativity we love and support in the un-fiction field.”
THEME: HACK-N-SLASH
“This frequency is about much more than your slashers and bloody piles of body parts. You’re encouraged to hack, slash, and kitbash media styles, camera angles, approaches, and anything else that works to Frankenstein or collage your Candy Bowl submission this year. The creativity of presentation is one of the major lines of approach you can take. And if you’d like to go for theme and story instead, then do get your hacking, slashing, and Frankensteining on. Anything that fits this sense, that’s your theme.”
“You could tell us a story through camera footage, animated sequences, and a series of photos, for example. Or you could take a straightforward approach about a situation where a monster hacks up a bunch of people, body parts flying all over the place… Or you can take both approaches. Just remember, Candy Bowl is FUN, COOL, and SCARY!”
Guidelines:
One-time stories only.
This is a FRIENDLY competition.
Only FRESH ideas (ideas made for Candy Bowl).
Videos cannot exceed 10:31 minutes.
NO audio only entries.
ABSOLUTELY ZERO A.I.
“Be as gruesome or adult as you like within YOUTUBE GUIDELINES. Don’t get us hit with a strike just for Halloween fun, and stay very far away from copyrighted music.”
Must be 18+ years old to apply!
Deadline:
October 18th, 2025 — Deadline.
October 20th, 2025, 5:00pm EST — Grace Deadline.
“For submissions, use an unlisted upload to YouTube, or CORRECTLY shared Google Drive link. This means you make sure the Google Drive upload when shared is set to VIEWABLE FOR ANYONE WITH THE LINK.”
If email is preferred, send submissions to nmindexentry@gmail.com.
Start the subject with (CANDY BOWL 25) followed by the title of your short film.
Candy Bowl will premiere during Night Mind’s Devil’s Night stream on October 30th, 2025.
Public status on YouTube will be simultaneous with the stream watchalong.
Halloween Hangover (for runner-ups) will premiere November 1st, 2025.
