POCATELLO — The curtain has closed on the inaugural Spark of Madness Film Festival, but plans are already underway for next year.

With a sense of relief mixed with unbridled enthusiasm, founder John Evans was already making plans for a second edition — even as the festival’s final hours played out Saturday at the Bengal Theater in Pocatello.

Taking refuge in a corner of the Bengal Theater lobby during the festival’s Saturday morning run, Evans said despite a few hiccups that community response was good.

“Everything, you know, went well,” Evans said. “Jon Heder came on Thursday, showed up. The community showed up on Thursday. Like at 10:30 in the morning on a Saturday, there’s like a hundred people in the Bengal (Theater) right now. So it’s going really well.”

Evans estimated total attendance for the three-day festival at around 300 and said he was already thinking about how to build on the momentum.

“I’m a little worried about how we’re going to top it next year,” he said. “How can we get another Jon Heder type situation going. I do think we’re going to be able to even increase the quality of the films next year. We had great films this year, and we’ll get even more submissions. So, yeah, things went well, and I think we’ll improve next year.”

Three films took home cash prizes of $1,000 each: “The Deliveryboy” won Best Short, “The Grim and the Dark” took Best Documentary Feature and “The Rabbit” earned Best Rocky Mountain Cinematography.

Evans said he plans to conduct an audience survey on the festival experience at both the Bengal Theater and the Pond Student Union Ballroom. He believes keeping the event centrally located enhances the audience experience but wants to expand with pop-up screenings throughout Pocatello, specifically at Historic Downtown venues, to broaden the festival’s reach.

“I’m not sure how else we’ll do it, but I want everybody in Pocatello to know that there’s a film festival,” Evans said.

Evans attributed the festival’s success to a core group he called the “Fab Five.” Web designer and volunteer coordinator Kyle Peterson’s input was critical, Evans said. Consulting programmer Ron Torres served as “Mr. Connections,” proving invaluable in reaching out to filmmakers. Evans’ wife, Erica, his sister, Julia Evans, and her boyfriend, Rowan, handled logistics.

“Family is super important,” Evans said. “I couldn’t have done it without my family.”

One change Evans wants to make is scheduling next year’s festival while Idaho State University is in session, hoping to draw more student attendance.

“So next year it’ll be during the school year,” Evans said. “So more students will come. So it’s going to be, I hope — I’m going to check with scheduling and see when April break is — but sometime in April would be good.”

Torres, who grew up in Pocatello and graduated from Highland High School in 1998, described the culmination of putting together the festival as “the dream for Pocatello that I didn’t know I had.”

He believes Pocatello is on the cusp of becoming a hub for creative enterprises and sees the festival as a turning point.

“I viewed this film festival as kind of like, I think we’ll see down the road, but a pivotal moment of awareness of something’s happening,” Torres said. “I would say Shady Grove Music Camp would be the other version of that, where something’s happening in the culture here, where we’re finally kind of embracing the creative community in a way that we really never have before.”

Torres described his role as connecting the festival to filmmakers he had met through years in the independent film community, whether by recruiting films he had seen at other festivals or through partnerships and collaborations.

“Pocatello kind of has to learn what a film festival is, and the way we lay this out is almost like a classroom — it is teaching Pocatello the film festival flow,” he said.

Among the lessons Torres took from the first year is the need for more grassroots promotion and marketing.

“You need to do pop-up cinema screenings at a place like Barricade on a Tuesday night and watch old horror films and see who shows up. You need to do a podcast around the filmmakers, both before and after. You need to build this whole tree, this whole ecosystem that exists both online and kind of in the grounds and the roots of Pocatello,” Torres said.

Torres envisions the festival maintaining a year-round presence in the community and cited Boise’s Treefort Music Festival as a model — a small local event that grew into a nationally recognized five-day festival over 15 years.

“I was there for Treefort One, and it was very similar to this,” Torres said of this year’s inaugural crowd.

“They’re going to find brand loyalty to us and advocate for us — the megaphone we need at a grassroots level,” he said.

While helping launch the festival, Torres also filmed a local documentary short, “The Cello Collective,” which debuted at the event. The film profiles Sophia Marshall, her musical philosophy and her efforts to promote the cello and live musical performance in Southeast Idaho through a local group of cellists.

For more information, visit sparkofmadnessfilmfestival.com.