Day 64- Map room comes alive with video projection!

That's correct. Video projection adds a whole new dimension to the haunt! Infinite possibilities exist. I did mention we were going to try this out this year and see how it works. What you will need is a projector obviously and in this case I obtained a ready made 'snakes and spiders' dvd. If you are new to this like I am, I strongly recommend that you google 'Jon Hyers' or go to his website outrageous-media.com. The set-up is shown here. I have a dvd player connected to the projector. The projection is a 'live' moving snake on the floor of the crypt which will be visible as soon as the door opens. Now as soon as the guests enter the room, the projection has to be shut off and the room light and other effects will begin. For those interested in trying this, you can angle the projector any direction. I have constructed a 'cage' which will hold the projector at the desired angle.Be careful as these projectors appear to get pretty hot! I plan to line the cage with foil and I will need to test this further and make sure no problems arise after 2-3 hours. I will need an operator to manage the dvd player. The problem comes up here regarding shutting the projection off at the appropriate time. When people start entering the map room they will quickly break into the light cone from the projector and ruin the effect obviously. I have found out that projectors cannot fade out and in without shutting the whole thing off.  There are fairly elaborate electronic mixing boards out there but I don't believe I can budget for that right now so my plan is to build a simple wooden shutter which can be controlled by the operator.

Day 65- Elevator panel complete!

Is this haunted elevator actually moving? Or is it your imagination? Hmmmmm.
As you can see we finished the foam portion of the panel complete with the brick and cracked rock. It's actually a simple technique. I took a sheet of foam board and mounted it onto the panel frame with screws and glue. Foam board insulation sheets you can get from home depot or building supply. You take a small dremel tool drill bit and load it onto your drill and then cut out the grout lines. I then sprayed with a grey flat paint. Now I understand the grout lines are not straight! Don't kill me for that Ghouls.I think it does actually look a bit ghoulish myself! I added some additional cracks to enhance the effect. It is very creepy with appropriate lighting! For this application I think it is fine because remember this panel will be moving the split second after the light shines on it. No one will have enough time to tell. They will be overwhelmed by the motion effect!  The floors will appear to the guests as top floor brick, then rock, then crypt at the bottom! I agree that if you are going to have a full set on display for a long period of time with this fake foam board brick, you need to make your lines straighter.

Day 66- Relativity and the Haunted Elevator demystified

Hopefully these 2 videos will clarify some of the questions I'm getting about what we're trying to do. In the first one I am explaining the set-up.
Bottom line is, the back panel, which will be visible through a window at the back of the elevator, is moving up which will give you the sensation of moving down!

Day 72- Elevator panel tower installed!

OK Ghouls, we're on to the elevator again finally! To review the concept, let's go back to that particular post. You can find it here. Now I agree, there is a huge amount of infrastructure we're building this year for the haunt in general. I'm getting a little anxious about it with the time factor and all, but I think we'll be OK. This particular design I am very happy with as I simplified it A LOT. If you look at the version I referenced in the earlier post you can see that having individual panels come out of the ground on some sort of rotating spool mechanism was logistically too complex and yet another motor to drive it was not in the budget. The sliding mechanism has to be super smooth and problem free. One day a couple of months back I was thinking about this and wondering what examples I could find of moving panels. It suddenly hit me in the face literally as I was looking right at one...the garage door! At first I was thinking about curving the tracks underneath our current garage door to make additional room but the curved garage door track is way too expensive. The straight track is cheap. The hinges and wheels you can buy in bulk. This was a good compromise. We have unfinished 10 foot ceilings in the garage so I was able to build a straight tower with 2 8' 2x4's and a pair of 76" tracks. The tower sits just in front of the open garage door so it doesn't affect it. I had to calculate where the wheels had to go on the panel frame so I could get the maximum height of elevation. Now it's true that with a straight panel construct you don't have as many panels as you would if you did have some come up from underneath a floor or something and then curve away, but if we raise the window at the back of the elevator a bit and have the 'elevator operator' raise the panels slowly, you will still get the motion effect I believe. The panel frame is 71" high. I put one crypt panel at the bottom as you can see, since this is the floor that the guests will go down to! I will use foam for the upper floors and carve bricks out! Now in the images you can see the panel is at the back of the elevator and a window will be created ('X' in the image) which will show only a small portion of the top of the panels. We will have someone behind the panels pulling them up which will in turn provide the sensation of a descent! Now this 'panel tower' is wicked smooth with the tracks and 2" wheels. I used some motor grease in there to lube things up. Works like a charm. Should have some video soon! Stay tuned!

Day 74- Haunted doors 101

Just a little more on this whole doors thing, only because it is THE critical feature in the basic design of the haunt. Doors will regulate your traffic. If you have no doors, no one will be stopping to look at anything. They just blow right past your elaborate props and sets that you spent a thousand hours creating! REGULATE your traffic, Ghouls, and direct your guests to stop and enjoy your handiwork! So as I mentioned several times already, I got this idea of suspended rolling doors from James Beach's 'Garage of Terror' website. This is the first year trying it and I must say it blows away the doors-on-wheels-in-a-track design. It is much smoother and virtually impossible to malfunction. No derailing which is what happened last year! These can be easily pulley operated at a distance! So the 'map room' entry door and the elevator doors I plan to operate from the control area. You can see in this video the door opening and closing. This is from inside the map room. The basic diagram of the set-up is shown. The hardboard is pretty light weight and flexible. I found by adding a 2x4 at the bottom and a 2x2 at the top, the board was adequately weighted down so it does not sway when it rolls and the added 2x2 at the top flattens the board so it isn't bowing.

Day 80- Map room entry door

Finally the first door is hung- literally! As I mentioned in a previous post, the door mechanics in previous haunts was floor based, basically a sliding mechanism with wheels in a track. This was cumbersome and frequently the doors would derail. It was difficult to balance properly. Door failure is possibly the worst problem because traffic flow is completely disrupted and people aren't forced to stop and experience timed effects that you spend a lot of time developing. I believe this year, having the doors suspended on 2x4 I beams will be the solution and I don't think we will have a failure again! The map room (crypt) entry door is shown suspended using the same brackets and caster wheels we used for the crush wall (see July 6 post- day 117) except obviously the doors are traveling parallel to the I beams as opposed to perpendicular. This makes it much easier to build although you have to first build a frame for the I beam track and it's a lot more construction than a simple wheel based sliding door but I believe this is the way to go if you want doors in your haunt! Now there is some sway at the bottom as the door is a couple inches off the floor, but we added a 2x4 at the bottom and a 2x2 at the top to flatten the hardboard door material (you can get 4' x 8' hardboard for around $7). This greatly minimizes the swaying at the bottom.The tricky thing here was placing the I beam track between the door frame and the crush wall so the wall could slide past the door easily. Looks like both the door and the crush wall will be fine with no impingement either way so far.

Day 87- Completion of crush wall!

I think it's definitely ready for primetime, ghouls! We finished the 'stone work' around the vacuform panels. Not that easy as we had to cut the foam pieces to fill the spaces around the panels. We used glue and also screws from the back of the frame. The foam is quite dense but very light weight. Once the wall details were complete, we tested the mechanism and everything works fine. There is very little additional weight there. In the second image it looks like the crush wall barely gets past the back wall but there is actually plenty of space there. The first image shows the wall from the side after moving it forward with the pulley mechanism about 1-2 feet. It's very smooth motion now.

Day 88- Devil in the Details

..And that's exactly it. This year, fewer events, WAY more details. Here we are seeing the Map Room or crypt room take shape with added wall detail for the crush wall and back wall. We apply some black sheeting to the wooden wall frame basically to minimize the light leaks. Behind this room is the control room. We will have 3 monitors this year! That means lots of light unfortunately that has to be addressed. We can screw the vacuform panels to the wall frame and we also have our 'stone' slabs which basically consist of foam from an old hot tub cover. A little black spray paint and away you go! With the appropriate lighting it really does look like stone! They are trickier to attach to the frame though. I used a strong epoxy as well as screws placed through the back of the frame into the foam.