2012-Day 10- Scenes from the upgraded Mansion

Entrance hall. Notice the 'real' webs! Skeleton and stacked books prop with chandelier a little further back.

Chandelier view from the foyer

Ghouls, this was a huge upgrade from last year! We got rid of the cheesy scene-setter sheeting and replaced it with foam 'wooden' panels you can see on the right. Probably the biggest breakthrough this year was use of a web gun to create the webs. I'm telling you this stuff is amazing! Here is an instructional video from Haunted Props that explains how it works. These webs look and feel like the real thing. We installed the chandelier at the back of the hallway.

2012-Day 46

About 6 1/2 weeks to go. Time is flying! But again, thankfully we have most of the build done from last year. Today we worked on lightproofing the pepper's ghost area. Remember to use FLAT black sheeting, not the shiny stuff! As you may recall we are going to attempt a moving pepper's ghost illusion. We have the cart already built. It has about I would say 6 feet of travel. We have a small area behind the cart for someone to push it forward. See this post for a review. I think the most time consuming part of this was building a track for the cart. You can't just have it slide on concrete between 2 barriers. You actually have to build tracks for the wheels. Once we did that it rolled totally smoothly. You can use regular caster wheels that swivel. This is probably better than fixed wheels because they can still work well if the track is slightly misaligned. The next challenge of course is both timing and lighting. We also need to install sound. I hope to have some images next week of the finished product!

2012-Day 136- We're Baaaaaaack!

Welcome back all you goblins and ghoulies from Halloweens past! We are BACK again for Halloween 2012! Can't believe it! The Nightmare before Christmas 2011 came and went..and we definitely survived. So now a couple of things. You will notice the posts have the year first before the day countdown. I thought this would make more sense since it is the 3rd (or is it 4th?) year of the blog. The next very important thing is to look at the images I have for you today. Anything "spooky" you notice about them? Yes that's correct! We never took down the haunt from last year! WHAT! I made a very strong case to the mayor of Halloween town. (Guess who that might be!) My take on it was this: I went into the haunt after the cancellation from last year's freak snowstorm. I looked at all the magical stuff we put together: The haunted elevator with it's detailing and intricate pulley system, the crypt room with the crush wall and painstaking paneling details, the pepper's ghost mechanics including the track we finally got to work smoothly etc etc. Bottom line was this: there was no way this could be taken down and put up exactly the same way. Does anyone think that Da Vinci could repaint the Mona Lisa EXACTLY as it was..OK a little exaggeration, but you get my point. Since we were going to do the same build anyway, it would have been a disaster to have to take this stuff down. It would never have worked. So my case was considered and the Mayor consented. Thankfully the winter was very mild as we did not have a garage!

Back panel of the elevator to the right

Crush wall. I did take down the exit door from the crush room

Entrance hall

And now it's back to work. Just because there was no take down does not mean we're finished. Noooooooo! It means we need to go one step further.
1) Better video coverage. I do have a new camera so we should have time to do this better
2) Upgraded mansion entrance hall. We have extra foam etc we can use and will replace the chandelier with one 'more appropriate'. Better scares for that section
3) Finish the crush room detailing. The back wall was not really done
4) The one capital expense this year will be a web gun. The store bought webs just don't cut it
5) Added sound for the pepper's ghost
6) A nicely detailed haunt entrance doorway with great fx sound and light
7) PLENTY of time to test and retest the whole set. No excuses this time

Day 16- Fake walls

What seems like 100 years ago we laid out these plans which called for, of course, the elevator as the key event this year. If you look at those plans on this archived page (scroll down a bit) pay attention to the red bars in the diagram, or you can also find the plans in one of the posts to the right (under 'popular posts'). These are moving walls. In order to create a 'realistic' elevator sequence, you have to keep in mind that the guests are entering and leaving through the same doors! You have to figure out some way to alter the scenery when they get out onto the crypt level floor! This is why we created 2 fake walls as it were which are pictured here. When the guests come around the corner from the entrance hall to the elevator foyer (see plans above as needed) the first wall (shown here as a random stone wall) is retracted out of view into the peppers ghost hall area where the ghost actor is waiting to do the ghost routine. The second wall is visible in the foyer as just part of the normal foyer type scenery. This wall is positioned in front of the crypt door concealing it until the guests re-emerge onto the crypt level! I will paint it black and dress it up with many pictures to come! Now when the guests enter the elevator, my elevator operator actor who lets the guests in will slide the wall back exposing the crypt door and the ghost actor will slide the stone wall forward which then conceals the entrance hall! The fake walls are foam reinforced with 1x2 strips. These are extremely light weight and easily maneuvered using the same rolling suspension mechanism used on all the doors this year. Again, this rolling door concept was a major breakthrough and I was able to put up 6 of these with no problem this year!
I realize this is extreme, Ghouls, but hopefully you can see what we are trying to do. Ask any questions you wish!

Day 17- Moving peppers ghost illusion

Well I almost gave up on this but finally got it figured out! The concept is to place an actor on a moving cart and have someone behind the actor push the cart toward the glass which will appear to the viewer getting out of the elevator as a ghostly image approaching. Hopefully that makes sense. To review the peppers ghost effect in general you can read the posts on the right that pertain to it. Anyway I got the cheapest dolly I could find and constructed a lean-to extension as you can see. The problem is the wheels swivel and there is no way to get smooth motion of any kind on concrete, so I had to build wooden tracks that were just wide enough for the wheels to be contained where they would stay in 1 position. I tried various configurations of wood before arriving at the solution that worked. The bottom of each track is an 8' 2x4, sides of the track are 2x2's and the actual track itself is about a 1" x 1/2" which raises the wheels just high enough where the metal housing is not impinging the sides, only the wheels themselves are in the track, as shown. I tested the cart motion with my sons standing on there. They are adult size. The actor I intend to use will be smaller. It works great. So if you intend to do this, you can't just put the dolly on the floor and expect it to work. You must build individual tracks to fit just the wheels. The other key element of this is that you need to line the tracks up with the center of the glass so the projection is accurate. I placed a light on the center of the dolly and checked it from the center of the elevator opening to be certain that the image will be seen from that vantage point. Now going forward we have to build an enclosure around the tracks and cover the inside with black sheets. Basically a lot more to do but this was a big help getting this to work properly!

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.