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Haunts: 2003 Planning and Set-up: What Planning? Apathy Over the summer, I was determined to get started working on new decorations. So determined, in fact, that I can't recall doing anything towards that end. At the beginning of summer, I actually remember being quite enthusiastic about the project. I began thinking of new ideas and coming up with things to build, but it never went beyond the brainstorming process. The truth is that, after a while, I began to believe what everyone had been telling me and accept the fact that I may not be able to pull off a haunt from college. By the time September rolled around, my expectations for Halloween had plummeted. I remember talking to my mom and telling her that I still really wanted to do a haunt, but I just didn't think it was possible. Nobody else seemed the least bit interested, and I knew I couldn't do it alone. Shortly after that, I basically dropped the idea all together. Inspiration Since I had essentially given up on the idea, the actual planning for Halloween 2003 really didn't start until a couple weeks before. There was nothing happening on campus for Halloween this year, so I figured I'd be going home anyway, and I began thinking of how I could spend the evening if not making a haunt. "I'll probably end up," I concluded, "just handing out candy at our door." It seemed a bit anticlimatic, but at least it was realistic. "I should at least put out my tombstones, anyway," I reasoned. And that was the thought that triggered what was to become my Halloween 2003 patio haunt. "If I can put up the tombstones, what's stopping me from setting up a couple slide projectors? Heck, I might as well hang a ghost in the window while I'm at it. In fact, I'll bet I've got enough right now to decorate the whole patio." As soon as I was able to abandon my notion of a full garage walkthrough and focus on something more managable, things began to come together. The Concept At that point, I was able to come home for one weekend prior to Halloween to set up. After that, if I left the dorms on Thursday night before Halloween, I would have just Friday to set up the remainder of the decorations. I needed to plan to use effects that required minimal set-up or attention. During the weekend prior to Halloween, I came home to work on decorations. My hope was to have most things tested and ready before Halloween. That, of course, did not happen. I was so determined to have a working fanimatronic in this year's haunt, that I spent nearly an entire day fixing, modifying, and testing a small fan I had. Fortunately, I was able to achieve a satisfactory result, but I had little time to commit to anything else. What time wasn't spent fixing my fan was spent brainstorming ideas for other effects that might work in our patio setting. I came up with an interesting concept of projecting an image of a person onto a similar sized form. That worked well in tests, but I wasn't able to implement it. I also entertained the idea of setting up a Pepper's Ghost effect using a mannequinne as the ghost, but that idea also turned out to be too complicated to pull off in the time I had. By the end of the weekend, I had decided that I would set up my projected light ghosts over the cemetery. A billowing ghost would be in the upstairs window. Black threads would hang down from our overhead netting to feign the sensation of walking through cobwebs. The fanimatronic ghoul would stand by the gate. And a hangman over the porch was a possibility. I had almost nothing actually set up, though. At this point, I still didn't know how I would decorate most of the inside patio or the living room, which was visible through the window. My billowing ghost was set up, but not tested. And I was still uncertain about how I would make my fanimatronic ghoul's body. It was clear that I would have a lot of work to do on Halloween.
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All original content copyright 2004 Raymond Fero |
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