I have finally had a chance to post two of my videos from the Transworld Haunt and Attractions show in Las Vegas last month. Here are two of my favorite props from the show. The first is the Skulltronix Talking Skull and Skeletron, which is a full size animated skeleton body on which to mount the talking skull.
The second prop is from ScareFactory, and is a zombie mounted on a walker that shakes around and basically just looks creepy. It’s really a shocking prop despite its simplicity. I’m strongly considering building something similar for this year’s haunt. Anyway, enjoy the clips!
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Last month, I attended the Transworld Haunt and Attractions show in Lass Vegas. Transworld is arguably the biggest show for the haunt industry, as well as the costume and party industry. I took some pictures and did some guest blogging for The Haunted Report ( http://www.hauntedreport.com ) upon my return since they were not able to make it out to the show. My posts so far are located here:
Check out my posts over there, and be sure to check out The Haunted Report for your online Halloween and horror fix! Hopefully this relationship will progress, and I’ll be able to be a guest blogger for them more frequently. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted as this relationship progresses!
Anyway, to get to the point… On Saturday my FC-4 package arrived. As always, shipping by EFX-TEK was amazingly fast. Although I didn’t have time to play with my FC-4 boards on Saturday, I did break one out and set it up yesterday to control my Christmas lights. I am happy to report that set up and programming is simple beyond words. (For those of you unfamiliar, the FC-4 is a control board that allows you to control incandescent light levels through a Prop-1, 2, SX, or PC using Vixen).
I probably went a bit unconventional, and used indoor two-prong extension cords from Target to connect to the AC terminals. It seems to work fine, plus now I can easily attach three lighting instruments per channel (up to the wattage limit, of course).
Once I had my FC-4, Prop-1, and requisite cabling secured to a scrap piece of 1″x4″ lumber, I was good to go. I downloaded the FC-4 test code from EFX-TEK and uploaded it to the Prop-1. Things worked perfectly, so I got to work programming my sequence.
Fortunately the FC-4 test code comes with a bunch of subroutines. All you need to do is copy and paste them from the program section to the subroutine section, add a “RETURN” to the end of them, and call them up as necessary. I tweaked some of them to suit my needs, just changing the timing and such.
Anyway, if you haven’t yet gotten into prop control using Jon and John’s products, you are missing out on a lot. I know the whole “programming” thing is intimidating, but it really couldn’t be easier. And for those of you who are already EFX-TEK fans, take advantage of the FC-4 holiday sale. You’ll absolutely love it.
I should also mention that Jon wrote me a program (actually three) last night for a random flicker. I’m hoping to simulate the Indiana Jones Adventure flickering light effect in the queue for next Halloween’s project. I’ll try out the programs tonight. Being able to fade incandescent bulbs is HUGE.
I suppose that since Rob Zombie’s new version of Halloween comes out August 31st, it still counts as a summer movie. Whatever you want to call it though, it comes out at exactly the right time for me. Right as the general public starts getting excited about Halloween, the retail stores start putting out their Halloween items, and tickets to the major Halloween events start going on sale, we’ll be treated to Mr. Zombie’s latest, and hopefully creepiest and best creation yet.
John Carpenter’s Halloween series of films, especially the first one, is a staple of the horror genre. The original Halloween the movie came out in 1978, right at the peak, in my opinion, of the horror genre. Great films like the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and the original The Hills Have Eyes (1978) were Halloween’s counterparts in this defining era for horror films. These films all paved the way for their slightly higher budget 1980’s successors like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare of Elm Street and Hellraiser.
To me, you just can’t beat the creepyness of 1970’s horror, though. The sketchy film quality with its overlying yellow dinginess mixed with low budget acting and special effects just makes for such a terrifying movie watching experience that it’s unbeatable. And even though movie making has changed significantly since then, I have faith in Rob Zombie’s ability to harness the original creep factor for the new milennium in his new version of Halloween the movie.
If you haven’t yet seen it, check out the trailer and see for yourself. I for one will be there opening day.
I’m going a little off topic here, but this is something that has been on my mind a lot lately and I thought it would be worth blogging about. It’s about finding your passion and making a living at it.
As many of you know, my full time job is as a web designer and tech support guy. It’s an interesting job, and I don’t hate getting out of bed in the morning to go to work. I have been around computers since I was five, and I’m completely comfortable working with them. I am also patient to a fault, and have no problem spending insane amounts of time explaining to people exactly what I’m doing or how to do what they need to do with their computers. So it’s a good match for me as a career choice. But it is not my passion.
I have a few things that I am passionate about. The most important is my marriage. I am passionate about making my marriage a happy one, and making it work for the long term. It’s my main priority on life. Obviously that’s not an option as a career, so let’s move on to the next one.
My second passion is Halloween. I love visiting and creating haunted houses (both man made and naturally occuring…if that makes any sense). I love the technology that goes into all the stuff back stage. I love the creepy environments that can be created with just some fog, lighting, props, and a few good actors. I love imagining the next great prop, and spending time figuring out how to accomplish the effect that I desire. Most importantly, I love the guests’ reactions - the screams, gasps, and laughs that a good haunt elicits are a wonderful reward for the hard work that goes into the production. If I had the means, that would be my full time job.
Another passion of mine is disseminating important information. I have a passionate distaste for the way that the mainstream media chooses to hide and skew information that people need to understand their world. I feel that if I can get even a fraction of that information out to a fraction of the population, I will have accomplished something, and made the world at least a slightly better place. Currently I accomplish this with this blog, but would love to have the resources to truly disseminate information on a larger scale.
My last passion, and probably the key to solving this riddle, is real estate. I love the thrill of finding a deal. I like to think I’m pretty good at dealing with people. And I love the opportunity for lifelong passive income that real estate investing can provide. It’s just a matter of breaking into the field and making it work for me on my terms.
It sounds to me like I have this puzzle figured out, but need to put the wheels in motion. I need to get off the couch and just do it. But think about it yourself. What’s your passion, and how can you make it your life?
In an effort to help out the beginning haunter, and to share some of my online haunts (haha, get it….”haunts”…yeah, not that funny. OK) with my readers, I will periodically post different online resources that I use on a regular basis.
The first in the series is The Haunted Report, one of the few haunt industry blogs out there. The Haunted Report is located at www.hauntedreport.com. It is updated regularly with great information for haunt fans and haunters alike. I have its RSS feed in my Yahoo! start page, and recommend that you do the same.
Well, procrastination didn’t do me any favors this time unfortunately. Turns out I only have 7% of the vote so far. That represents one of thirteen total votes. Thankfully, it wasn’t me who voted for myself, although I’m not sure who did. Admittedly, with more time I would have done a much better job on my prop. He definitely needs a makeover before Halloween. It was a learning experience though, and got me in the mood for prop building and Halloween decorating quite nicely.
I can’t imagine that I’ll reap any more votes by the deadline (or that anyone else will for that matter), but I had a great time, and am glad to have a new prop this early in the year.
Well, as of Thursday night at midnight, the $20 Prop contest is officially over. I have submitted my entry, and am now waiting for the results. I must congratulate my other worthy opponents, as everyone did a great job.
My final price came out to $16.61, broken down as such:
Fake fur (1 yard)…………………………………….$1.50 (on sale from Joann Fabric
9 gauge multi use wire (12.5 feet)…………………$2 (1/4 of a 50 foot roll for $8 from Lowe’s)
Newspaper (1/4 of the Sunday LA Times)…………$.25
Pool noodles (2)……………………………………….$2.58 (Big!Lots)
PVC (10′) and elbows…………………………………$6 (Lowe’s)
Wallpaper paste (1/4 box)…………………………..$.80 (Lowe’s)
Hot glue (5 sticks)…………………………………….$.50
Blow mold skull……………………………………….$.99 (Big!Lots)
Blow mold hands and feet…………………………..$.99 (Big!Lots)
Bouncy ball eyeballs………………………………….$.50 (Target)
Brown and black tempra paint……………………….$.50 (Teacher supply store)
The first entry in the contest was from ghostie, and was a crypt door. It’s built out of foam, which is very cool since I’m trying to figure out foam fabrication currently:
The second entry was from Naturepixie, and was a creepy tree stump, or “Pillar of Souls” as concenses determined it to be. An amazing amount of detail went into this, just take a look at the tears on one of the faces:
And now, to reveal my own submission, the flying monkey. I feel ok about it, although I am bummed that the shoulders turned out extremely boxy. I’ll probably take him apart and rework that shoulders before Halloween:
And that’s it. You will notice that the cat is not at all scared of this thing…maybe some creepy lighting would help.
So I finally took the initiative and started working on the head for my $20 Halloween prop. I was pretty intimidated by the thought of trying to make a one dollar plastic skull into a monkey head, but it actually worked pretty well. I started out trying to use modeling clay, but it was extremely heavy and wasn’t shaping up the way I wanted. It turns out that a little bit of newspaper and masking tape works great to build up a monkey jaw. Amazing, no? Oh, and cardboard makes pretty good monkey ears. I’m going to give it a few coats of paint tonight, then will add some monkey fur to the parts that are supposed to be furry after that dries. Anyway, enough jibba jabba, here’s a picture:
