January 18, 2015
We met in the basement of my house and discussed our plans on a haunted house room for Great Lakes Fright Fest. We discussed a lot of different aspects of the project… theme, construction, readiness, size, and time. One of the first concerns was the size of the room. Rooms were allocated on a first come basis and usually were a single 10×20 space.
The theme was something that was on everyone’s mind. Before the meeting, I sent out a link to a YouTube video that was passed onto me via the Chicago Haunt Builders group. The ”Fangoria 2010 – Machine”. It was a brilliantly done video of a project that was housed in someone’s garage and depicted a steam punk machine that allowed some sort of time travel with different scenes in the cramped space of the garage. The production was over the top for a “home made” project. It was very impressive. Equally impressive was the behind the scenes video (how they did it). Search “Fangoria 2010 – Machine – Engineers’ View“.
Everyone seemed excited about the video and the behind the scenes aspects that might apply to our project; but we dismissed the idea rather quickly for no good reason and focused on traditional themes. One scene was a saloon where Kirby, our resident keyboard musician, might play a piano in front of a bar scene. Another scene discussed was a freezer room where we might bring in portable air conditioners. Yet another was a steam room or boiler room were we could use space heaters to create an ambiance. We steered towards these ideas and some of the participants actually left the planning session when it was brought up again… the idea of a machine, a Halloween Machine.
A Halloween Machine was advantageous because we thought a traditional Halloween scene would resonate with the participants more quickly. They wouldn’t have to be given a lot of time to digest and understand the scène. A witch scene was immediately thrown out as a possible candidate.
The next challenge was “could we actually build a machine with seats that would fit 6-8 people”? We immediately pulled some chairs together to see how comfortably and close people could sit together and measured the width needed. Remember, we needed to work within a 10×20 canopy tent. Here is a picture that staged the simulation.
Fits 7 people!
Next was how we would simulate transporting the participants to different scenes. What sort of illusionary tricks could we use to make it feel like you are transported and end up viewing a scene as an observer, a voyeur of sorts?
Jose’, our resident carpenter, was pretty sure he had a scheme that would allow a platform to turn. The thought was we could turn the seated participants from scene to scene, sort of like a marry-go-round.
We used white boards o sketch some ideas and you can see the raw imagination and creativity right here.
At the drawing board
The birth of the Halloween Machine was born.
See all of the pictures here http://jseiler.smugmug.com/Halloween/The-OctoPod/20150118GLFF-Build/