Haunted Playground 2015

  Another Fall, another Haunt project!  Chris B. caught many more shots of the day-of event itself which are available here.  [To download the whole set as a convenient .ZIP file, change the "?dl=0" at the end to "?dl=1" and expect about 225 Mb to arrive.]  Here I can help round out that view by looking at more of the backend preparation and infrastructure, as usual.

[Previous years going back, within my experience, for reference:   '14   '13   '12   '11   '10   '09   '08 ]


    Painting day

[Images are linked to larger-detail versions.]
Laying out panels and adding base color We had much better weather than in 2014, and could bring all the panels outside to organize and lay out.  It was a bit breezy, so I brought a bunch of bricks over from the little stockpile around the corner of the building to weight down various upwind corners. 

Base colors were the first thing to go on, hiding whatever the designs from last year had been.  Most of these panels have about four or five years' worth of paint layers on them by now.  A couple of new flats also got built, because we needed them.


Beginning pond scene detail Beginning to add details to the "pond scene", backed by a truly brilliant blue to represent the water.

Dance set concept continues Dance panel detailing
The Dance School wanted the usual fairly wide backdrop, with a sort of a thematic mashup of clocks, Alice in Wonderland, and steampunk.  A token effort went into making the design flow properly across the flats. 

Nice detail in eye With excellent drying conditions, we had the leisure to add lots of nice little details.

Makeshift paint booth Over at the other side of the building in the more sheltered space, Ed and Larry and the boys had set up a makeshift paint booth for spraying which helped make quick work of applying a base black to many of them at once.  They'd need a lot of panels because they were going to construct a large "fun house" sort of walk-through maze.

Cleanup and putting panels away In general the artwork came out really nicely this year, and everyone was pretty happy as we put things away in the storage -- nice and *dry* this time, unlike last year.

    Event day

  My main role was technical infrastructure as usual, although I had some help from a visiting friend this year.  I started on Friday with putting lights in the air and running some wiring out, but didn't go totally crazy on it -- my checklist had become routine enough that I didn't have to sweat the design details.  This time I took one of the big CFL clip-fixtures and added a third light to the tall pole over the pavilion and tot-lot, making that a fairly heavy lift to get into the fencepost, but it definitely helped brighten up the area some more.


Rehearsal of canoe skit The canoe-skit turned out really well after the varous mechanics got worked out.

Fun house near entrance Fun house near end
The fun house got some serious deco on top of the black paint, all done in fluorescent colors lit by blacklights, which the Chromadepth glasses they issued at the door really punched up into a somewhat disorienting walk-through experience.  They did a great job on it.

Full dance-school set We almost got the floor continuity right as the dance-school set went in!  This time the orientation in the tent was 180ed from the usual and the audience side left un-tarped -- didn't really need to close it all in.

Building the mini-graveyard Graveyard entrance end
Construction on a reduced-size "mini-graveyard", as we were calling it, really looked just like any other year of it with perhaps a bit less of the ratty fencing.  With all the props deployed, possibly in a more dense way instead of spread over a larger area, it still looked plenty creepy.

Golden glow of last light The last golden glow of sunlight touched the treetops, and things swung into evening mode.

Dance school warmups The Dance School girls arrived and started their warmups.

Graveyard rehearsals Graveyard cast rehearsed some quick vignettes they'd just do over and over for the passing groups.

Tour guide orientation Tour guides were oriented on how to keep the flow going.

The incoming mob! And here's the "heartwrencher" shot, taken from standing on top of the smaller swing set.  Right here is why we do this -- for the community!  The mob of people coming in the entrance was quite the impressive sight; far and away the scariest thing *I* had seen all day as we all realized it was going to be busy night.  We went through *all* the food and even had to cut off tour-ticket sales at some point.

I wonder what a top-down "drone shot" of this event would look like...


Juggler with crutch act Instead of Jim the magician, we had a professional juggler.  Chris caught much better pictures of the act; see the Dropbox set. Getting light to this area on the open basketball court was an interesting bit of hackery, but needed because the sodium streetlight overhead was on the blink [literally] and kept going on and off every couple of minutes.

Tae kwon do demos Master Chin's martial arts class came in to do a Tae Kwon Do demo.  They even had stirring theme music to go along with it.  The lighting wasn't the best out here, and trying to capture any of it during movement resulted in ghostly tracks of the people doing the kicks while the board-holders stayed mostly still.

Dance-school run with watch props The dance piece was interesting and odd, with a lot of reference to time, and quite tightly choreographed.

Pumpkin patch I didn't catch the pumpkin patch at the optimal dusk time, but it looked great in the dark too.

_H*   151105