Halloween 2019 Postmortem

We pretty much achieved the look we wanted for this year's haunt and everything worked as planned, except for not being able to use the black light fixtures in the mini mausoleum on Halloween night. With all the heavy rain on Halloween afternoon, the mausoleum roof leaked in a few spots and the light fixtures got wet (we did get pictures with the black lights the night before). The quick save for the evening was to use a couple of the waterproof LED multi color 3 inch diameter battery powered "puck" lights we bought from Amazon just before Halloween for our skeleton ghost props. Some industrial strength velcro on the bottom of the lights and on the ceiling of the mausoleum and we were back in business. One light was set to aqua blue, the other to green. Not exactly the same effect as the black light, but it still looked good. The lesson learned from this Halloween is plan on the weather to not cooperate and not to bother with anything in the haunt that can't stand up to inclement weather!  

2019 Yard Haunt Photos

The pictures from this year's Halloween yard haunt are now up on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmJ5ZfSn

Another Great Halloween

Despite the awful weather and close to 2 inches of rain, we had 111 trick-or-treaters tonight. Good thing we bought extra candy! This was our 10th Halloween in this house and we got more complements this evening regarding the haunt than any prior Halloween. We're very happy how everything turned out despite the mess Mother Nature threw at us. We will be uploading a comprehensive photo album of the haunt pictures to Flickr tomorrow.

Happy Halloween Morning

The weather cooperated yesterday long enough to get the haunt set up and photo shoot completed before the rain came later in the evening. We have hundreds of pictures to go through before deciding which ones will make the this year's yard haunt Flickr photo album. Hoping the predicted rain tonight isn't too bad, but the kids out here tend to come out rain or shine, even in sleet and snow (Halloween night 2010).

2019 Yard Haunt Soundtrack

Every year we try to pick a theme fitting soundtrack to play in the yard haunt on Halloween night. This year we chose Nox Arcana's The Haunted Symphony.

Digital Projector Effects Test

Tonight we did a test of our new video projector using some AtmosFX "digital decoration" videos with the projection screen up in the window. This was an arduous task. We had purchased a "projector & video" bundle from a big box store back in 2016 to use for a future Halloween. We first tested it out back in September and were extremely disappointed with the output brightness and image resolution of the projector. So we purchased a better projector (VANKYO Leisure 430 3600 Lux Video Projector), but then realized trying to get the projector at the proper height and distance to fill the projector screen window using existing furniture, books, and boxes was not going to work either, so we purchased a proper platform stand (Pyle PLPTS4 Pro Universal Device Stand). It finally all came together tonight! Should be a big hit on Halloween night.

Last Looks Before Halloween

We worked on the final costuming for the mannequins and props and did some lighting tests since it's only one week until Halloween. Only major thing left to do really is carve the pumpkins next week.