The opening to Raiders of the Lost Ark has to be one of the best sequences in the history of cinema. The fantastic low-tech booby traps. The John Williams score. The visceral feeling of danger with icky spider webs is completely immersive and “completely immersive” is always the goal for us.
Spoiler: No, we did not roll a 30-ton ball down the stairs. But we thought about it.
One of the first hints we had on achieving this was in finding a still-frame of the idol room which we edited the pedestal out of. This we projected on the house so that we didn’t need to build the whole room. Falling rocks were animated over the image to simulate the destruction of the temple, triggered on a Sprite video player.
The pedestal was fabricated out of wood and carved foam with foam hardener. In the center was a pneumatic-driven lift mechanism with a Chachapoyan Fertility Idol that we bought on Etsy. Turns out you can buy anything on Etsy.
As an almost last minute addition, we introduced an ankle blaster on the stairs to simulate the blow dart scene. The compressed air blast worked really good as a scare because it was combined with a stereo blowgun sound effect that panned across the stairs. As in past years, the whole show was run on VenueMagic software.
In all, we had just over 200 kids. We’ll call it a “rebuilding” year. It was definitely the best prepared we have ever been with the setup mostly done at 3pm. Having friends Suchi and Sarath over to hand out candy also made the evening the easiest and most enjoyable we have ever had.
We have been wanting to improve on our 2007 Tiki theme. That year we made a giant African mask. The mask spoke and rolled its eyes and we planned on using those features to create a circus barker-like character in a somewhat elaborate interactive display.
The show didn’t make it as far as we wanted. They never do, but this year we scrapped the interactive elements and the production became an exercise in set decoration. The porch was clad with reed fencing and jungle vines. Shrunken heads on bamboo pikes. Two Maori warrior shields. Or at least our interpretation of what a vaguely Polynesian warrior’s shield should look like.
There is some debate as to how far tiki should stray from Polynesian culture. To be authentically tiki, the environment must be:
Mysterious
Exotic
Richly detailed
Our take on tiki is that in addition to the above it must be comfortable or romantic and include anything that might wash up on a tropical beach. Over all it must be a form of escapism. Start with a South Pacific island, imagine what floats in from South America, Japan, India and Africa. Then light a torch and pour a drink. That’s tiki.
Our incorporation of tiki into Halloween was only half intuitive. The dark and mysterious aspects are well suited, but the exotic parts not so much. We decided that defining the story to be about headhunters would make the theme more palatable to kids.
For the music, we went straight to exotica. Les Baxter, Martin Denney, The Left Arm of Buddha, and The Tikiyaki Orchestra. Is this what a headhunter listens to? Doesn’t matter. Slower tempo songs added to the feeling of mystery and suspense. The genre speaks the language of adventure and – somewhat surprisingly – it is decipherable by people of any age.
When adding detail, shadow is as important as light. With vines covering the doorway, the darkened space behind added as much to the suspense as the foreground elements. We tried to make the body of the house as dark as possible to put focus on the themed elements. The most detailed element being the jack-o-lantern pineapple tucked into the corner of the porch. It was the kind of Easter egg that makes tiki great.
We did make a couple contributions to technology. The first were musical warrior shields. Each shield make a sound when hit. This was a subtle feature that no one picked up on unless shown, but it was fun for little kids. Each shield had a piezo trigger connected to an electronic percussion controller. The controller triggered the “Tiki Threat” patch on an E-mu Proteus sound module. Good old 90’s music technology made even better for having an obviously named sound choice.
The other new feature were the self-flaring tiki torches. There is nothing that a little propane can’t fix. Just add a solenoid valve, a regulator, and some copper tubing and you’re off to the races. They were connected to the VenueMagic show control system that gave all the lighting a soft, flame flicker. The occasional burst of flame kept people ready for the unexpected.
Out of the 258 kids to come up our stairs, about half correctly identified the theme as “tiki.” That’s impressive. Tiki is most often identified with adult diversions, but it creeps into pop culture everywhere. It wouldn’t be a surprise if children picked it up from a trip to Disney World or an old episode of Scooby Doo. Wherever they got it, the theme was much better received than we planned.
Moments from the Figawi Hyannis to Nantucket ocean sailing race. At least the bits before the camera ran out.
Contains language inappropriate for most of us. Moments from the Figawi Hyannis to Nantucket ocean sailing race from the emotional perspective of being a crew member.
