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Halloween 2024: Jumanji

The Jumanji franchise films of 1995, 2017, and 2019 originally featuring Robin Williams and later Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson are excellent adventure stories liked and remembered by the parents of trick-or-treaters of all ages. Children under 15 have no clue. This will be our Halloween theme.

Jumanji is an idea we have been batting around for years. There’s a lot of material to take from, but streamlining the story down into a small number of visual elements is a challenge. Visually, the movies are generically jungle-ly which makes it difficult to identify at a glance. The first movie has the iconic board game. This is changed into a video game in the later films for no plot-driven reason. There’s the statement about social and racial inequity from the first film, but that will be hard to squeeze in. The rest of the scenes are just people being chased around by plants and animals. That is with exception of one line: “Albino rhinos! They’re indigenous to Jumanji.”

We must build a rhinoceros.

The rhino was one of the more achievable gags that we tried to build. Granted, it was scaled back from making the full animal to just the head, but we’ve gotten pretty good at building large sculptures and mechanisms to move them. In this case it was papier-mâché on a cardboard form.

We figured that projecting the game board and the mysterious riddles that appear in the game on the front of the house was both achievable and would provide enough context for people to get the theme. That and the drum sound that is heard whenever player takes a turn in the game.

About half the people figured it out. There were a lot of good guesses: Jurassic Park, Tarzan, Jungle Cruise. Only people who had seen Jumanji had any real hope of getting it. And this refers only to the adults. None of the kids got it, save maybe two. That was part of the fun… for us.

There’s noting quite like opening the door and exclaiming “Welcome to Jumanji!” only to see utterly dumbfounded children respond “Trick or treat..?” Then, down the stairs, out in the darkness we hear a parent say “I told you it was Jumanji!” That is our definition of success.

As always, there were a bunch of gags that we tried to do, but couldn’t quite make work the way we wanted. There was a visual effect that was intended to emulate the magic green light that sucks you into the game as seen in the movies. This, we knew, would work only if we combined the lighting with fog. There were technical problems with hanging the fog machine close enough to the lighting to make the effect effective, but no matter. The fog blast itself ended up being the jump-scare of the night. C’est la vie.

With such great weather we surprised to receive only 204 kids. Maybe as many adults. These things ebb and flow as the neighborhood changes. It probably means that next year will be huge. We will have to prepare something special and well known. Perhaps our take on Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 film Coffee and Cigarettes? Kidding.

Halloween 2023: Curse of the Mummy

Back in 2012, we presented The Mummy’s Curse Puzzle Door of Doom. It seemed like a good time to do it again. But first we need to make some improvements.

The door took a pretty good beating in its 3 hours of service the last time around. Parts of the foam sculpt needed to be repaired and repainted. For this we used an epoxy product we heard that other haunt builders use. Aves Apoxie Sculpt is a 2-part modelling compound that is easy to use and sets-up really strong.

The original control system was on a PIC-IO board, but that had been reused for another project. Since 10 years had passed since the last use of the puzzle door, it seemed like a good time to make a tech upgrade. We chose an Espressif ESP-8266 module, which is a WiFi enabled microcontroller. The ESP-8266 can be configured for 5 digital inputs, so that would be enough for the 4 puzzle buttons and 1 switch to detect air pressure.

Having a connection to WiFi allowed us to take an IoT approach to designing our system. Instead of running wires from the front porch to the attic to be connected to the Maris hardware show controller to send MIDI commands that are, in turn, consumed by the VenueMagic software show controller (Ugh), we would use RTP MIDI over WiFi to communicate directly from the door switches to VenueMagic.

RTP MIDI, also known as Apple MIDI, is typically used to wirelessly play a synth keyboard with an iPad. Fortunately for us, there are open-source libraries for the ESP-8266 to allow a MIDI message to be sent every time an “event” happens on the door.

But why stop there? We also need to know when people are heading up the stairs. For that we have our dual light beam solution. That too is on a PIC-IO that was replaced with RTP MIDI on an ESP-8266.

Things were looking up until Halloween night. By the time we got the puzzle fixed to the front door and powered-up, it was discovered that, well, it didn’t work. There was either a mechanical or electrical problem with one of the puzzle switches. 5 PM arrived and the problem wasn’t solved. We quickly pivoted to hitting our guests with some thunder and lightning when we heard “trick or treat” outside.

The only people who asked about the puzzle were high school and college students who had trick or treated in the neighborhood back when they were much younger. It was unfortunate to let them down, but really nice that people of all ages come to see what we were doing. We gave out candy to 222 kids this year and had some great conversations with a whole lot of adults.

Next year will be scary. We promise.

Halloween 2022: Expedition Everest

Scariest. Halloween. Ever. Needless to say, we were really pleased with this. And a bit surprised.

It’s difficult to calculate the fear factor on any of our Halloween displays. Fright is often reliant on the element of surprise. Since in 2018 we tried to build a structure to conceal props from the street – and failed, we have kind of given-up on building large structures or total concealment. Also we don’t generally get to try the whole thing until it is Halloween night.

Since our basement is full, we are in a mode of trying to re-use past displays. Enough time had past that we thought it was worth another go at the Yeti. We had the props and media needed to do most of it. We developed a lot of new technology and felt we could make a large animatronic figure work reliably. All we needed was a way to make the yeti pop.

One barrier to working with props next to our porch is that the stairs set the doorway about four feet above ground level. To get something scary to be in-your-face, we would need to raise the thing up on a platform or hang it from some kind of scaffold. Hanging the yeti had some appeal because the motion of the yeti could be tied to the vertical movement if we raised and lowered it.

Fast forward two months to our having constructed a 12-foot tall truss, which notably does not fit in our basement. The truss has a 20-inch pneumatic cylinder at the top to drop the yeti down by its arm. His foot is mounted statically on the truss so the vertical drop forces his body to swing-out towards the unsuspecting kids. We did not think this would scare anyone.

Part of the reason we though no one would be scared is because we have hung props by the porch before. It doesn’t matter what kind of lighting we throw on it or what shocking sound we have. Kids are are unphased by anything short of a trapdoor swallowing them up into a pit of eternal misery. The other reason is we didn’t have a good way to conceal the yeti. No matter what we did, you could see the yeti from the street. We were resigned to providing lackluster fear.

After setting up most of the props, we cut down a 12-foot tall white pine in the backyard and put it in a Christmas tree stand. Placed in front of the yeti, the tree was a modest attempt at concealment. At the very least, it looked outdoorsy. Like the way they have trees – in Tibet.

The fact that many people failed to see the yeti is not wholly credited to the tree. There were a couple other factors that worked as a distraction: The video on the door worked as a red herring. There seemed to be a “if we make it to the top step, we’re safe” attitude. This worked in part, because we ran the video and the animatronic on two separate threads in the show controller by using light beam triggers at the bottom and just past the top of the stairs. This meant the yeti would not be triggered until you fully committed to walking toward the door. Also, the speaker placement for the video soundtrack was cheated to the left which seemed to make people look away from the yeti on the right? Maybe? Regardless, there was no way this was going to scare anyone.

We knew we were successful/in-trouble when the first child came up the stairs, saw the yeti, then broke into tears. The parents reaction to this was incredibly gracious. In fact, parents overwhelmingly enjoyed this year’s display. To the detriment of their children, parental guardians willingly pushed their terrified children up the stairs to meet their fate. When the kids refused, the parents came up. We had more parents take in the experience for themselves than in any other year.

This is not to suggest that kids didn’t like it. There are kids that love to be challenged and we were told repeatedly that we could do this theme every year. This might be a rebuke of our past efforts, but we created an inferred challenge that now must be met on an annual basis.

218 kids got candy this year. Some were handed to parents or siblings. Some kids ran away too fast.

Halloween is not just about candy.