> INTRODUCTION a fascination with imagination   > THEME PARK MAGIC inspirational rides and attractions   > A PHANTOM PLOT UNFOLDS a 2003 test from Disneyland ideas   > THE HAUNTING BEGINS five years of Halloween, 2004-2008 > BACK FROM THE GRAVE 2010-2011 with new technology   > A 2013 RESURRECTION a mix of new and age-old effects   > DAWN OF THE UNDEAD 2014 show, part one   > THE ZOMBIES EMERGE 2014 show, part two   > A CHANGING CONCEPT 2015 show, part one   > BUILDING PNEUMATIC FIGURES 2015 show, part two   > ROLL UP, ROLL UP! 2015 show, part three   > INTO THE TUNNEL... 2016 show, part one   > MAKING MONSTERS MOVE 2016 show, part two   > TO HELL AND BACK 2016 show, part three   > SHARPENING THE SENSES 2017 show, part one   > A MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 2017 show, part two   > THE BIG EXECUTION 2017 show, part three   Reaching ten years of the Halloween Experience...       Re-introducing movement to some of the figures in the 2013 display had brought more surprise and excitement to the show. The previous few displays had mainly focussed on effects that used lighting and sound only, so bringing moving figures back into the mix felt like I was restoring the missing piece of the jigsaw. If only there was another opportunity to develop this further... Well... 2014 would mark ten years from when it all first began! I just had to do another! A tenth anniversary, show-stopping display for our visitors! It had certainly come a long way since the UV-lit signs and smoke machine of 2004. But what would feature in it?         The zombies emerge                           In the past, the displays had followed a fairly broad theme. Witches, ghosts, goblins, skeletons; visitors encountered a typical 'haunted house' cast of spooky characters. I had always been fairly careful to make everything suitable for the age range of visitors that came to see it! Children from three upwards (sometimes younger!) would often come to knock on the door, and I wasn't keen on being responsible for traumatising these individuals with bloodthirsty monsters leaping out of bushes, or any other gory scenes! But I did want the experiences to create good reactions nevertheless; laughter, surprise, and if the effects and overall theming were right, a bit of fear. With these things in mind, I came up with the idea of having a new and specific theme for 2014’s special display. I wanted to ramp up the fear factor, making it more scary than previous years, while being careful not to overdo it and end up with no-one coming down the path! It didn't take much thinking to decide what the new theme would be... zombies!       For the 2013 experience, I had been inspired by effects from The Haunted House, the huge and highly renowned theme park ride installed in 1992 at Alton Towers. For 2003, it was re-themed as Duel: The Haunted House Strikes Back! This new concept armed the riders with 'blasters' and allowed them to shoot at the various ghoulish apparitions they encountered; the more they hit, the higher their score. To make it a more compelling experience, zombie figures, which would appear suddenly from out of the darkness to provide shock effects, were also added. Having spent time watching footage of the ride, I was really inspired to create a concept of a zombie infestation into my new display.       Image credit: Towers Almanac                                 Early theming ideas, and a new ghost?     With this theme in place, it was clear that some new scenes were needed. The witches making spells from 2013 would not fit. There would be no place for the headless banshee and her axe-swinging executioner, and it was also time to go for our green skeleton who had welcomed visitors as they entered the garden for the past three displays! Nevertheless, some of the previous characters would later make reappearances under new guises! I was particularly keen on including as many new ideas as possible, as well as having a complete change of sound effects and music. With this much more specific zombie theme in place, the display would need a more apparent logic to its layout; the individual scenes would need to match each other stylistically. But there had certainly been some great effects at the 2013 display, and I was looking to adapt some of these to fit the new theme where possible.       The Pepper’s Ghost effect was one of my favourite features. I decided that this could be used again for the new display, but with a different figure to fit with the zombie theme. An early idea I had for this effect involved placing smaller Perspex screens at the required angle in front of tombstones. With some clever positioning of props and lights, this would give the illusion of ghouls rising from the grave. I also considered moving the larger Perspex screen nearer to the path, and creating a shock effect whereby a zombie figure would suddenly appear with a loud noise, a few feet away from the visitors. This could have possibly been adapted further with the use of a large video display instead of a static figure. Pre-filmed footage of a ‘zombie’ could be played, on cue, as visitors approached - a super-realistic and high-tech Pepper’s Ghost! But I decided that finding someone who didn’t mind their big and no doubt very expensive LCD telly being stood against a tree, outside in October temperatures would probably be a challenge too far...!     The main problem with these new ideas was that in the relative openness of the garden space, there was nowhere else to hide the workings of the effect. One of the reasons that the 2013 ghost had worked well was because it was situated at the back of the garden, a considerable distance from visitors, and surrounded by bushes and branches. This made the edges of the Perspex screen undetectable. The figure and necessary lighting were shielded from view by the overgrown trunk of the tree. Bringing this whole assembly closer to the path would reveal the workings of the effect and make it far less impressive; clearly it had to stay where it worked best.       A new style of motion-triggered effect       In order to heighten the surprise and fear element, I felt that the animated effects of the new experience should have a more traditional ‘ghost train’ feel to them; our zombies needed to give the impression of ‘jumping out’ at the visitors, much like in Alton Towers’ ride. In previous years, the effects triggered by visitors were of the style where most figures had spoken soundtracks that could only be heard in their entirety if the visitor paused at each scene. This time, the experience would feature a number of quick jump-scares of only a couple of seconds; wails, screams and evil laughter would occur immediately when visitors approached a particular point, to give maximum impact.                                           A figure that's bigger!     To make the zombie theme more imposing to visitors, I realised that it needed something that I had not attempted before - full size figures! The undead monsters would be far more menacing if they were roughly life-size, and in some cases, taller than our visitors! But how would they be constructed?         Around the same time, I went to see a performance of the musical The Lion King at the theatre. It had excellent technical complexity, with clever lighting tricks and impressive special effects. (I realised my friends that I was with knew how interested I was about these elements of theatre production when afterwards they asked me what I thought of the effects, rather than the actual show!). I noticed that many of the animal figures were supported on wooden frames and stands, which allowed the actors to walk around whilst turning wheels and other parts to make them appear to move. Then an idea came to me – the zombie figures could be built around metal lighting stands, which would give them excellent rigidity, but also make them very easy to move and position! Their black colour meant they would be well hidden beneath the zombies’ exteriors, plus they were extendable, enabling the height of the figures to be adjusted.     But what would the zombies actually look like? I studied some smaller figures (about two feet tall) that I'd used in previous years for inspiration. Essentially they were just a polystyrene head, with a long piece of bendable wire mounted below to form two arms. Shredded rags and cloth hung down from the arms to give the impression of a body underneath. Clearly I needed to build a larger version of this frame, and then attach it to a stand so it could be raised to the required height and held in place. But with a bigger frame, came the need for bigger anatomical features! I found some great latex zombie masks, and fitted these to human-sized polystyrene heads. I then sprayed these and some fake rubber hands in blue and green paint to give a ghoulish, decaying look. Some arms were created using two bent lengths of copper pipe, wrapped in foam lagging to give them a bulkier appearance.         Before I began constructing the figures, I had considered how I might animate them. One idea I had was that the frame that held the head and arms would be mounted on a motor such that the whole torso of the zombie would sway and roll from side to side, to imitate lumbering, stumbling movements. This idea was scrapped once the zombie had been fully constructed – the frame was too heavy for any sensibly-sized motor to move. However, a small motor was added to the head, allowing it to rapidly move side to side in an aggressive way. Two similar figures were constructed, to be part of two separate scenes for the new experience. To fit with the idea of an infestation, I decided that the zombies should be attempting to turn unfortunate visitors into the undead! One zombie figure was to feature in a scene which I referred to as ‘the electrocution’, whereby he would be ‘electrocuting’ a screaming figure held chained within a large crate. The other zombie was to go into a scene I called ‘toxic’, essentially a zombie version of the witches scene from 2013, with smoking barrels of toxic waste, and some great water effects! By now I could visualise each individual scene in some way; my ideas book was packed with diagrams and scribbles of motorised props and some other new figures, so it was time to try and bring some more of them to life...