> 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   Roll up, roll up!       The tenth Halloween Experience opened at around 5.30pm on Saturday 31st October 2015, with its new selling point - pneumatic moving figures! There were three of these, plus two more static figures in the garden, and another in the porch. Over 150 people came to roll up, roll up to the most twisted show in town! Among the curious carnival cronies were strange caged beasts, a conjuror with perplexing illusions up his sleeve, and the fortune teller, Madame Zelda, with her crystal ball! Let me take you on a tour and show you some of my favourite effects at the Carnival of Horrors...     A fearsome freakshow awaits...           Following on from 2014, I didn't think I could possibly cram any more into the garden, but somehow I managed it for this year! It was absolutely packed with stuff - in fact once everything had been installed, you couldn't get to the back of the garden any more! It all had to be built starting furthest away from the path! Visitors first came across a number of signs at the front of the display. A small horn loudspeaker (of the type you get at fairs and carnivals!) was attached to one of the signposts - when visitors approached, a sinister voice urged them to come nearer, telling them "The Master is expecting you..."!                   I would describe signs like these as the 'pre-show' part of the display; they get visitors' brains engaged as to the things they're about to see, allowing them to buy into the concept more, and anticipate what might be coming up. All the lighting for these signs and the overhead festoon lights flickered eerily, giving a creepy, run-down look to the display.                                                     Animated monsters in cages       < In the first of two cages at the side of the path was the wolfman, standing upright with hairy hands gripping the bars. When visitors got near, he began rocking back and forth and growling angrily! He had a great latex mask with realistic gnashing teeth! I found some fake brown fur and attached this under the figure's clothes, before cutting holes in them, such that the fur was poking out, suggesting he was mid-transformation from human to wolf! > In the second cage, visitors saw a hunched figure in rags. Suddenly, he lifted up his head with a snarling noise to reveal a hideous deformed face, providing a great shock effect! I wasn't sure whether this so-called grotesque figure would be a bit too gruesome for our very young guests, but I think we got away with it!         See the wolfman and the grotesque in action (.mp4, 17.3mb)           LED PAR 56s were used to up-light the two figures in red and green, while speakers mounted in the top of the cages were used for the sounds. The bars on each cage were made from pieces of 40mm PVC pipe, sprayed with metallic paints to look old and rusted. They looked very realistic! I used a hole saw fitted to a drill to cut holes in the wooden cage bases and tops, which the 'bars' were then slotted into. The two figures were part of the same animation program, running from the first Arduino Uno board in the control box, and activated via a PIR sensor hidden at the front of the garden. The CD that was triggered for this contained the sounds for both cages; the wolfman on the left audio channel, and the grotesque on the right. The figure movements were then programmed based on the timings of these sounds, so that everything looked in sync.                                                       From Goddess to Gorgon - a mysterious transformation...     The carnival needed some magic, and I really liked the idea of including a sinister magician-style figure, who would perplex visitors with an intriguing optical illusion… but what would it be? For the previous two years of the experience, I had included a Pepper’s Ghost effect at the back of the garden, behind the tree. This year, it wasn’t an option because the tree had been removed! So instead I set about thinking how the same effect could be used elsewhere, and possibly in a different way. The previous Pepper’s Ghost effects were designed so that a translucent figure would slowly appear from nowhere and then disappear again. But what about making something transform into something else, in the style of the old Victorian grand illusions I'd been researching?     I developed the idea of a large box in which visitors would see an innocent-looking classical Greek head. A few seconds later, it would slowly transform in front of their eyes into the head of a snarling Gorgon, with snakes for hair! This worked by means of what I dubbed a ‘double Pepper’s Ghost’ - two Perspex panes angled at around 60 degrees to each other, as in the drawing to the right. The prop heads were positioned on either side of these. The result was that whichever head was lit would be reflected and visible in its adjacent pane, when viewed from the front. What the viewer actually saw was reflections on two separate pieces of Perspex, but when viewed head-on, they would appear as though they were on the same horizontal and vertical plane (ie. the same head morphing), as the Perspex itself was practically invisible in the dim light.     See the transformation effect with this video taken during testing (.mp4, 2.2mb)                             I found a fantastic latex Medusa mask that became the Gorgon’s head. The Greek head was actually a flat printout on card, but with dim lighting it still gave a realistic three-dimensional reflection. Each was lit from above with a PAR 16; these were then programmed to fade slowly and alternately via a dimmer. When viewed from the front of the box, the resulting effect was a fantastic transformation between the two heads! Click the image to the left to see both heads. There were two important things needed to get the effect looking right. Firstly, the angle of the two Perspex screens needed to be exact in order to make sure that the two heads were aligned for a good transformation, particularly when both were ‘half-lit’ at the midway point of the fade, and both heads could be seen; the facial features of each head needed to line up with each other. Adjusting the distances between the heads and the Perspex allowed for them to appear the same size when reflected, even if they were not physically the same dimensions.     The other requirement was that the two heads themselves obviously needed to be obscured from the visitor, so that they could only see them as part of the effect by looking into the box from the front. This was done by surrounding the main box with two extra wooden boxes.The inside of these boxes were sprayed with non-reflective black paint, so that they would not show up behind the heads in the reflections. The heads were also positioned on top of black fabric to further avoid this. The larger of these two side boxes was styled as another magic trick – the famous Sword Cabinet, with lots of Arabian-style swords puncturing the sides. Again, the swords were chopped so that they didn’t actually protrude into the box and spoil the reflection! To give it a gory twist, ‘blood’ was painted onto the box, dripping down from some of the swords! A sign was placed on the box advertising for a new Sword Cabinet Assistant!                                                         I built a static figure using the same pipe materials as for the other moving ones, and dressed him in a great Victorian costume to become the carnival conjuror! He was positioned in front of the effect, gesturing to visitors to take a peek at his mysterious illusion. This was one of my favourite effects because it was great fun coming up with the idea and experimenting with it – the actual transformation looked brilliant, and it fitted really well with the theme of the whole display. The concept allowed me to create signs and an extra character to go with it, and I liked the contrast it gave to the shock effects of the moving figures.                                                       Zelda reveals all!     Madame Zelda, the fortune teller, was the third pneumatic figure encountered by visitors. I wanted her to have an area of the garden all to herself, surrounded by a canopy-like structure to give the impression of a fortune teller’s tent. From within, various sparkling lighting effects emanated to give a sense of dark and mystical forces at work. When triggered via another PIR sensor, she leant forward to gaze into her crystal ball, while intoning doom-laden prophecies and incantations! This scene offered up a prop-finding challenge that I was a little concerned about – where on earth was I going to find a crystal ball?! More accurately, where on earth was I going to find a ‘crystal ball’ that wasn’t an actual crystal ball that would cost me a fortune (see what I did there?) in some obscure witchcraft or divination shop! It also needed to be able to glow ominously by means of an internal light source. Not the easiest thing to find… As it turned out, it was a lot easier than I thought! I found an old bathroom light fitting which had a glass sphere on a wooden base, about 20cm wide. And since it was a bathroom light fitting, it allowed for a good old fashioned 40W pearl lamp to be fitted inside it, which was then connected to a dimmer. Turned upside down on a table, with the lamp slowly dimming and brightening, it became a perfect crystal ball! Sorted!         See Zelda working in this short clip from the display (.mp4, 7.1mb)                         The touch-sensitive, 'reveal your fate' part of this scene was eventually developed into a computer-based projection that displayed visitors' fortunes on a large board in the fortune teller’s tent. The board would initially appear ordinary, with a message inviting visitors to place their hand on a touch-sensitive plate positioned on a plinth at the edge of the path (as in the photo to the left). Upon touching, the effect would be triggered; the letters on the board would re-arrange themselves to magically reveal the visitor’s fortune in front of them! This was a really exciting feature. The system to make it work involved a relatively complex sequence which required the triggering of two separate computers. The first contained the projected graphics that were programmed to display a randomly selected message (sorry – it was to be no more clairvoyant a system than that!). The second computer ran a synchronised lighting and audio sequence that played whooshing sounds and also a DMX lighting sequence that lit a concealed mirror ball and ran other lighting cues to give magical sparkling effects as the message appeared. There were 30 possible ‘fortunes’ to provide lots of variation and surprise to the effect.     Later on in the evening, however, it went a bit pear-shaped. Perhaps it was the damp air or outside temperature affecting the touch sensor, but what we eventually ended up with was the system endlessly triggering itself in a rather comical way – no sooner had it reset itself from one message, another appeared! Gradually it got worse until it jammed the computers and the whole thing had to be switched off! Doubly ridiculous was the fact that during the earlier part of the evening where it was working correctly, only a few visitors noticed the touch sensitive plate at all! But as soon as we switched it off, suddenly everyone was trying it out and of course nothing was happening! Eventually we took the plinth out so it wouldn’t be seen! It was an ambitious effect that was well conceived, but I confess to not fully testing it in an outside environment beforehand, and lost out on its extended use as a result!                                                       Adding some fiery effects       There was room for one more figure at the carnival; the fire-breather! A big plume of smoke was ejected from one of the torches he held outwards, illuminated by a concealed PAR 16, giving the impression he was breathing fire! This was another static figure, with a one-inch pipe threaded up his back and into the torch, which delivered smoke from a hidden smoke machine. This worked in a similar way to the water-pouring zombie in the 2014 display. I liked this chap’s latex mask; a corpulent face with puffed cheeks in a ‘blowing’ expression, making it clear to visitors that he would be making another big expulsion of smoke at any minute!         The final surprise awaiting visitors was in the porch, themed once again with lots of rags and drapes. As with the previous year, a large piece of scrim was hung from ceiling to floor. When visitors approached, a sinister clown figure was lit up behind it with bright strobe light flashes and an evil laugh!     A spooky sideshow of scares!                                                           2015 feature: a closer look at the pneumatic effects See the pneumatic figures operating at the display, followed by a closer look at the system required to make them move, in this special extended clip (.mp4, 47.5mb)                                                                       The carnival display was brilliant fun, with around 150 people coming to see it across the evening! The star of the show was definitely the wolfman, which several people assumed I'd bought as a full size prop from somewhere, rather than building it myself, so I was chuffed with that! What I particularly liked this year was the scope of the theme itself - it gave me the opportunity to broaden the fantasy of the environment which the figures inhabited, such as with the building of the cages and the fortune teller's canopy, and also through the use of signs and sounds in the garden which all helped to heighten the illusion of a carnival atmosphere. I felt that it was significantly different from the previous year too...there were less shock effects, and everything was lit slightly brighter, in a way that would highlight the figures well, much like at the 2006 display nine years previous. After all, the reactions from our punters would be mainly generated by these figures, and I think the fun lay in walking down the path and seeing how they would move when approached. Huge thanks goes to my cousin Chris, and also Sam (making a brief Halloween Experience return!) and his partner Lisa for their valuable help with setting up. They went to town adding in the cobweb, chains and fabrics to make the show look its best! Sam also, as always, provided me with all the power equipment and lighting for the display. The biggest credit must go to David Buckley, who throughout the whole building and testing process sent me huge amounts of information and advice on everything to do with constructing and optimising the pneumatic elements. I sent David some video and photos of the finished display, and he replied with this kind message: ...You put on a fantastic show. There are set designers, set dressers, prop makers, pneumatics experts, computerists, programmers, the list goes on and on but rarely can they do more than one thing or even want to, but you did it all and made it all work, well done. I hope you have a great Christmas and go on to even more impressive things next year. Yours David So now I had pneumatic figures to add to the Halloween arsenal - where to from here...? It would be something Sam said to me in passing at this year's display that would get me thinking up a crazy new project for 2016...