Thread: What did you learn from last year, or years?

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The last two years has been a blast for the wife and I, we started out small with some deco's and really concentrated on our peppers ghost effect in the garage door window. Last year I went for volume, my wife always goes for intricate detail.I built 8 headstones and spent some extra time on the one in my avatar. It seems like the more time I spend on DETAIL the more it gets appreciated. The first year the peppers ghost was the star, last year it was 1 of 8 headstones. I'm realizing that I need to put more into each piece that goes out for display, they do notice, even the litte TOT's. I'm tired of starting over every year because I'm still hung up on the volume problem I have. But I'm considering replacing some of the more mondain props with more interesting ones, what worked for you, and what got completely overlooked?

I agree with the detail comments. Along with detail, I think uniqueness plays a role as well. With the advent of the Spirit stores, and similar retail outlets, there tends to be a lot of repetition in decorations. A new witch comes out, and you see the same witch at multiple houses around the neighborhood, which makes it more common than interesting. But this can be fixed by people taking commonly available props and detailing them so they become unique.

This is why we've been focusing on making props of more obscure monsters (Gremlins, Jeepers Creepers, Dog Soldiers, etc.) that you're not likely to find at every other house.

I bet I know which ts was a hit.Love the wheel ts.
Everyday I learn and apply something new from this forum but for me the biggest one thing I learned to help me out this year is the bayou that was done last year.With the info from bluefrog on what was done in their haunt I am ready to make my pirates ride some water.

take the off-the-shelf stuff, and dress it up or alter it just enough to make it different.
layer your display. first pass ,the partiers will see the big picture.
as the night goes on, they will start to see the depth of detail you create.

the devil is in the details...lol

oh yeah..... we learned 150 + guests are to many to enjoy in a 3 bedroom house. Thank goodness the weather was great.
good thing we moved the large furniture to the garage

TagTeam, fly to oregon, you can come to mine. I'll set it up now, just for you! lol, we did do some off the shelf reconstruct, people liked it. It's funny, we set it up for TOT's to come and go, but once people get there, they don't leave. I'm glad that they don't, it's just funny.

I've learned that I have to live on saltines and sell plasma starting about this time of year to afford anything Halloween. Freak's sake. Can't wait for the economy to pick up!

Have a list (mental or physical) of props, who makes them, how much they sell for, where to buy them, and a running tally of these informational points is then used to assess the dollar value of the haunt or even the "Wow!" factor of a haunt....
I have never seen things like this. The "Wow!" Factor is the actual "WoW!" the patrons express and creating "WOW!" is totally in your hands (and mind, and sense of showmanship and timing)
Making things impressive, frightfull, entertaining works best from human interaction because... our patrons are seeing and listening for human interactions.
Tell them a convincing storyline, take the extra moments (or hours?) to let it brew in their minds then do the unexpected and see and hear "WOW!"
Forget the "Laundry-List" nobody is really too impressed by either clean or dirty socks.
Go build your own wackiest ideas, they can be as simple as mud in a cup, but if presented right can have people talking for generations.

Did the entire yard in ONLY black light last year with a few mini-LEDs clipped on some props here & there to enhance them. We learned so much about how to use black light in wide open areas, not just inside the house or in windows.

I should add that a lot of the success with the black lighting was due to following advice/suggestions given to us here on HF!

I learned that lighting is oh so important. I did all this killer painting on my displays last year, and at night you couldn't see it! I now paint my displays using the light they will be displayed in.

I've learned a few things.

The two main important ones were quality over quantity and to ignore stupid guests.

We had two or three different groups of adults walk into our scarezone with their kids. Within seconds, in all instances, the kids were crying and screaming. The adults mocked us and would say stupid things like "Hey kids, get lives", "You kids need to get out more", "You need to get laid and grow up", etc. It pissed off myself and my actors and we just continued to irritate the adults, trying to just be obnoxious with our scaring. It probably made us look stupider and made the situation worse. Next year, I'll just ignore these losers and carry on.