Thread: Fundraiser/prop building input!!

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Okay, so I wasn't sure to post this thread here or in the party idea forum...

My friend just asked me to help her out with her high schools choir fundraiser. Basically they want to pimp out their choir room with creepy stuff and make it a semi haunted house I guess.

Here is the catch. Fundraiser = little money/low LOW budget.

I am used to making houses look creepy, not a school/choir room for a fundraiser. I need ideas of what I can do for the room. Its large, acoustic, with tall ceilings and just wide open space. All of the money is going to be going to the choir kids (I was a choir kid in high school so it means a lot to me), and I am doing this free of charge.

If anyone can throw out some ideas for some home made props I can create that would be fantastic, or link me to any of the ideas which have been created and think would work good for this project! Large or small.

To start ideas, I know choir rooms, have practice rooms in them. So I was thinking have the main room, and then have each practice room, some what like a theme. So one could be a witches kitchen... one maybe a small graveyard or pirate theme. Simple things which I can use recycled stuff out of to make the rooms, like jars and what not.

I am calling for everyone on the forum to help with all of the vast experience and themes that have been done, brainstorming should be easy. I want to know about each theme you are good at and what props you created for it.

Ideas, ideas, ideas!! Go Go Go!!!

I am super excited!

I did a school haunted house for five years.

Is the idea to have an actual walk through haunted house?

We earned over $500 in a four hour period in a small community middle school every year, charging just $2.00 per person. Please note, the whole school maybe had 250 people in it, if that, and it was from 10AM - 2PM.

Black plastic is your friend. If you were doing a professional haunted house, I would say stay away from it, but it really is great for these smaller stuff. Create walls using black plastic. You can either use clothesline hanging from wall to wall and use it like a curtain with the black plastic, or get buckets, fill it with cement and stick PVC pipe in it, and then run your clothesline through it like that. Both are super cheap, and easy to set up and take down.

As for themes, one year, I just plunged the whole thing into darkness, strobe lights here and there, big time sound effects, and had random scarers everywhere, but as for props, we had absolutely none, and it was one of our most successful seasons.

This might not work if your primary audience is high schoolers, as you'll need to amp it up some. Movie Monsters is always a popular theme. Asylums are super easy to do. The popularity of Zombies would be easy to do.

Seeing it's choir...do Glee Zombies...one of the sound effects could be a slowed down version of Don't Stop Believing.

Those are great ideas! I hope others will chime in with things they think would make a good addition to it. Right now I am not sure if we are going to do a walk through, or if we are just going to creep out the whole big room and just make it so everyone is in awe of how awesome it is.

The practice rooms I was thinking different themes, and I think there are 4 or 5 of them. So for one I was going to do like a witches kitchen, since jars are cheap and people recycle them all the time so it would be relatively easy to make and just have everything on a piano or something. I am looking for every and all idea anyone has!

Will this be more of a Halloween carnival type event or are you leaning towards a haunted walkthrough? For a fundraiser, both have merit as potential money makers. With a walkthrough you of course charge a one time admission fee and then after visiting the attraction, the visitors leave. With a carnival or Halloween fair event, there is ample oppurtunity to make a little more money. You could make Halloween themed carnival games and charge per game, sell homemade food and treats, sell homemade Halloween crafts and props, sell raffle tickets to give away donated items, zombie/vampire face-painting booths and so-on. Also if you managed to recruit a group of volunteers, you could delegate these specific builds and task to them. That frees you up to oversee the overall progress of the fundraiser. A walkthrough would be more involved, having to create pathways, build alot of props, and having to procure alot more material to decorate with.
Im in Dallas as well and have very limited funds for(or just a lack of willingness to invest in) Halloween props, therefore I alike everyone else here create my own props from scratch. One source I find plenty of free goodies for prop building in the DFW area is the free stuff section of Craigslist. People give away tons of stuff there. My favorite building material is old fence panels or pickets! If you have a large area to fill, they make great walls or material for coffins and other props. Suprisingly, they make great great fences for graveyard and pirate scenes too!

I am thinking its going to be more of a carnival/event fair type thing due to it being held in a large room with a few 3-4 practice rooms which could be used as a type of themed window walk through, from window to window, so people can peak in. (and I just found out that the doors of the rooms, are FULL WINDOWS!! Thats amazing!! Perfect viewing room)

I am going to build most of the stuff myself, just because I love doing it.

So for practice room one, I was thinking a witch room/"kitchen":
- jars/bottles for potions and cooking goods in bottles
- fake coals and cauldron
- witches spell book
- fake candles.

So something simple, easy and cheap but with a really great affect.

Just trying to think of different themes for the rooms and I wanted everyone's opinions of themes they haev done and projects I can work on for each room like I listed, and if links can be provided that would be great.


..and what part of Dallas are you located in? I just joined the meet up group on meetup.com (search halloween) and its DFW Friends and Halloween or something like that. They have events and what not.