Thread: Prop builders tell all. What didn't work!

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Ever try something that just didn't work? Get an idea in your head and rush right out to build it. Take one look at it and wonder why it looked better in your head? Ever put it in your display and wonder if anyone ells notices how bad it looks? LOL

This year's one thought wonder for me was an idea for making haunted trees. Had some downed limbs and a Christmas tree I could trash. Thought it would be a great idea to cut off all but 5 or 6 of the 'tips' form the Christmas tree branch ends. Use the 'tips' left at the end for a hand. Spray painted the branches. Drilled holes in the limbs and put it all together. Took them apart before anyone had a chance to see them but me. LOL OK, the truth? I played with the idea for at least 2 hours trying to convince myself it would work. Even showed the wife in hopes she'd see something in it I missed. Her exact words.
"maybe if you put them in the back and shined a light up through....."
She could have stopped at "put them in the back". LOL

Be honest folks. What did you try that didn't make the cut?

Tried a toilet with a pump that spewed blood. It made the cut but was a real pain........I wanted a light in the water so it would glow red..... all I had was a flash light. Kept putting it in plastic bags to stay dry...... no mater what I tried it kept getting wet and the light would go out...... I had the red water spilling out over the edges of the tiolet with a hand coming up out of the water....I put plastic under the tiolet to catch the water but no mater how careful you are when it comes to red dyed water, it will get onto everything. That was 2 years ago. We scrapped it last year.. too much hassle. I had even wanted the lid to move up and down and have sound of moaning playing...... maybe again one of these years...... try to plan it again and maybe have a better light worked out.

I did a real "know it wouldn't work" special at the last moment. Came across an oscillating fan a few days before Halloween, and rigged it up inside a dummie PVC frame. I was too lazy to turn it upside down, and have the motor in the hollow of the dummy where it could get air. and have the head turning on the shaft that was the stand. Sure enough, it burned out from overheating in less than an hour, lol.
Also. had a few motion detecting props that wouldn't trigger in the low light.

Excellent thread putrid.
This year, I was going to do a witch stirring a cauldron. I remade the witch so the arms would move freely, and spent most of September looking for a cheap turntable (side story: at stretches at work in early September I asked if anyone had a turntable they didn't want. One guy piped up and said I do, but what on earth do you want it for? Another coworker looked at him and said, Matt, Halloween is coming. Matt said, Oh, I forgot.)
So I finally get a turntable, (Matt's didn't work) and came up with a cauldron. I made a holder for the turntable (the original was too large), created an attachment for the stirring stick and called it good.
Took the witch and cauldron to the road, plugged it in, and the turntable wouldn't turn. I checked everything, making sure nothing was on the ground, or being pinched, finally took it back to the house to troubleshoot. Plugged it in inside, it worked. Huh? Took it back down to the road, no go. WTF?
This went on and on for several days while I tried to find the problem. I never did, so grabbed one of the Chauvet mirror ball motors and tried several ways to rig it up so it would work and still be weather protected. Finally I did and took it to the witch. I hooked it up and of course it worked. But by now, the cauldron had gotten a little warped so it was fetching up on the sides. At this point I gave up and left her as a static witch. Will work on this next year.

I was abit disappointed in our "Laser Beam Eye" Witch . The head turned beautifully, but the beams only really show up when she's looking through fog. We had the chimney of the fog machine hidden in some shrubs about 5' in front of her. Of course, during our practice runs, the fog came out perfectly. On the Big Night, I dunno, too much ice(?), the light barely shone through the fog. Also, after about 90 minutes, I noticed that the lights were starting to fade. They were still on the next morning, but they were really only effective for the first hour and a half.

Next year -1- Move the fog chimney INSIDE the Witches body.
2- Look for better Lasers. The ones I used were $2.99 cheapies.

I had this great idea to lay a garge door opener upside down on the front lawn and attach a dummy to it....The dummy was too heavy and the opener unit kept tipping over on its side. I got frustrated and scrapped the damn thing. LOL

Holy cow, too many to post!
This year I had everything go pretty right from the get go, but just about every year before I have had some grand idea turn to smoldering, ozone-scented shreds in my blistered hands.
First animatron back in '89 started smoking out of the head within minutes of powering it up for the first time. Back to the drawing board.
Ooh, how about my grand idea to whip together a bunch of Christmas twinkle lights into rat's eyes? This was some ten years ago.
I cut up a bunch of empty film canisters with eye shapes, put colored paper behind the eyes in each canister, then attached each canister to a bulb on the strand of lights.
Worked great, until I realized I didn't have (or need!) 50 sets of eyes.
"Just remove half of them and rewire in series!" I convinced myself.
Yeah, those of you who KNOW these things can start laughing now.
With only HALF the load suddenly in place to the strand, nothing lit.
So here I am an hour later RE-attaching every light, the strand lit up again, and I put black gaffe tape on every other light to black them out.
Simple solution, stupid me.
How about the air-blown Kong coming over the roof my house?
Now to be fair, I ended up making this work, and this was LONG before the glut of cutesy air-blown deco's around now.
But let me just say that four electric leaf blowers under a sewn sheet 'head' of Kong was not really the monstrous prop I'd envisioned, and until I changed a LOT of things up it just looked, and was, plain stupid.
I was 15 years younger than I am now, but still... lesson learned.
The story of the pumpkin lamp (based on the classic pickle lamp) is legendary in my family, but I will not give it here, except to say it DOES work (as many know) but if you decide to use a faulty cord set and no acidic element in the gourd, and blow fuses while everyone's waiting in the dark to watch a pumpkin glow worse than you could achieve by using the usual CANDLE and match... well, you'll understand.
Nearly prop-related disasters, such as barefoot stepping on hot soldering irons and hot glue guns are off-topic for the thread, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one... BTW, I prefer the irons, as glue guns stick like napalm and leave far nastier burns and blisters.

Oh the things we do in the name of our beloved craft...


Mike C.

Lynn, I liked your bloody toilet idea with the hand sticking out....why not use a low voltage underwater light from lowes...should work great-Pete

LMAO! Man it's nice to know I'm not the only one.
No stranger to mis-haps here Mick C. Did this a few years back. Wile using an electric drill I ran a philips screwdriver head into my thumb. Spent the rest of Halloween morning trying not to bleed all over the tombstones I was putting up. One year I had a can of Great stuff blow up on me. Nossle and assembly shot right out of the top of a brand new can. Emptied itself in a matter of seconds.
Lynn and Wolfman, I think it's Halloween and batteries in general. We had some of those flying bats one year. Put brand new Batteries in them. Only lasted for a few hours.

Keep em coming folks. This is like a therapy group session for prop junkies. LOL

BF16603,

I didn't even consider a problem with a flashlight until the morning of our haunt. So I didn't have time nor money to try find something else. It really would have been a neat thing... oh well, live and learn. Hopefully I learn faster than I'm living. HA HA