My house caught on fire.

**cromag** · 10-30-2010,01:17 AM

Long post.
I'm trying to do something different from the rest of the neighborhood this year. We have a lot of people who go all out for the Halloween season in my neighborhood but its the always same old thing. Zombies, graveyards, Skeletons and chain store Halloween swag ect. not that thats a bad thing. But I wanted to be different from everyone else so I tried to set the house on fire using the Pirates of the Caribbean in D-land type effect. .

What started out being a $25 project turned out to be around $90 but I think it was worth it.

I started out buying $25 worth of fake silver silk from the fabric store. About 400" by 48" worth.
I also ended up buying $25 worth of colored red incandescent red and yellow light bulbs (4 red - one yellow) and $20 bucks worth of PVC pipe to anchor the structor that holds the silver fabric just below my window and to elevate the fans. The top I anchored to my existing curtain rods with curtain rod hooks.

I managed to borrow four 20" box fans from neighbors and spent another $20 on cheap clamp light fixtures from home depot.

I built 4 stands for the fans out of PVC to elevate the fans off the floor and allow for proper air circulation.

I got a loopable sound file of a flaming inferno I mooched from my cousin who does sound FX for movies and downloaded the 10 min file to my ipod and used a portable roland guitar amp hidden in the bushes to amplify the inferno sound. This part was really a make or break part. Its audible from 1/2 black away and sounds incredible.

I borrowed a 400 watt fogger from a neighbor who had a spare to add a smoke effect which unfortunately you cant see in the video because I took it with a cannon camera but it really puts some wicked final touches on the whole fire effect.

I had planned on barely cracking the garage door and utilizing the chasing christmas light controller modification I found here on a light in the garage to make a simple flickering light to mimic a faltering electrical system due to the fire but as I plugged in my lamp I was to use, the apparatus I built failed. I hope to fix this tomorrow with another method I found on the net.

Overall I cant tell you how cool this looks in person. I wished my video would have captured it better. I was almost worried during my tests tonight that someone would drive by and call the Fire Dept.

It took me a good hour and a half of screwing with the fabric tension and fan speeds as well as adding a yellow light to the 4 red lights had in place to get it looking good but I think it worked well and I'm happy with the results. At 10 ft you can tell its a prop of course but at 35 ft or from the sidewalk its looks pretty damn good for such a simple prop. if anything its defiantly different from what everyone else has done in my area.

When I have time I'll take some pictures of the back side of the prop but for now I have a Halloween party to go to Saturday and the next day is Halloween so I had to get it up and running tonight to make sure it worked.

I cant freaking wait to see what kind of reactions I get.

Here is a vid of the final FX. Please excuse the quality. I shot it with a cheap cannon camera.

I'd love to hear feedback. Good or bad.

**Shockwave199** · 10-30-2010,01:27 AM

That is so cool I can't stand it! That looks real man- so real it could be problematic. It really has that look of curtains a blaze. In fact it looks like an inferno in there! One window is one thing, but could you imagine this prop in every window in the front of the house? And one step further, a flamming cauldron type effect on a bit larger scale in spots on the roof or gutters? That would bring the FD for sure! You got game for sure with this one. If that doesn't create a buzz I just don't know what will.

Take THAT neighbors!

Dan

**cromag** · 10-30-2010,01:34 AM

Thanks . If I had more then one window I would have done it in each. But this is the only front facing window on the house. Its kind of why I want to compliment the effect with the flickering light in the garage. The window is like 11 or 13 ft wide so it was a challenge. Its made from 3 different pieces of fabric which are not sewn together.

Thanks for the positive response. it makes me feel good about all the hours I have into this that I thought would just take 45 min when I started. You should see my living room right now. Its strewn apart to make room for the row of 4 fans.

**Shockwave199** · 10-30-2010,01:39 AM

It was definitely worth the effort and I think you'll see many with that opinion here. And I think most of us can sympathise about what our living rooms look like right now! I think I have a couch under there somewhere!

Dan

**madmax** · 10-30-2010,01:44 AM

Looks great the way it is.

If I had to guess on the reason the flicker light controller failed, you used too many watts of light. You have to look on the back and see how many amps you can use with it. Not all are the same. I have some with a 3amp rating (300 watts) and others with 1(100 watts) and .6 (60 watts) amp rating.

**cromag** · 10-30-2010,01:50 AM

I tested it with two 40 watt bulbs in separate fixtures and it worked great. Then I plugged it into a single lamp with a 75 watt bulb to do the flicker FX and its fried now. I checked the fuses with a multi meter for continuity and there good. I tried a different fixture and nothing. I think its dead. Which bums me out. I thought I was done.

I think I'm going to try this.

http://booityourself.blogspot.com/20...puttering.html