Greetings from Richmond Virginia!

**Beergnome** · 11-13-2010,04:49 PM

good evening folks!

by way of introduction, I first need to say that I found this site this morning while looking for a vintage Lab coat. I'm already planning my big set piece for next year

y'know the style.. the collar and side button full jacket lab coat ala Dr. Horrible? its called a Howie style with a chinese collar..

but that's besides the point.

I'm a Brewer by trade and make beer for Legend Brewing Company here in Richmond VA.
three years ago, I pushed the Idea of having a big halloween party in the pub, costume contests and all that Jazz, of course, since one of my... many hobbies is DEEJAY stuff, I would of course be the entertainment and MC of the event.

every year since the party has gotten bigger and better and in the second year we incorporated the "haunted brewery tour"

we spook house up the brewery with a zombie theme and take groups of twenty folks down into the beer mines for the tour every twenty minutes. charge $5 a head and donate all the proceeds to a local charity.

I've always help set up, but never actually seen the tour because I'm up stairs holding court

so I fabricated a few simple gags for this past event. my proudest number was a Laser vortex effect. simply put, it was a pretty powerful for consumer grade green laser pointed at a rotating offset mirror that created a cone of laser light that you would then blow a smoke machine through.. very effective, simple effect. we used it at the end of a corridor of giant fermentation tanks with Zombie brewers rolling kegs off .. INTO THE LIGHT!

another simple effect that I called a "flicker box" was made to simulate flaky wiring. That was also put into a long hallway and caused the overhead lighting to flicker and strobe. like the wiring was bad and the lights were shorting out.

to pull that off I dissected some 25 watt florescent light fixture starters and wired them in-line with a standard electrical socket. I must add that I bisected the positive side of the socket and wired a starter to each circuit so you could power two independent 25 watt incandescent light bulbs off the same box and keep the whole effect random.

lots of fun,
we raised some $3000 for this years charity, the byrd theater foundation.

next Halloween I intend to make My DJ booth into a full on mad scientist lab. complete with lightning and laser effects, over flowing with fog lab equipment..

its going to be a GREAT set piece!