This is the perfect threat to sum up my 2019 Halloween. It started w/ an idea for a large scale pirate skeleton scene in my front yard back in August - I live in Phoenix and I mostly stay inside in the hot summer, and by August I think we all start getting a little cabin crazy. So I got on Pinterest & Youtube and started getting ideas! I had so much fun building stuff and dressing my skeletons. Then I was in the process of switching jobs so I had the last 2 weeks of October off before starting. I didn't want to set up stuff too early because it's been windy out and small chance of rain (very small, but it would screw up everything) so I wanted to wait until the last week. And then I got bored, so I started looking for little animations I could add. I ordered a bunch of reindeer motors and 2 rotisserie motors because I'm not especially swift w/ electronics and wanted something I could just plug in. They arrived on Saturday (10/25) which gave me 4 days to build and 2 days to set up. I spent 5 1/2 days building and half a day setting up. It wasn't enough LOL!
My animations were supposed to be:
- drunk pirate w/ continuous flow rum using a small fountain water pump. (Inspiration: )
- drunk pirate rocking back & forth on a box w/ a bottle of booze (Inspiration: )
- rotating ship's helm (Inspiration: )
- pirate sword fight (Inspiration: )
- rotating kraken tentacles (similar to rotating ship's helm)
I actually completed all of these, and got all of them to work in testing, but only 1 survived being setup and running during Halloween:
- the continuous flow drunk pirate - the hose going from the pump to the jug got jostled and moved from the mouth of the jug to deeper in the jug. When I turned the pump on, the water filled up in the bottle of the jug instead of running out to the guy's mouth. This weighed down the jug, and pulled the guy's arm down, which moved the water flow to over the side of the tub, and started pooling close to the extension cords, so I just unplugged it.
- the rocking back & forth drunk guy - I had thrown some "scary netting" over the side of the table he was sitting on to make it look less like a table, and then turned on the motor and went about doing other things. Then I noticed it was jammed, and discovered the netting had wrapped around the arm of the motor. So in trying to pull that off while the kids started showing up (in droves mind you!), the whole setup got moved around I didn't have time to get the guy positioned right so the motor + arms had clearance, so I just unplugged it.
- the rotating ship's helm - this worked but discovered attaching the skeleton captain's arms to the wheel was too much weight and stopped it, so I just left them hanging and the wheel had free movement. The only bummer is the range of rotation was pretty small because the wheel didn't have a lot of clearance to rotate. But it worked!
- pirate sword fight - this actually worked (Amazing considering I built it in 2 days) w/ a little rotisserie motor, though slow. But one of the side pieces holding the container (similar to the video guy's coffee can, but I used a protein powder jug) broke and I didn't have time to fix it, so I turned it off.
- rotating kraken tentacles - the two issues w/ this were the "lazy susans" I built for 2 of the tentacles to rotate just need a little more refinement and didn't give enough freedom to rotate, so the weight of the tentacles was just too much for the motor to rotate them.
In all of the craziness, I also never got to set up:
- my projection screen & projector that had a storm scene I was going to play in the background of the ship's helm
- audio for the drunk pirates scene & sword fight scene - it was all recorded & ready to go, but the little off-brand iPods I set up to play had already drained their batteries, so no power, and the kids were coming in herds so never had time to charge them & set them up
- I had a fog machine & home made fog chiller all set to go, but the fog juice (Froggy's Freezin Juice or whatever it's called is supposed to be the best) and I had ordered it but got an email saying they couldn't ship it before Monday, and w/ the chaos of the last 4 days, no time to go buy more. So I just skipped it all together.
So I learned all sorts of cool things about how to build props and the beginnings of using motors, so my learnings are the following:
1) I need to learn how to use & get bigger motors if I want to do heavier props.
2) ABSOLUTELY need to allocate AT LEAST 2 days to set up, test everything, put the final touches on things and get the lighting set up.
3) Order all my stuff way early - most of the biggest inspirations came in the last week where I had to research what to order, order it and then wait for it to arrive before I could start doing anything.
4) The most useful material I had for my builds was some shelving stuff (those metal rods w/ lots of holes that you attach to the inside of your cupboards to set shelves on) I saved from a demo of a wall unit when I moved into my house 5 years ago! I was able to cut or bend that stuff to make most of the motor arms that I used.
5) Move my car out of the driveway. (didn't have time for that either)
Unfortunately I was so busying fixing things and the kids were coming (we got about 150 kids, though usually we get 200+) so didn't get a chance to record everything until it was way dark, so my night video is sort of crappy. And the day video is missing the lighting and nothing is plugged in.
NIghtime:
Daytime:
https://youtu.be/5JhKTJYSmfw
All in all, it was huge fun learning how to do all this stuff and filled my time between jobs, it turned out well, even though most of my "big production stuff" didn't work or didn't get setup in time, and I'm sooo thankful it's all over. I'm exhausted and amazed I didn't blow my back out doing all of it! Now I have to dismantle it all and attempt to find a place to store it or toss it. Sadly the tentacles & kraken head have to get tossed. I have no room for them and I suspect they wouldn't survive. The paint is already getting scuffed.
Until next year!