2008

After completeing my resource DVD this year I was quickly running out of time for new features for my haunt. I hadn't quite made enough money for my new projector, so that got postponed to next year's list of enhancements.

I had mentioned in my TV interview in 2006 that I was thinking about having an AC DC style song for the next pumpkin' song. Instead of AC DC I decided I was going to go with KISS since the pumpkin makeup already had a bit in common with them. I came up with some of the text of the song and the general melody/bass concept that year, but it just went in my growing pile of future ideas at the time.

I decided early on this year that I only wanted to don the pumpkin makeup if I could do two songs at once so I had to come up with one more. Early in October I started to try to figure out what the theme song for the house should be. I hadn't really talked about it in any of the songs thus far. I was not sure what the house actually wanted (other than to look scary), but I decided that it wanted to be left alone and would attack visitors. I spent a while thinking and working on an involved story style song for it where someone would end up trying to stay the night at the house and have it go crazy on him, but I was just got way to silly. Then when I was driving to work on the 16th, realizing I was out of time I decided I should embrace the silliness and decided the house wanted to eat people. By the time I got to work I had the first verse and the chorus figured out and by 10 am I had the rest.

Halloween was flying toward me now, I ended up staying up late and and taking off work for the last 3 days to finish the two new songs and Mac Adobe Premiere switchover (which took much longer than I would have liked).

This was the tightest year yet. I finally finished arranging and recording my new songs about 4pm on Thursday. Then I spent from 7 till 11 in that horrible makeup with my teeth itching something fierce! The KISS "makeup" was not a problem except for the one with the thin lines. I just couldn't make it show up very well. Oh well.

I figured it was time for the all nighter, so I worked until 5 in the morning laying out the rest of the new song effects (including the all important faces). It looked ok, I hadn't tested it or anything, but I was exhausted after a week of 3am nights.

I crashed in bed while it rendered. In the morning I went back to work fixing bugs. I was still adding effects to the movie at 1pm on Halloween. Then I had a 6 hour render ahead of me (I was hoping it would be a bit faster).

Premiere kept crashing the whole time because my movie is getting too hard for it I guess. However it was rock solid in the renders (thank goodness!) In the old days of Premiere 2.0 all the way to 7.0 they had problems where I would get half way through the render and then have a crash. Or worse there was one bug where the whole render would complete, but it would not finish "blessing" the movie file to make it work! I am very happy now but I need to start doing some simplification of the movie (pre-render more parts) to bring it back to safety.

I spent the afternoon doing the rest of the physical setup that I hadn't done last week, and at 6:45 I carried out two laptops which were wirelessly copying the movie between each other over to my projector. By 7 we were on our way!

KISS Faces

KISS Match Up

The two new songs were a hit. Everyone also liked the KISS face makeup for the Pumpkin Rot song. I am glad they are fairly recognizable. All in all we probably had about 5-6 hundred visitors that got treats. Then by about 10:30 everyone had left. I spent about another hour and a half taking pictures etc. Then cleanup, and bed by 3 again.

Anyway, that was the crazy day, and the end of the crazy week at the Bates Haunt.

Halloween is a great holiday. I realized the other day that Halloween is a holiday that is more about neighbors than it is about family... An unusual thing, and very nice. I think we should make it a paid holiday since I know I will never work on it at my day job.

Thanks to everyone that supports me this time of year, and gives me nice compliments! I'm so glad we can give everyone a good time, and give me an outlet for my creative juices.