With the usual crew from Martin's Pond taking time off from presenting the
annual Haunt event, a different group took up the reins this year.
Friends of Hornet,
the local middle-school boosters, saw the opportunity to engage
their students and parents in a similarly large-scale production, using
much of same props and equipment and supplying more of their own, and
adding some fresh twists to the event.
This icon is the overall mascot for the town's school sports,
with a couple of extra details added by the Friends.
It was somewhat ironic that during the run-up to all this, I was
battling a nest of yellow jackets that had taken up residence
under my leaf compost pile.
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[Images are "clickable", linked to larger copies. The text contains several links to chase, too] | |
The original thought was to continue holding it in the Park, but later
it was decided to move the whole event to the middle-school field across
town.
This would give a little more overall space, and an environment which more
of the new crew were familiar with. And maybe a different perspective on
public visibility, given that the school sits at a major crossroads
in what amounts to the center of town.
Most of the old crew was content to not be involved in the new project, but the new crew wanted to consult with me about power and lighting. I sent them links to my old writeups from last year and '14 and beyond, which they found quite useful and likely took some ideas from. I sat in on one of the planning meetings, where they had kind of a sketchy concept of a layout, and we outlined a few details they needed to check on or verify with the school. A few days later they sent this annotated google-maps screengrab. The viewpoint is as if you were floating above the middle-school roof, and lays out their general plan pretty well. |
The model for how the event would get set and run was very similar --
numbered tour batches with guides, skit tents, games, a pumpkin patch,
and the "scary section" near the end with an optional bypass route.
As well as an extensive food area, side entertainment from magicians and
DJs, and access to the playground.
Having a visual layout map would allow a little power-path planning
to have minimal wiring across traffic areas.
A brief night-time survey revealed two major dark areas that weren't
covered very well by existing streetlights -- the playground off
the lower left of the picture, and the midfield area near the food
tents and its tables.
So I'd be doing some bit of area lighting as usual.
The ideal point to light the playground from would have been from the roof of the school building at that corner, with lights clipped to a cinderblock or something like I'd done on the park-building. But the building super nixed that idea, citing "safety reasons". Seriously?? I've probably been on more roofs in my lifetime than he has... Instead, I placed myself at *greater* risk by getting way up on a ladder to bind a group of lights as high as I could to one of the streetlight poles around the driveway. It actually worked out okay either way; three of my big CFLs were able to add just enough visibility light over a broad area that it helped, even at the non-optimally long distance. A little bit of preliminary setup happened Friday night, but the group couldn't get access to the field before 5pm anyway so we were there setting up a few pop-ups in the dark and cold. Build began in earnest early Saturday morning. |
One final bit of tour creepiness would be found in a spiderwebbed exit tunnel from the "haunted tour" graveyard-substitute area, constructed from garden arbors or something. |
The commercial tent-rental guys showed up around noon and started their
deployment.
They had a fun method of initially setting the rope spikes in position --
eyeball the right place and just whip one into the ground.
Seemed to work really well.
In the background is Ryer's Store, a popular local feature. I've never actually been in there, and today didn't have time to pop over to see if they're barefoot-friendly or not. |
Jim the magician came again, and his stage has clearly undergone a bit of spiff-up with new artwork. He's also changed over to much more energy-efficient lights. His daughter came along to help with the show, and spun fire poi as part of it. We had a fun convo about spinning and barefooting and various other things. |
Somewhere around mid-day people started needing power, to test lights
and toys like this inflatable.
At least *three* generators had been brought in as power for along the outer
fence line, and my big inverter
would handle some of the things up closer to the driveway as an
isolated and much quieter power source.
The field only has ONE 15A "shore power" circuit available, located at the wrong end, so a large quantity of auxiliary power was definitely needed. Some effort was made to erect little temporary foam noise-barrier enclosures around the generators; the rear side of one can just barely be seen behind the inflatable here but I didn't get a clear shot of them. |
Referring to the map -- at my position near the point of the brick area I wound up feeding power to those lights, the games tent and photo booth, and one or two other things tapped off from there. This kept most of my own gear deployment contained near me, making it easier to collect at the end of the event. I was completely out of there by late Saturday night, which was excellent as I had signed up for a fun hike the next day. |
The games area was already mobbed, and stayed that way most of the evening. |
Even as the event officially started, there were still things to get done -- bringing another inflatable upright, firing up any generators that weren't running yet, and lots of quick cleanup. |
Some of the singing groups were still rehearsing as tours started to get organized. |
In fact, I spent a good bit of the runtime spinning the better LED staff to provide even more entertainment for the folks passing by or waiting in the tour line. That was fun; the movement also kept me warmer as the night chill settled in and I wasn't doing much else other than occasional walkarounds to check on things. |