The Building of Ultimate Facade for Darkness
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| The Building of Ultimate Facade for Darkness By Jim Kelly, Vice President, Halloween Productions Inc. As soon as the door closes, sometimes even before that, plans begin for new improvements to Darkness Haunted House in St. Louis, MO. This year, we were privileged to be featured on the Travel Channel, America’s Haunts, and even on Modern Marvels. This inspired a desire to make the Darkness attraction more like a theme park attraction, instead of a standalone event. We wanted to add TV’s playing preshow videos, some new animations, and other elements to the attraction that would create a mood that was exciting, even before you entered the haunted house. It was decided that we needed to build a new elaborate façade to complete this concept. This is the story on how we built it. The first and sometimes overlooked step to building a façade of this magnitude starts with a good design. The days of just coming up with a new idea and “winging it” are long over. A good design can save you hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars and lots of valuable time. And this year, since we are opening the Darkness this March for the Transworld Haunt Show, we needed to save all the time we could. The first section of the Darkness is an “Indiana Jones” style temple, which is a mixture of different ancient cultures (Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, etc.) The façade would have to fit this theme. Research is important, especially when your project is based on real history. We compiled a small wish list of details we wanted to incorporate into the façade. We also knew that we needed to include several pieces we already had, a troll animation, a new talking animation, and several fiberglass pieces. All these went into a drawing (Figure 1), and, after a couple of revisions, became the new design for the project. The second step was to determine how to build the façade and what materials and tools would be needed to complete it. Since our façade consisted of lots of custom rockwork, we determined that only custom carving of foam could achieve this effect. Since foam is very flimsy, a series of walls and framework was created to give a backing to the foam. Then hundreds of sheets and pieces of foam were applied using minimum expanding foam as an adhesive. Lot of people make the mistake of trying to glue foam together with something like Liquid Nail. This is a mistake. The bond is not very strong and you can’t carve into Liquid Nail if you need to. Next you need to acquire the correct tools, and many different kinds are needed. You need a hot wire to shape and cut foam, several carving hand tools to carve in details, and rasps to smooth off edges. Sometimes a chainsaw is needed to cut into big chunks of foam. One new trick used on this façade was the use of an electric weed eater. This shapes rock really quickly. You will never get smooth rock this way, but if you don’t mind a rougher look, this gets the job done in half the time. Part of the façade was also supposed to look like it was made out of slate blocks. Instead of trying to carve each brick into a solid sheet of foam, we decided correctly that the best way was to cut out each brick on a table saw, shape them and then pit them with acetone, and finally to glue them on. This worked great, looked awesome, and saved lots of time. The third step was to prepare any special features on the façade. In this case, we were creating a waterfall in one section, adding glowing eyes to a big carved statue, and adding animations in certain areas. Plumbing had to be installed into the façade walls themselves for the waterfall, along with a pump, water flow valve, and plastic pond pool for the water to recycle from. We ran all the wiring needed to do the glowing eyes and several other lighting effects. Air hose and electricity was brought to the areas that were getting animations. We knew if this was not done now, it would be much harder to accomplish later. The next step was the hard coating process. Foam has two main downfalls; it is extremely soft and can be flammable. To correct these problems it is necessary to hard coat the façade with something to protect the foam structure. Now several processes are possible to use, but we own a hard coating machine so this was used. This gun mixes a resin and a hardener together to create a hard plastic shell over whatever it is sprayed on. The whole façade took several days to hard coat, but when it was done the façade was nearing completion. If you do not own a hard coating machine, you can hire someone to spray it for you, or you can shoot your façade with concrete from a gun or hopper. Painting is now the next step for the façade. Since we hard coated this façade with a plastic, a special primer called Grip and Seal had to be used as a base for the paint job. If you didn’t use this, the latex paint used next would just peal right off with a fingernail. To finish off the façade you then apply your colors to the façade. We choose to paint the façade very dark colors and then went over it with lighter colors. After our primary color of the façade was applied we then proceeded to age the façade. Aging the façade is done in several steps using very thing watered down paint colors sprayed out of deck sprayers or splashed on with thick paint brushes or dripped on with sponges. Lastly we complete the themed paint job by airbrushing on detail, highlights, and cracks. Next is the natural detail stage. Since we wanted this to look like an overgrown jungle temple, vines were purchased and applied all over the façade along with Spanish moss, real dirty, and plants which appear to be growing out of cracks in the rock. All the animations and other props are now all installed into their places. A camo net was also hung overhead to hide away the ceiling. Other elements are added to the façade such as skulls, which we actually hard coated right onto the foam during the hard coating stage and painted later. If you search through garden supply companies you can find really cool fiberglass planters and as you can see we found some Inca style pieces which we added to accent the façade. Lastly you might notice a realistic Panther was added on top of the rock formation which really added a nice final touch. I guess the final touch is good lighting and sound to finalize the mood we wanted to create prior to entering the haunt itself. Building this façade might have been one of the most complicated pieces we have ever made for the Darkness Haunted House. It took almost two months to complete, and cost tens of thousands of dollars. However, it was all worth it, and is now the perfect entrance to our attraction. Some other benefits are the professionalism it brings your attraction. How many times have the media covered your haunt and uttered the line ‘now let’s us go inside the haunt’ so now they can through your awesome façade. How will this façade look on television or how will the photos translate on your website in photos and video? Halloween Productions, Inc. builds all sorts of attractions, facades and more for customers Worldwide and often we build something really cool and say to ourselves ‘when are we going to build something like that for ourselves’. Now we have! I personally feel it will pay major dividends for our attraction well into the future. Had the haunted attraction show not come to St. Louis we probably would not have built this façade this year with so many other projects in the fire. But now that the façade is done I couldn’t be happier and hope that this article inspires you to build your own dream façade. I hope I get the chance to meet everyone in St. Louis for the Haunt Show. Our new façade will be proudly on display during our tour and for many years to come for our guests here in St. Louis each and every October. Happy Haunting! Jim Kelly |