Halloween

Halloween is coming up and I want to encourage everyone to participate by scaring the crap out of yourselves and each other.

We built a haunted house in our garage this year and I'm really looking forward to seeing the response from the neighborhood kids. If it goes well we'll continue to do it each year - who knows, maybe even expand it into the backyard. I bought a few props for the haunted house - okay, maybe more than a few - in fact, our original budget for what we were going to spend on this project has pretty much tripled. But don't point that out to my wife. If you appreciate special effects, makeup, and prop design and want to see some really cool work - check out Terror Syndicate. Not only does this guy make all his own stuff but he maintains a haunted house in his back yard all year around - just for Halloween! On the website you can take photo tours of past haunted houses and see all the props. He also makes great Halloween soundscape CDs, skulls, and creatures. (I couldn't resist buying a few skulls.) I'm definently a freak for Halloween but when I see someone this into it blows me away. I used to do this stuff all the time as a kid - set stuff up in the front yard, build haunted houses in the living room - I even worked in a haunted house for 3 or 4 Halloweens in high school and early college. So maybe I'm just trying to get back to my roots.

There are a few good haunted houses and forests around the state so I would encourage you to get out and go to one. They take a lot of work to put together and most of them don't make any money - they donate it to local schools, churches, charities, and causes. In many cases, the money they do make goes right back into the haunted house for next year.

As a shameless plug, I'd like to mention my friend's haunted house in Drumright, OK - Scream Country. If you get a chance go check it out - they're open Oct 26, 27, 28.

*note: all pics from Terror Syndicate Productions

New Super 8 Films

Got two rolls of processed Super 8 film back yesterday. One of them I shot over three years ago when I lived in Tulsa! The only parts that didn't turn out were some climbing scenes I shot in the Little Germany area. It was early evening, under trees and in one of the limestone corridors - just too dark. You can just make out the outline of a person climbing and topping out but nothing more. It's too bad because I was looking forward to seeing what climbing looks like on black and white S8 film at 18 frames per second.

Everything else turned out great. My second roll, shot at the Oklahoma State Fair, was particularly good. The picture was sharp, the light was good. The only problem was I wish I had shot more. But this was primarily a test roll to see how my *new* Zeiss Movieflex camera works.

I'm working on the new site and will include the transfered film-to-video file so you can check it out.

News

I am working on a new site - a complete overhaul of this site to be released hopefully within the month of October. I'd say I'm about 1/3 of the way there. Shit, maybe less now that I think about it. I've had so much going on I can't even keep it all straight. Problem is I bring most of it on myself which drives Lisa (my wife) crazy. She's due in January so that's the main thing we are focused on - that and everything that goes along with it. At the same time, my web-design business has taken hold and I've built up a fair number of web jobs to keep me sufficiently busy. A good thing but there's only so many hours in the week, you know. And then there's this whole goal of filmmaking and screenwriting which I'm still actively pursuing. My goal is to have a story finalized so that I can pursue budgeting, fund-raising, and pre-production (casting, crew, etc.) in the next couple of months. You'll find details when the new site goes live.

Course we have Halloween coming up - my favorite holiday - and Lisa and I have decided to do a little haunted spectacle at the homestead this year. Not that either one of us has time for it but I hate to let another Halloween pass without doing something.

As far as climbing goes - I noticed an area on the boulder near the slab descent that is starting to crack. No surprise - I figured it was only a matter of time. It's in one of the areas that does not have wire mesh underneath. So I'll need to crack the texture away there, apply some mesh and re-texture it. That'll have to wait.