Help: Scenery Design for haunted house

[RPicking]

Hey,

I see there's nothing in this forum so I thought I would add something. I mentioned in another thread that I'm in development for a Production that I'm doing Next October 09. It's somewhat like a Haunted House except one major difference is that I'm doing a religious element to the house. Anyways, I'm working with a "next to nothing" budget and I'm wondering if there is any place on here or on the web or someonen on here that could help with making ordinary props look great...and actually building a maze without putting a major amount of money into wood?? OR...What kind of wood is out there that would be cheap and good enough??

 

[cdub260]

Given that the expense of luan is an issue for your project, you might want to consider building muslin flats. While they can be a little trickier to build, they require less framing and should cost a bit less to build.

 

[tcahall]

Take a look at some pipe & drape equipment. It won't serve your purpose well because the drapes are only about 2' wide, but the ideas are solid. If you find a welder to build some base plates and get a little creative with some 3/4" or 1" conduit from the hardware store, you can build a very suitable frame. Some fabric connected top and sides and you can build a decent wall. It is, essentially, a self standing "muslin flat". It will not contain sound like a wood wall, but will create the maze effect.

If you are looking for something completely different, you can build the walls with balloons pretty inexpensively. However, you need a good inflator and some pretty solid balloon decorating skills. You may be able to find something in the area.

Tim.

 

[Van]

tchall sort of beat me to it. I would suggest using muslin covered frames for walls. You can, very inexpensively, create some self supporting structures out of 1" and smaller pcv pipe. I Highly, strongly and in the most demanding way suggest you obtain some Rosco Flamex < or comprable brand> and treat all you peices. I'd hate to read about a haunted house maze going up in flames with 20 people inside. Flamex < or comprable brands> is extremely easy to use, and very inexpensive.
Once you've designed the layout of the maze you could easily create the structure from PVC and make it simple to set up and tear down year after year, in diffrent configs.

 

[cisgrig]

You can use heavy cardboard and might be able to get some free from a furniture, office supply, store. Good luck.

 

[Sayen]

I'd hate to read about a haunted house maze going up in flames with 20 people inside.

Or crushed if the walls lack proper support, which happened near me a few years ago. Make sure you have clear exits marked and an evacuation plan with your crew.

 

[gafftaper]

CB member Radiant works on a huge church haunted house in Tulsa Oklahoma. Here's the event website. Drop him a private message I bet he would be happy to chat about it.