Season of Shadows Blog » Halloween Haunters Reality

Halloween & Workshop Webcam

John Wolfe — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:47:59 +0000

Over the last week or so, I made up my mind to pursue having a live video (webcam) feed of the haunt on Halloween night. Not only that, but I’ve also decided to broadcast live video from my workshop as I’m building my props. The workshop footage isn’t going to be chock-a-block full of riveting action. Prop building, at least for me, is a very slow process. But, hopefully it will provide some interesting moments for visitors as well as a charge of Halloween spirit.

I’ve always enjoyed live webcams. There’s something comforting about observing what’s happening elsewhere at precisely that moment in time. In fact, my initial intention for the Halloween Haunter’s Reality project (from last year) was to create a fly on the wall, “webcammy” type of thing. However, I started getting more and more involved in the editing process after the first installment.

So, the Halloween Webcam feed is really an extension of Haunter’s Reality, but with a true fly on the wall style of documenting my prep. For more info and to check out the feed, please visit the new webcam page.

Halloween Haunter’s Reality #4

John Wolfe — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:32:10 +0000

Welcome back to the Halloween Haunter’s Reality series. After many, many hours of work (on camera and off), I’ve finally added the fourth installment. Though the video only runs 9 minutes and 26 seconds, there is a lot of time involved in the mache time-lapse segment. This installment also features a short segment at Wagner’s Farm (in pursuit of cornstalks) and pays a visit to the West side Albuquerque Spirit Halloween Superstore.

My camera will definitely continue rolling right on through Halloween, but due to the rapidly approaching big night, episodes five and six probably won’t be released until after the 31st. But, I won’t stop there. Halloween Haunter’s Reality will be an ongoing project. I plan on releasing new episodes throughout the year, as I prep for Halloween ’09. Thanks for joining me for this installment. I hope you enjoy it!

Related Halloween Haunter’s Reality Posts

Halloween Haunter’s Reality
Halloween Haunter’s Reality #2
Halloween Haunter’s Reality #3

Halloween Haunter’s Reality Update

John Wolfe — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:05:39 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know I’m still working on the fourth installment in the Haunter’s Reality series. Tomorrow should have been my last day of filming prior to editing the footage, but we have received a ton of rain in the last twenty four hours…ugggg! So, I’ll be spending a good portion of tomorrow spreading my corn stalks out and working to dry them in the sun. Soggy stalks just don’t attach well to the display fences. However, I’m on the job; I’m working my mojo to bring nothing but sunny days until Halloween.

Hopefully the video will be up by the end of the week at the latest. In the meantime, here’s episode three, for those who haven’t watched it yet and for those of you who may want to check it out one more time. Thanks for your patience.

Halloween Haunter’s Reality #3

John Wolfe — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:13:27 +0000

Welcome back to Halloween Haunter’s Reality. In this installment, I’ve included time-lapse construction of my latest ground breaker corpse, a little tour of my work area and a trip to the Spirit Halloween store. When I first started creating these videos, I swore I wasn’t going to do a lot of editing…um, yeah, that’s sort of changed! In putting together the time-lapse segment, I had to heavily edit and condense a couple hours of video into about two minutes.

I loved doing it, however, because it shows a lot of the building process. I want to do the same thing with an upcoming episode for laying the initial mache on the ground breaker. If you have any questions about anything I did in the building of the corpse or the rest of this episode, please don’t hesitate to email me or leave a comment. I hope you enjoy the video.

I’d like to thank Creepy, the Los Angeles Halloween Blog, for featuring a link to my Haunter’s Reality posts.

Halloween Haunter’s Reality #2

John Wolfe — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:16:50 +0000

Welcome back to the Halloween Haunter’s Reality series. This second installment contains three main segments. The first, features footage of my scarecrow corpse after turning it into a fogger prop. The second segment includes my recent trip to Party City to check out their Halloween displays which, unfortunately, weren’t ready yet. And the third, features more detailed footage of the mache “corsping” process for my ground breaker skeleton.

The entire installment is split into two parts and can be viewed in the players below. Once again, the music featured on my stereo, during the corsping segment, is by raison d’etre.

Thanks for joining me for this second Halloween Haunter’s Reality installment.

Part 1

Part 2

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Halloween Haunter’s Reality

John Wolfe — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:18:03 +0000

Over the course of the next sixty three days I’ve decided to do a sort of reality video blog series- Halloween style. Each video will feature “fly on the wall” type recordings of my nine week prep work counting down to Halloween night. I have a lot of projects ahead of me- some I may finish, some I may not, but it’s my intention to document a large portion of these with short (roughly ten to twenty minute) video segments. Basically, I’ll be attaching the digital camera to my hip for the next several weeks. I’ll be taking it with me during every Halloween related trip or project I’m working on and grabbing footage along the way.

Since I’m emphasizing the reality portion of these videos, there’s not going to be any fancy camera work or great soundtracks. The footage will be posted as is, including all of the flaws, cracks and pops, with very little editing. I’ll be operating the camera myself, unless it’s set up on the tripod, so the majority of this series will be point of view shots.

While I’ve never been a fan of traditional reality programming, I thought this would be something really fun to do; since it’s actually about showcasing Halloween items and Halloween preparations instead of focusing on a person’s life.

The first video was recorded yesterday while I was adding skin and texture to a ground breaker skeleton in my garage. You can play it by following this link or watching it below in the embedded YouTube player. The running time is 7 minutes, 31 seconds. I hope you enjoy it!

The ambient music playing on my garage CD player, in this clip, is by raison d’etre.

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Halloween Haunter’s Reality #2