Good morning,
this is a short post just to share some news that we heard early this morning. Sadly the long battle that Brian Wolfe has had with pancreatic cancer is over, It is a great loss and our thoughts are with his family. RIP
Afternoon,
The fact that there are only 25 days to go before our first live evening became very apparent today. With the clearing up from our weekend gigs and all hire equipment returned, today has been a planning day for some of the final scene layouts and the opportunity to put schedules together for the build at Tulleys Farm. A huge amount of work has already occurred, with marquees in place and containers into the corn field, it is now the job of the Twisted Technicians to make them come alive.
Twisted Maze is well underway and some fairly substantial changes have already happened to the Cellar, but a few more are also planned. This will be the fifth season for the Cellar, so it is due a small facelift and i am sure the changes will be appreciated.
The Hayride is also having a few new tricks put in this year, so watch out for those, i will not reveal the plans just yet. Hell-Ements is also having a small revamp and a new sound track is going to be put together in the coming weeks. So that leaves us with the Creepy Cottage staying as an old favourite with proposals for some new lighting and the Field of Screams....or newly named for 2013 as Woodshock. A twist on the field being the aftermath of a festival, there are some firm favourites being adapted and some new concepts for the field, this is going to be a lot of fun to build.
We are also having a new element this year, live entertainment in the form of a stage area, this will be a first for the site and a huge amount of planning has gone into make this work for this year, logistics, bands, location and access as well as all of the technical requirements.
So i will Leave you with the short trailer for this years event, and post the updates as they happen.
The weather is turning, Autumn is coming and so is Halloween.
Good Morning,
The new website is live, there are a few teething problems with the media pack which is being dealt with right now, so i thought i would put in a preview of the new flip book on here, and if you would like to take a look at the new site please visit www.funfear.co.uk
Good evening,
As some of you may well know, the corn crop in the UK was not great last year. Many of the farm parks who rely on this for both summer fun mazes and obviously the much more interesting corn mazes for halloween suffered very severely with the lack of growth.
So as we were collating pictures in the office earlier, a few appeared from last years crop. i have laid them side by side, and the difference is astonishing. The good news is clear....this year we have a canvas to work with.
Good Morning,
this is a really quick post just to let everyone know that the final testing of the website is happening today, and hopefully a new faster streamlined website will be up and running in the next day or so. I will post a quick entry as soon as it has gone live.
August is drawing to a close at an alarming rate. The Halloween bug has bitten and all the crew are firmly into the swing of design, creating and installing for the fast approaching pinnacle of our year.
With plans being sent all over the country, the administration is certainly beginning to take its toll on my brain..! The designs we have been given to work on are amazing, and with potentially 8 new attractions to build before the first week of October, we really do have our work cut out for us.
New emergency control panels and lighting designs as well as custom sound tracks and effects will certainly fill up the next few weeks.
FunFear have been developing and fine tuning our new DMX programmer as well as some new LED fittings. Production is in full flow and we will be taking delivery in the coming days of the new units. We have utilized a reliable proven LED unit, that is robust and dimmable to create one of the most discreet fittings there is for haunted attractions. This is going to be added very shortly to our ever expanding product lines and in a choice of popular colours. Approximately 300 will be used this season in different attractions and we will put up some pictures to show the effects in the coming weeks.
Recent Projects
In the last few weeks we have been busy building a few of our Emergency Control Panels. Below is a small video that we put together showing a brief outline to the build process. The panel featured here is a custom build and design for a customer in Phoenix, AZ. it was a great challenge and obviously a little different in respect of wiring colours compared to the UK. It incorporates a brand new solid state sound store from the same people who supply our usual card readers, but this has a small built in amplifier and easily provides a simple show solution as well as evacuation track.
A New Paint Job
FunFear were asked to carry out a technical refit recently, obviously not a problem, new sound system and a complete overhaul of their lighting system as well. It was decided that the old lighting units were not really going to make the grade and so a decision was made to replace them with newer more efficient Led units.The unit was agreed on and we offered a custom programming service to boot. Only fly in the ointment was a small suggestion of colour matching the current decor. So it was a strip down and full spray job and refit, to be honest i had my doubts but the end result was excellent, a very discreet functional unit that looks like it belonged and had been in place for many years. Final testing and programming will be carried out on Thursday, i will post some pictures of the results, until then take a look at the paint work below.
This year is just flying by, it seems I have very little chance to sit and catchup on even the simplest of tasks. So what have FunFear been up to? Product testing, designing all sorts of crazy stuff, building amazing attractions..??
Well actually spring cleaning, not the most "Rock n Roll" or technical of terms but yet one of life's
necessary evils. I have actually seen the colour of my desk for the
first time in months and that is actually the truth! It has been long overdue. A complete restructure has been carried
out and some major changes to our equipment storage and workshops. With new products
coming in it has been a perfect time to actually throw out some of the
crap that we just seem to hoard! Although it is believed that if something is broken we can still salvage parts from it and is
often the case, we don't seem to discard the bits we don't need!
Well that has been sorted and a very brutal approach and for now a
system appears to be in place. With new flight cases, storage system and more racking I think we have it cracked.
So what else is new? The new website is in its final stages and being tested, there are a few nice touches and some additional information on there. Blog links to current stories will also be accessible direct from within the site. With a downloads page being added and a much more streamlined approach we are happy with the progress to date. We have also added a few tweaks to the current site and and testing the downloads page on there right now, so please feel free to have a look at the media pack that we have added as a PDF brochure. www.funfear.co.uk
Projects, well there are a few in the mix right now, our annual projects obviously taking up the usual time at this point in the year. Ensuring both staff and equipment are on site at the right time can be a logistical nightmare at times, but always interesting.
A complete re-design of one of the attractions for Tulleys Shocktober Fest and a revamp for several others is filling many hours currently. Sourcing props and designing both new lighting and sound systems as well as coming up with something new is always a great challenge. The new designs for Tulleys are already turning into lots of fun, I think it is a great concept and really looking forward to seeing this one come to fruition. Below is one of the teaser pictures for the new attraction.
Several other very interesting builds have come our way but at the moment I am afraid two of those attractions are under tight wraps and awaiting official launches and press release. So news will be released at the same time via this blog and Facebook pages.
However work is continuing to produce an amazing lighting system for a very unusual product called wovin wall. Although it is already possible to light this product, we have been approached to create a spectacular display and have risen to this and pictures will follow of that installation upon completion.
Good afternoon, I did promise some pictures of the trip to Dallas. However I found the videos from the trip a lot more informative than my pictures. So here is just one picture of the crazy FunFear Clown on the dance floor at the costume ball and below that are a few videos from the 2013 Hauntcon show. Check out more from this show and previous ones.
Morning, well I have arrived back safe and sound from Hauntcon, I have to say it was an excellent trip. I have some pictures to share with you however i will put that in another post.
So May is marching on, with seasonal events already being planned and kit being prepared we also have some panels to build in response to the Halloween Show we attended last month.
The emergency panel has taken off, with people realising that safety can be built into their events without compromising the integrity of the designs they have in mind. We have also been working on a unit for customers in the USA and have created the same high standard to suit the 115 VAC market. There is a small amount of clarification left for this but I believe it is just crossing the"T's" and dotting the"I's" now.
Also after many months of working with manufacturers directly to produce a safe LED fitting we have our pre production units for final testing. Yesterday saw a couple of us actually trying to destroy these fittings both mechanically and electrically.
The results are excellent as is the size, 12V DC units, that are capable of being dimmed, using our MOSFET control units or DMX decoders.
Three days to go before I leave the shores of this island and head to some warmer climes. Dallas Fort Worth is the destination for the next FunFear road trip. I am heading to HAuNTcon 2013 to explore some amazing haunts and attractions in the pre show tours and then on to network with operators and suppliers thought the 3 day trade show. As well as the opportunity to brainstorm with product suppliers it is always a pleasure to enjoy the education sessions and seminars. This all builds to what is usually an excellent evening of outrageous drinking and partying at the costume ball, this years theme being a "Texas Chainsaw Masquerade". To say I was looking forward to this would be an understatement. I will take pictures and share those on my return.
On another slightly different note, after the months of development time spent on our polarity safe LED fittings, we have a new product coming from our manufacturer. Apparently they have further developed our initial design and have made some minor improvements, we will carry out some testing ourselves next week. I am also happy to announce that we will be offering a matt black version of the unit in the coming months. This has been an enormous challenge and athough the external colour is rarely of importance, (especially as you are supposed to be scaring the guests....not giving them time to be looking at the installations) we have achieved what at times appeared to be impossible.
I will keep everyone up to speed on that and a new updated website is being developed which will incorporate a product page with all of our LED products and control system options on as well as our recommended sound stores and MP3 player.
Well it is fair to say that 2013 is proving to be a very productive and interesting year so far.
The twisted technicians have been working very hard in the R and D office refining a new control system for scare attractions. A modular fully controllable unit that can be integrated into just about any attraction to provide control via just about any switch, whether it be pressure mat, break beam or PIR. Output can then be provided to control either relays, servos or dimming circuits for LED units. We are working with an improvement to enable the controller to work over Ethernet and provide remote control and also ultimately a complete DMX over Ethernet system. That will be a few months away i think but at the moment we have working models and the MK3 unit is proving to be one of the most versatile control systems i have seen for mazes and walk through attractions.
We have also been playing with the now world famous Raspberry Pi, this has been a lot of fun and i think with some more time spent on the programming it will be possible to use this very unique unit to provide a black box system for show control and video output.
So February saw the opening of the London Dungeons new site. Sitting very comfortably on the south bank, it certainly feels like it has been there forever. FunFear were invited as guests to view the new location and attraction with a full technical tour. It was an excellent evening and was very interesting to see the techniques used within. Visitors will be pleased to know that although a new building and some new theming as well a new tag line, some firm favorites still remain, as well as some excellent use of new technologies, i would highly recommend a visit if you are visiting London
March saw the final planning and preparation for the fast approaching Halloween Show at Alton Towers.
A site visit was planned and Sally Duguid from the team behind the show, myself and another one our tech guys spent many hours in the capable hands of the Alton Towers event team, a plan was coming together.
The team behind the Halloween Show had a vision of what they wanted. It was very apparent that Alton Towers would provide a perfect location and back drop that would be very hard to match anywhere else. A trade show, speakers from throughout the scare industry, the presentation of Scare awards in one venue. This was going to be a lot of fun. Many hours of planning were still to come though.
April 10th brings the day of the show, all the hours of planning and organising had come to fruition.
Trade stands in place, AV in the right places as well as the other all important starting of the coffee machines, my guys had been up early rigging lighting and control systems and there had been no time for breakfast, so coffee was clearly required.
Delegates arriving, and they appeared to just keep coming, i am not sure of the final numbers on the day but it was an excellent turnout, with delegates from as far afield as Germany, The Netherlands and Jersey. Some familiar faces and a lot of new ones.
I was giving a talk on technical aspects of running a scare attraction, covering some very basic considerations for both lighting and sound installation, as well as demonstrating a new control panel to the industry which provides an option to change sound effects to suit the audience, so daytime events will probably require a very different feel to a night time or dark attraction. As well as the sound switching the panel also provides emergency switching allowing the show state to be dropped into flood lighting and emergency evacuation sound track. This was certainly received very well and a there was a lot of interest on the trade stand following the demonstration.
A great day all round, with workshops and technical talks running along side business seminars creating a huge variety of interest and catering for just about everybody's tastes.
The evening saw a rare opportunity to have a lights on tour of the sanctuary, as well as a full live run, a pleasure for all us techies, a chance to see what we are up against in the tech rooms of our attractions, very interesting opportunity and thoroughly enjoyed.
The night was not done, with the Scare Awards being presented and a chance to let our hair down, drinking, dining and dancing was also still to come.
Well done to all the people behind The Halloween Show, an excellent job well done, Check out their website via The Scare Network here
I would also like this chance to thank my excellent crew for the hard work and long hours they have put in this year already, it is very humbling to see the dedication and commitment they give to the FunFear brand. Thank you.
