Halloween-L Haunt Video
Click the link below to watch the movie or right-click and select "Save Target As" to save the movie to your hard disk. Note: both movies use the Divx codec. Divx is a popular codec so if you can't play the video, consider going to www.divx.com and downloading the free codec.
HauntVideo-large.avi (25mb large size video)
HauntVideo-small.avi (8mb small size video)
NEW! Zachary Washington (Scareside Studios) made this awesome remix of my pathetic audio (see full story below) soundtrack. He has generously granted me permission to host it on this site and permit downloads. If you want to check it out, click here (2.3mb .mp3 music file)
The Halloween-L group is an active group of hundreds of people who create Halloween props and homemade haunted houses. Professional haunters are also known to frequent the group.
In 2002 I decided to collect everyone's home movie of their haunted house and compile them onto a series of cd's. Since I had all of the raw footage in high-rez on my computer, it seemed a natural step to collate the best of the best into a short video.
Early in the project I decided only to use moving props or footage of props that moved, to give the video a lot of energy. I cut out the 1-2 second clips of dozens (hundreds?) of props in action and consolidated them into groups (skeletons, graveyards, etc.) then put them together in a manner that made for an interesting video.
Knowing I needed some good sound for the movie, I first tried to select Public Domain screams and thuds and gurgles but the results were not very satisfying, so in desperation I ended up with the idea of a "music video". This was kind of a last resort as I have no music ability or talent at all. I thought about recruiting someone with musical ability but I kinda wanted this to be "my" project, my little something that I give back to the Halloween community that has given me so much over the years.
So I settled on a "voice over" style, with me talking in the background. I whipped out my handy dandy beat-generator and spent some time coming up with a funky beat for it. Then I recorded the voice-overs and spent some time laying them down at specific times in the audio. Once I had the video done, the base beat done and the voice-over done, I was ready to start experimenting with a melody.
That's when it happened.
For some unknown reason, both the music file and its two backups died. I was using Cakewalk to do the music and their tech support was unable to solve my problem. Poof, game over. Faced with nothing but my in-progress .wav (sound) file and the thought of re-creating the whole thing from scratch, I decided that it was "done" as-is.
I hope you enjoy watching it!
Mark