Tag: directors

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The Haunt Begins

The First Day

For all the previous posts, I have tried to create an air of mystery to enforce the realism. That clearly hasn't worked. I'm Mark, I am the one of the Directors here at the Dread House. Last night I spent 2 hours packing my car, yes my car with the entire marquee for this year's haunt. I manage to fit a 12m by 6m tent in my car, not set up obviously, with the tools to build it as well, plus the covers. My car is a low rider now, there are many speed bumps at Capel manor, I will take it easy.

Today is the first day that we will be building over the course of the week. The marquee and inner walls go up and then over the coming days the props get installed. There is a lot to do, since we have spent a year putting it together, a lot of it is in pl;ace already. I would here a plan here but I don't want to ruin the surprise, you will only have to wait two weeks and the plan will be published on the 'Experiences page', click on now for previous haunts, please finish the blog first.

This is the first morning and I will plan to write a progress blog everyday until the 29th October (the final day and pack down). I hope you will see what goes into building a haunt, the things that go well, how we create things on the fly and solve challenges along the way.

Day One

My plan for this year's haunt has been developed over the year since last November. The experience was decided on November the 1st 2024, to be build it took a period of ten months. There were a few minor teething problems, the idea and concept was sound, the issues arose on minor things like hanging the material on the walls. Theses were solved in a matter of minutes. The team for today Was Jordan, June, Jake, Baris, Lucas and Myself. By 5pm the whole structure, tunnel and some of the internal walls were up. Although we are still building, it doesn't look like an dis organised mess. I am looking forward to tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Mark. 🙂

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99 Spooky Days

Jordan

The Dread House where do I begin, this place is way more than just some horror attraction. It's literally built by the same people who run it. We have built what feels more like a family over the past years we have been creating and running this experience. We put our all in for each other like all the planning behind the scenes having meetings to discuss how to make things run smoothly and more efficiently, and way too many late nights spent building walls, wiring lights, and figuring out how to scare the life out of people in the best way. All of us have a passion for creating something that sticks with you but more than that its an experience to remember. We all put a lot of effort into creating these experiences and love to hear back from our guests what they enjoyed about the experience as it drives us to push ourselves harder the next year. Hope to see you all at these years haunt but remember we are always planning the next big scare.

Mark

This year as any has not been without challenges, usually though, they come in the form of physical restrictions of what we can do inside the Dread House. In the effort to streamline and make the experience more efficient and less cumbersome, the challenges come in the form of limitations we can achieve as attractions. So far, we have had all of our remaining crew, directors and actors suffer in some physical way. It is not appropriate to list people’s illness’s etc but needless to say, it makes this year’s event all the more poignant, in light of what people have had to overcome. 99 days as of this post are left and now it is coming together, we are gathering what is needed to start the haunt build. The first of the new films has been made, well within the Dread House style. Now comes the flurry of ideas and creative posts to promote and get into the spirit, pun intended. It was made very clear to me by all parties involved, it is way more than an opportunity to entertain, scare, engage the general public, it is a vehicle for our own development, enjoyment and artistic expression. The Dread House is a fun experience for everyone on all levels.

June

This is only my second year doing the dread house but I am so exited for it. There is a lot of behind the scene work that people do not see I would say we started probably getting ready for it in April. I think this was the first time I probably bonding with some of the other people in this project. I am beyond proud to be apart of this. I think this year's one looks way better then last year, it seems way more spooky. I have always loved acting and I also love scaring people so I feel like I fit right into the dread house. We still have a lot more preparation to do before October be we have an amazing team of people who are very dedicated so I know we will get it done. And we will definitely see a lot of terrified faces this year.
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