plan for next year.

[mbudenske]

.
We build our walls out of a wooden frame (2 x 8; 3 x 8) and streach sheets over them staple then paint. after two or three coats of paint the sheet gets hard almost like wall board but much lighter. We have almost 200 now. We build a few new ones every year. Sheets and paint can be gotten for free. Call the paint stores for "oops paint" and call motels for their old sheets. I use 2 X 1 X 8' furring strips that cost about $2. each to make the frames. They are light, easy to move, can be painted different for different years. when we put the pannels up we leave gaps that are just hung with a sheet. That allows the actors to move back and forth between scares.
You paint old sheets black and hang on walls and ceilings to cover. Paint the sheet before you hang it or it will bleed through to the wall. We have a couple of hundred painted sheets and add some every year.

We have not had to pay for any sheets. Most of the paint has been donated. One paint store was willing to put the tint for black into their oops paint for me.

A bonus is that latex paint won't burn. although the wood frame and the material under the paint will. I buy New York Invisishield and spray everything down every year. 5 gallons is around $250. When we are haunting with only about 3,000 sq. ft., the 5 gallons lasted for two years. Last year with 10,000 sq. ft we used the whole 5 gal.

Keep a staple gun and some screws handy as someone always gets scared and runs through a wall pannel. repairs are quick and easy however.

[hoffie08]

thanks a lot i will look at them

[Front Yard Fright]

Also, if you are short on live actors, you could look into making some mannequins and dress them up to be clowns. Then you could have a room full of about 3 to 5 clowns and have one a live actor. And even then you could maybe switch out the masks on the mannequins ever night to change things up if somebody were to come through again.

The cheapest way to do a haunt is of course to build as much as you can on your own. So rather than buying different props and stuff like that, try and make your own. I highly suggest you check out www.hauntforum.com and www.halloweenforum.com and see what they have to offer. I have a feeling you'd get a lot more help there than on here because this is more of a place for pro haunters.

[hoffie08]

thanks man i will do that

[Front Yard Fright]

And if you're looking for props and masks (Thought it might be a little too late now) But check your local Halloween stores for after Halloween sales. Each year we go out a buy as much as we can seeing as they have 50% to 75% off discounts.

Spirit has/had a bunch of stuff 50% off on their site. Might want to check that out too. www.spirithalloween.com
.

[hoffie08]

thank i was going to do a jack in the back and the door thing maybe 2. thanks for the help

[Front Yard Fright]

Talk to your friends about helping you out. I started my haunt when i was a freshman in high school and I had some of my friends help out.... Then as time went on and we got bigger we had people contacting us wanting to help out... And this year we had a crew of about 20 people a night and we had a few nights we had to turn people down because we simply just didn't have the space or costumes for that many people.

As far as walls go, there are two ways we do our walls for our haunt. For our outdoor haunt we used plywood with 2x4 frames. For our indoor (Garage) haunt we use OSB with 2x3 frames. OSB is much cheaper than plywood (1/2 the price) however, it doesn't hold up after being in the rain for long. You can get "wafferboard" (A really thin sheet of OSB) for about 4 to 5 bucks. 2x3s run about 1.75 around here. It's relatively cheap, but things do add up!

We've done a clown room for the past 3 years and next year I plan on adding a whole new haunt with a circus/side show/fun house theme to it. Some rooms that I'm planning are a jack-in-the-box room, a monkey cage, hall of mirrors, a "wheel of death" room, and a hallway with tons of doors that they have to find their way out of.

It all comes down to time, money, space, and actors. If we all had plenty of that the world would be a great place.
.

Good luck!

[hoffie08]

i am looking for props walls mask so f u have same u want to sell send me pics at dhoff_13@yahoo.com and i will look at them and see if i like the tell me the price u want to sell them for to.
thanks
hoffie08

[hoffie08]

dont the people just see right through it then

[hoffie08]

thanks i will look into that

[Lord Barnabus]

Another way to do wall panels on your cheap budget is to use pallets. You can usually get them for free from places like K-Mart, construction companies, newspaper and printing companies. You can either strip the planks off and build your own panels, or screw the pallets together to form wall panels.

Or check with companies that haul manufactured homes. They use wood panelling to transport the homes, and some of these companies throw away the panels after a home has been moved.

Moving companies like Roger Ward, Red Ball, Allied and others have large wood crates that get beat up over the years. At some point in time they fall apart. You could check with these companies to see if you can have the boxes that fall apart.

[hoffie08]

i said how much $ i will have in the first post and i have few actors. so idk what to do.

[shawnc]

o thats cool but idk if i will have a lot of people to have 2 in a room.

Then that brings up one of the quandaries (spelling?) in putting on a haunt, and especially in doing one on a budget.

Do you have a lot of animatronics (expensive) and few actors, or do you have few animatronics and a lot of actors (also expensive)?

You can always seek out volunteers, but you need to figure out how much you can spend and what you can realistically do with that money.

[hoffie08]

o thats cool but idk if i will have a lot of people to have 2 in a room.

[UnDeRTaKer313]

well for over the top..
we had two clowns one had air horn and then we had him jumping off the walls and then in corner we had a clown juggling real machetes it was amazing!