# Hi-Rez Designs: Pirates of the Caribbean - 2011 Halloween Home Haunt Display



## creeeepycathy (Jul 12, 2011)

Oh My Goodness!!!!! That is freakin' AMAZING!!!!! Love everything about it!!!


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## jdubbya (Oct 4, 2003)

Really hard to describe this in words. This is something I would love to see in person. Remarkable presentation and the detail is nothing short of movie set quality. This would win best home haunt hands down. So enjoyable to watch! What's on tap for next year? lol!


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## matrixmom (Oct 29, 2010)

Boy - I'm glad you actually run a business! I would have felt so inadequate here! Its greatttt!!! I wish I was your neighbor. !


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## madmangt (Sep 4, 2009)

Amazing! Wonderful work as always! Do you have a tutorial for those cannons yet!?


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## Terribletony (Sep 9, 2004)

WOW!!!nuff said


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## cyberhaunt (Oct 23, 2006)

That is an amazing display! I want to dable with motion in my display next year.


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## ReaperRick (Sep 2, 2009)

WOW!! 
ok, that was the coolest display/show!! Thanks for posting it.


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## Its the Great Pumpkin (Jun 20, 2010)

WOW Rez! Awesome! Just Awesome!


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## 22606 (Aug 11, 2008)

That is wicked! Great job, hirez00


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## larry (Apr 5, 2002)

This is absolutely my favorite display of all time. I bow to your brilliance. 
Most of it is very close to the actual attraction.


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

*Hi-Rez Designs: Home Haunt 2011: Pirates of the Caribbean: Photos - 1*


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

*Hi-Rez Designs: Home Haunt 2011: Pirates of the Caribbean: Photos - 2*


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## BeaconSamurai (Nov 5, 2009)

I would think that your awesome display would bring a smile onto Walt's face. Congratulations on a job done to the highest of levels. Now if we could only get you and Terra to live on the same block!


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## Rynnye (Oct 24, 2010)

This is by far one of the best haunts I have ever seen!!!! Absolutely incredible and the details are phenomenal!!! Wow!!!!!! If I hadn't known any better I think you would have filmed it at Disney POC. Fantastic job!! I only wish I could have seen it in person.


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

We named the dog "WALT" after Walt Disney. My only regret is I never had the chance to shoot the reaction of the little kids that watched the display in action. Some screamed, some cried, most sang along, but they all SMILED ... that's until the EEL came shooting out at the end. 1 kid wet his pants ...



Thank you for the kind words.


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## halloween71 (Apr 22, 2007)

Disney has nothing on you!!!!
Great job as always!!
Did you do your graveyard this year?


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

Yes we did setup the cemetery but it looked basically the same as last year with a couple additions / subtractions.

Unfortunately, due to some "technical difficulties", we never even got to setup the "ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE" are on the other part of the yard / lawn even though EVERYTHING was built and done including 8 zombies and a collapsing telephone poll. 

Real shame ... will have to wait another year, but the nice thing is we can now concentrate on "details" that were overlooked or we didn't get a chance to do this year ...


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## billman (May 1, 2006)

Amazing!!! Just amazing!!


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## buckaneerbabe (Apr 28, 2007)

You also got my vote for the Best Ever home haunt, hands down!!!!


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## cinders (Oct 12, 2003)

Absolutely amazing! Gotta say, I love that dog!


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## HalloweeenSis (Sep 9, 2011)

WOW! That is the most impressive home haunt of all time. Amazing job.


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## CaptnJackSparrow (Jul 5, 2007)

Avast thar, HiRez!! 'tis a worthy display indeed!! Be a lucky skallywag tha' signs on wit' yer crew! Th' animatronics be 'mazin'!


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## camsauce (Sep 20, 2008)

Incredible! Please tell me for next year you are working on a miniature boat and pond that you can float your guests in for that extra feel. Talk about saving a trip to Disneyland. I really really want to know about two things:

1) The cannons are awesome, it looks like there's a red CFL in there but would like to see how the general construction of these was done and how you synched up the fog, sound, and lighting.

2) The water caustics on the treasure was super sweet, was this done just using rear projection or something else?


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## Ghost of Spookie (Sep 28, 2008)

Wow, that was impressive and fun to watch. Hats off to you. I've been looking at your DVDs for a little while now and guess not at all surprised to see an animated haunt of this caliber coming from you. 

Great home layout to do something like this too. i've always loved U-shaped homes or those with interior courtyards. When we moved to Calif we looked at a number of homes in this style. That's when homes were being fought over in the bidding, and we ended up with a different plan. Curious if your home is an Eichler. It certainly has a lot of great glass for doing something like this. 

Have a couple of questions about how you ran the haunt. Did you have kids wait a little until you had a larger group to run them through? Did you tell kids a head of time how long it would be before they would get their candy?...Assuming that they got their candy at the end. Sometimes kids seem in a big hurry to hit as many houses as they can and basically do a hit-and-run and you barely get to see their costumes. 

Thanks for posting your video and pics and sharing it all with us. Now I know where Bobzilla's eel and kelp, etc went on halloween.


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## Rania (Oct 27, 2011)

Utterly fantastic!


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## Rania (Oct 27, 2011)

My favorite is the sign. But that's because i love making them. The talking skeleton blows me away. You gonna give us the inside scoop on how you made that?


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## scubaspook (Sep 8, 2009)

Great show and dispaly. I was wondering when you were going to post your display. Was this the only setup you did? Where did you put your dancing bride and groom?


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## doto (Nov 20, 2009)

> Real shame ... will have to wait another year, but the nice thing is we can now concentrate on "details" that were overlooked or we didn't get a chance to do this year ...


You overlooked some of the details????


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## thunderchild (Jun 18, 2009)

Winner winner winner !!!!!!!!!


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## LittleBlueBMW (Oct 9, 2010)

damn.. I need to go down to LA to check out some haunts


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## Terra (Sep 23, 2007)

That was fun to watch. Loved the Bobzilla eel scare at the end. Bet it had the kids scramblin outta there.


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## Haunter (Oct 12, 2005)

Huzzah! You really outdid yourself this year.
That's a lot of Wally and Barney skeletons and motors.
I'm going to have to get the DVD for Christmas (sale anytime soon?).
I would love a tutorial of how you did your cannons (hint-hint!).


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## Dark Passenger (Aug 22, 2011)

You're a rock star, dude. Everyone who had a hand in the show deserves the highest praise.


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## kittyvibe (Oct 27, 2008)

I especially love the cannon scene and the captain hollering orders, everything else was great as well. Thank you for posting your video! I do have a question, how on earth did you get the Biscuit dog to stay awake? lol I bought one for last years haunt and he fell asleep so I got rid of him and went back to the drawing board. How did your stay peppy and awake?


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## ter_ran (Jan 14, 2006)

*Excellent job as always buddy! Looks like it was a true success for you on this Halloween night! Congrats to you for a job well done! *


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## halloween71 (Apr 22, 2007)

hirez00 said:


> Yes we did setup the cemetery but it looked basically the same as last year with a couple additions / subtractions.
> 
> Unfortunately, due to some "technical difficulties", we never even got to setup the "ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE" are on the other part of the yard / lawn even though EVERYTHING was built and done including 8 zombies and a collapsing telephone poll.
> 
> Real shame ... will have to wait another year, but the nice thing is we can now concentrate on "details" that were overlooked or we didn't get a chance to do this year ...


I will have to go back and look at last years than.I always love your graveyard to.Everything is always detailed perfect.Look forward to zombies next year!!!


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## halloween71 (Apr 22, 2007)

my favorite is the drunk pirate kinda reminded me of......me.
I need to put one of your dvds on my christmas list.Just need to decide which one to get.


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

My store / site will be having a BLACK FRIDAY (day after thanksgiving) SALE on all visual fx DVDs.

This is basically the only sale we do all year ... Up to 35% OFF, so if you are purchasing something for a fellow haunter for Christmas or you just want to treat yourself, make sure you mark your calendar. 

Thank you for all the great feedback and comments.


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

*Answers to Questions:*

Answers to some questions:

*Camsauce:*

1.) I emailed you about the cannons "situtation".

2.) The water effect on the treasure is from an "AMERICAN DJ H2O" unit mounted above. Got it for a very good price. I highly recommend it.

*Ghost of Spookie:*

1.) Yes it is an Eichler. Owned it for 11 years now ... when we move from California, will et you know when it is available. 

2.) Didn't have to wait for kids, there was a line that always built up to 20 people or so, so there was only a 2-3 minute delay between shows. People were advised the show would be about 10 minutes in advance. 99.9% of the people stayed to see the show and only a handful of "teenagers" didn't want to wait.

3.) Candy was always available, both before and after the show. Honestly, most kids after the show would forget to ask for the candy and left without it and my wife kept chasing them down the front steps to make sure they got some. We only handed out about 1/4 of the candy we purchased, even though we probably would have run out fairly early if each person took some.

_*Rania:*_

The skulls are 3-axis skulls with the bare internals purchased from www.triaxialskulllabs.com. I've found the Triaxial Skull kits to have the best movement for the price. $50 for the kit and $40 for all the servos needed and $12 for the skull. Skull is treated with Minwax Gel-Stain. The internal kit is The skulls themselves and the servos inside were purchased at a local hobby shop with a wholesale account. Everything is controlled with VSA Software from Brookshire, Relay boards from Animated Prop Systems (www.pimpmyprop.com) and the Servo Controller is a Lynx Motion SSC-32 card. Lighting FX are DMX dimmers (4 channels for $60). I used 3 DMX Dimmer boxes (12 channels) for the entire Pirate show.

_*ScubaSpook:*_

The Dancing Bride & Groom was in the cemetery in the front yard. Unfortunately I was not able to shoot any video of the cemetery this year because we had to dismantle the entire cemetery at 1AM Halloween night and bring it either in the house or in the back yard to avoid theft.

_*Doto:*_

Yes some details were overlooked in the Cemetery and the Zombie Apocalypse are wasn't even setup up due to time constraints and other issues. There additionally were some "missing" elements with the Pirate setup ... but unless you knew exactly what was missing, then you wouldn't know ... but I did and want to improve it next year.

_*KittyVibe:*_

The "Biscuit" dog was tough. I simply did not have time this year to "hack" the dog to be able to control it 100%, but what I did do it wire the power directly so as not to require batteries. I DID keep the batteries in it with a small piece of tape on either side of the battery to prevent actually running power. This was because the dog needs the "weight" of the batteries to balance properly when it lifts it's front legs.

Now the trick to keeping it awake was ... I only needed it to stay awake for about 2 minutes at a time. When you first turn it on, you have a good working reaction from the dog without it going to sleep for about 2 minutes. It would do some random things like shake it's head and lift it's paws, etc. Kind of like a temporary default actions. The TRICK, was to cut power to the dog right after 2 minutes or when the scene was over. When power was sent to the dog again, the dog would then run for about 2 - 3 minutes like before, just doing random things before it would try to go to sleep again. Basically I was controlling the power to it to only turn on when I needed it and then would turn it off and do it again when needed again. Think of it like "jump-starting" the dog.

The extremely loud noises like the cannons / guns firing, etc also would keep it "awake" ... cruel torture if it was real.

Next year I plan to hack the dog completely to be able to control it exactly how I want it and not, hope it would react when needed ... but fortunately "HE" did perform very well for the whole night and everyone wanted photos of him.

We made a dog collar with a name tag of "WALT" but forgot to put it on him Halloween night.

Thanks for the questions and comments.


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## The Halloween Lady (Jul 17, 2010)

^ I think everyone has summed it up pretty well! It is absolutely flawless!!!! Kudos to you.


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

*take down*

Originally we were going to keep the display up through Christmas (putting Santa hats on all the skeletons) but unfortunately we decided to dismantle the whole setup and store it along with all the other Halloween items (cemetery & zombie area that was not setup this year). 

The really sad part is what took months to build, design and setup only took 8 hours to dismantle. 

But, we expect to be able to set it up next year in a very short time.


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## CraigInPA (Sep 11, 2007)

The most impressive Pirate display yet!


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## dadgonemad (Oct 4, 2005)

Just amazing, Hirez. As a fellow pirate haunter, the scenes you chose to create are just perfect, and the execution was flawless. I hope to reach this level of sophistication one day.


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## offmymeds (May 26, 2010)

I would have kept it up all year and every time I was feeling like I needed a smile or big hug I would go turn everything on and just sit and watch................


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

I have the "video" for that. 

Besides, my wife would kill me if I left it up all year. She would dismantle it and would not be nice about it.


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## stick (Apr 2, 2009)

*WOW* I wish I lived closer to be able to see it in person. Great Job to all that help in putting that together.


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## stick (Apr 2, 2009)

*WOW* It was so good I screw up and posted twice.


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## Empty_W (Apr 28, 2009)

Awesome... so glad you are part of our community and willing to share some of you knowledge and experience with us.


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## HallowSusieBoo (Aug 11, 2009)

*You knock it out of the park as always HR!! Aaargh - I be willin' to sell my soul to the devil himself to set up this in my dungeon next year.... Aaaar matey!! *


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

I very much appreciate the kind words and feedback. 

Perhaps there is some confusion ... 

I am a basic home haunter ... I do not "build" or design props professionally.

Yes I make "visual fx" DVDs for other home haunters to enjoy and use, but as far as pneumatics, servos, programming and prop building ... That is my Halloween hobby / passion and have only been doing it for 2 halloweens seasons now. I didn't even really know what pneumatics WERE until early last year. This is all "fairly" new to me ... But I very much enjoy figuring it all out. Believe me, there is a lot of trial and error and experimenting and a patient and supportive family. 

99.9% of what you see in these videos and photos I learned to do from internet postings and forums like this one and of course, YouTube. 

With places like Halloween Forum and some of the great and generous people on here, I'd never be able to do any of the things I've learned to do this far. 

For that I THANK everyone here!


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## Raven's Hollow Cemetery (Jul 3, 2011)

Oooh, I'm slipping! I could have sworn I commented on your most excellent display...  I don't think I can express it any better than those that posted before me, but it is unbelievably awesome! Congrats on your success at pulling off a display of this magnitude. It is astounding, truly!  

Also, thanks for the request. I'm honored to accept.


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## geyser463 (Nov 14, 2011)

Love the whole display, really amazing work. How were the cannons built?


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## Halloween_Nut (Jun 15, 2010)

Wow Hirez, I’m blown away by your setup this year. I had no idea of what you were capable of when we met at Transword and I’m utterly impressed! I can only hope that it was my super-duper ultra-fantastic uber animatronic organist I built soooo long ago that inspired you.. Going to have to step up my game for next yet and see if I can give you a run for your money!


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## Phantom Blue (Sep 28, 2008)

Shiver me timbers! 

Yo-ho-ho, I'd be loaded to the gunwalks with admiration me bucko!

Just Awesome!

PB


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

You are correct, Mark ... It was all you.


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

*Q & A + FAQs*

Greetings all,

Been getting a lot of PM's from people asking how specific things were done ... With a lot of duplicate questions. 

Kindly post your questions here so we can answer them so everyone can benefit / learn at the same time. 

Ask about anything, EXCEPT the Pirate Cannons ... That is a very sore subject which I will perhaps explain at another time.

Thanks


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## madmangt (Sep 4, 2009)

Thanks for the opportunity... You mentioned earlier you emailed someone about the cannons, but i would love to see a run down here. I have never been able to find a system that looks as convincing as yours! Please reveal how it is done!


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## darkmaster (Apr 29, 2009)

You're very welcome. That's what the Forum is for.

You have done well for only 2 years.


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## ELH(Erin Loves Halloween) (Nov 5, 2008)

This completely inspires me for 2012, I love it


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## hirez00 (Oct 13, 2009)

Thanks Erin,

After discussing things with my wife and the other people involved, 2011 will probably be the last time we set up the "Pirates" display in our home. We had set it up for the past 2 years in the atrium of our house, which is behind closed doors and allows us time to set it up ... BUT we want to change it up for 2012 and use that space for our "Zombie Apocalypse" that we didn't have the space or time to set up last year. What I have designed for the "zombie" area is going to be HUGE and require a lot of building / time to create ... Which means it would need to be set up in doors, ie: the atrium.

Our "guests" seemed like they were disappointed this year (2011) because although the Pirates were upgraded and added to, it was basically the same. So, alas, the Pirates will probably have to go (not get used this year).

We will always do our "Cemetery", but this year we will be upgrading with a lot of new additions, mostly new moving props.


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## halloween71 (Apr 22, 2007)

Sad to see it go.But understand and look forward to see what you do this year.


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## darkmaster (Apr 29, 2009)

It's always good to change things up and keep it fresh and new. Unfortunately, it gets costly too!

Good luck with the new setup and keep us posted.


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## Hoodoo_Hermit (Nov 4, 2009)

I always look forward to seeing your haunt videos and was just as impressed as ever. Brilliant work and so much fun to watch. I'll be looking forward to your zombie apocalypse scene. Thank you for sharing and all the hard work you put into these great productions.


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## Haunter (Oct 12, 2005)

hirez00 said:


> After discussing things with my wife and the other people involved, 2011 will probably be the last time we set up the "Pirates" display in our home. We had set it up for the past 2 years in the atrium of our house, which is behind closed doors and allows us time to set it up ... BUT we want to change it up for 2012 and use that space for our "Zombie Apocalypse" that we didn't have the space or time to set up last year. What I have designed for the "zombie" area is going to be HUGE and require a lot of building / time to create ... Which means it would need to be set up in doors, ie: the atrium.
> 
> Our "guests" seemed like they were disappointed this year (2011) because although the Pirates were upgraded and added to, it was basically the same. So, alas, the Pirates will probably have to go (not get used this year).
> 
> We will always do our "Cemetery", but this year we will be upgrading with a lot of new additions, mostly new moving props.


Sad to hear you will not be flying the colors this year. If your "crew" is looking for a new (albeit temporary) port to haunt this year, tell them to navigate their way 1000 nautical miles due "north by west". Pirates once again this year but with a snazzy new pirates special-effects DVD.


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## Ween12amEternal (Apr 15, 2006)

Well, you can think of it as your pirates will get to haunt Davey Jones' Locker this year  Looking forward to the post for your zombie apocalypse haunt pics!


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