HAuNTcon Day 4 (the seminar)

Had a little trouble sleeping having gone to bed so late and thinking about the seminar. We didn't plan on attending any of the morning seminars so we slept in and ordered room service breakfast.

I posted some blog entries. We headed down to the show at about 11am. We took a brief look at the creative class room we were speaking in and it was bigger than we thought. We sat in a class in it for a while but then left. The show floor opened up at noon so we took a look around to scope out our purchases.

I talked to Leonard Pickel about getting something we could use as a stand for holding up our background and he kindly lent us a sign stand he had that worked great (thanks Leonard!) We walked around the show for a while and then headed to our room to order some room service lunch (bar wasn't open and the restaurant was called the "Cattleman's Club" - yep, just full of vegetarian food - like the rest of Texas).

We reviewed our presentation which was good because the movie wasn't working (tension rising) and we had to download the backup copy I uploaded to our website (thankfully) but I couldn't remember what I called the file! Finally figured it out (in the nick of time) and got it downloaded and the PPT working perfectly. Now if Chris can just operate it correctly during the presentation :)

Packed up all our stuff and headed to our seminar at 2:30 (30 min to go). We unpacked and put the backdrop on the stand. Got our stuff setup while the other group was taking down.

We had some trouble with the laptop showing on the projector (funny a video effects talk with the projector not working, not!) We winged it for 15 min while they fixed the projector but the attendees had tons of questions (mostly about the yard) and we were happy to answer. Finally got the projector working and the talk went smoothly. We were able to get a volunteer (the lovely Marianne (sp?) - if you read this email us, we would like to send you your "ghost") to do the video and created a short video right in the class.


The time went fast and before we knew it we were done. Everyone enjoyed the class and we talked to people afterwards who said it was great, and asked a lot more questions. If you were in the class and did not get a handout, check out our website to download it, or email me and I will send you a color print out in the mail.

We went to the show floor and ordered some skeletons from The Skeleton Store (we are going to use them for the charity auction items this year, so if you want a realistic skeleton, buy a raffle ticket!) Stopped by our Froggy's Fog friends (I still owe them some wine) and bought some Swamp Juice. (We were using the regular Fog Juice, we will see if this one is better.) One of my favorite vendors, their name is Froggy, as the Frog Queen (I have hundreds of minions at my desk), what is not to like, and they love good Cabernet's! Now that is almost heaven :) Crap, I now have a John Denver song stuck in my head.....you too? Sorry about that.

Picked up prop controllers from EFX-TEK and met (the delightful) Amber (blessed be to you too honey!) They were as helpful as ever and we look forward to seeing them again at the RMG. We talked with Kim and Bert (and met their son Adam) at Mini Spotlight about their new products. I even had a long chat with the Smooth-On folks about their products and they gave me a sample of a brushable rubber I didn't have.

We went to the dinner at 6pm with 4 tables of haunters and had a nice dinner and chatted with some great people from Ohio and Chicago (and a home haunter.) This was a new experiment for Leonard, we have a good time and with a few suggestions would recommend it to anyone next year.

We boarded the bus at 7:15 and went to Phobia to tour their haunt. They had 4 of their 5 haunts open and we waited in line for each one and went through. The 3-D clown haunt was wild and the other 2 demented haunts were intense. They put on a good show. We got back on a bus and were back by 10pm so we went back to the bar and got some food and drinks and hung with a fellow haunter Don from Seattle who does fantastic makeup for EMT training. (realistic severe injuries). Got to bed at a decent time so we could go to classes all day on Saturday.