This year being pressed for time, as always,
I devised a "drop skeleton".
It was intended to suddenly scare
patrons, in the same manner as
a pop-up prop. I have two actors
in the "Haunted Garage", so
although prop reset had to be done manually,
it took less
than 5 seconds to do so.
I only had Halloween day to assemble,
so please don't be too
hard on my "construction techniques",
and know that it
worked well for the 3 hours it had to
survive. The prop,
itself, was one of those 4.5 ft latex
skeletons,
painted the year before with white latex
and
silver on the skull.
I used a wireless (radio signal)
trigger, giving an actor the control of timing.
It greatly increases
job satisfaction when you can give actors control
over animatronics,
in addition to their own performance.
Here are two short (10 sec each)
video clips of the action:
(note in view #2 the strobe light illumination
at bottom of frame)
Assembly of Drop Skeleton
(click photos for larger image)
Before drop
After drop
The skeleton was hung by its two ankles
from garage ceiling, using lengths of rubber tubing;
this gave it a nice "spring like bounce"
as the rubber tubes absorb shock of fall.
I used a 7 gal air tank; filled occassionally
with a portable "tankless compressor". The compressor
was not hooked to tank permanently; however
very little air was used for each drop.
Also shown are the (1) wireless transmitter
(board mounted inside box) and air solenoid valve.
I needed a 3-way valve but my supply of
these was already in use, so I converted a 4-way
valve(2) into the function of a 3-way.
Something heavier than the skeleton was
needed to hold it up against the ceiling via a taut cord passing through
a ceiling mounted pulley. I had an old cast iron hunk of metal
that "fit the bill". So I mounted
a 3-inch stroke air piston on a piece
of plywood (1) and bolted it to the cast iron (2).
For cord, I used flexible (pink colored)
wire. It was the only flexible material available at my
house (had no time to shop) with enough
diameter so that it wouldn't slip off
the pulley wheel and get stuck between
the pulley frame and wheel.
In this close up view of the Bimba air
piston (2) you can see the piston fully extended,
with a key ring (4) holding the wire cord,
which in turn holds up the skeleton against the ceiling.
Note the "strip clip" (3) that allows
the piston to move but forces the key ring loose
when the rod suddenly retracts.
The taut portion of the cord (5) above the key ring is
holding the weight of the skeleton against
the ceiling; below the key ring is
un-tensioned "release cord" whose
end is stapled to the plywood (1).
This provides the means of manual reset.
After the fall, this
length of cord is merely pulled to draw
skeleton back
against ceiling and then key ring is slipped
back
onto the end of the piston rod to hold
skeleton
in place.
View of pulley
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