Our premier 2006 prop gets resurrected!

Back in 2006 we spent hundreds of hours on this prop, only to have it seriously damaged on Halloween eve by some careless construction workers. Here's the 2006 Well To Hell Project Details. In 2007 the well takes on a new (after) life, with a face lift and internal repairs to make it better than ever.

See the well in action here (short video)!

Note that all the initial construction details are on the 2006 project page; here I'm just going over the renovations and enhancements we made in 2007.

First, the well gets internal repairs. Damaged components from last year were repaired and the unit brought back to life.

Next we added a roof to the well - giving it more of a "well" look (as opposed to the "misplaced chimney"? look it had before).

You can see in the photo above the rear view of the well, with the frame installed above for the new roof.

And above the roof is fitted with tarpaper (to make sure its waterproof) before applying the shingles. Below you see the cedar shingles we used, an in-progress shot (one side shingled awaiting trim at top); and a shot of the completed roof.

Next the innards got a nice primer coat to help ensure the well stands up to inclement weather (it IS designed to be run out in the open after all);

You can see the light mounts where the red and yellow floods are mounted (they trigger when the demon springs from the well amongst all the smoke). There's also a shot from the back where you can see the cylinder mount that raises the demon.

Not pictured here - but we also took the opportunity to "mount" three fluorescent black-light fixtures on the back side of the well. Two 2-foot fixtures were mounted vertically on the back of the vertical supports for the roof; and a 4-foot fixture was mounted inside the front of the roof facing the back wall. All are hidden from view and all come on to illuminate invisible UV-paint writings on the wall behind the well on queue from our spell-casting witch.

One of the major improvements (aka "fixes") made in 2007 was moving the electronics box out from inside the well and mounting it on the back wall. The contortionist maneuvers necessary to get into the box inside the well got really old quickly. Mounting on the outside (yet behind the well where it's still out of view) was a big help.

And finally, some touch up was done to the demon itself. Though not visible in the pictures the guide pole (the PVC pole alongside the cylinder you see from behind that keeps the demon head pointed forward and not twisting around) was redesigned. It's a pole-within-a-pole (a 3/4" PVC pipe mounted to the wooden demon-head platform and extending down about 14") with another pole (1/2" PVC) mounted at the bottom of the well and extending upward inside the other pipe. They pipes keep the whole mechanism from turning side-to-side after it raises/lowers each time. You can see the mechanism below.

Also pictured in the shot above is the "dressing" we added to the demon. A piece of black fabric mounted to the wooden platform the head rests on and hanging down. This material shields the cylinder from view when the head is fully extended. We added a chunk of 2x4 stapled to the bottom of the material and another small piece of wood stapled about halfway up the material (on the inside) to help  weigh the material down so it settled straight down  - and didn't interfere with the cylinder or the fog machine.

Here's a diagram of the electronics controlling the well (click on it to see full-size version):

Also our well witch (the spell caster) needed some repairs and sprucing up. One of the first things we noticed was that her speech, though really cool, was too long; most TOTs never stuck around through the whole speech. So, the speech was shortened and the PROP1 program that controlled the whole show was adjusted to shorten the length of the show as well. We cut it down to just over 30 seconds start-to-finish. This seemed to work well as most TOTs (aside from those who were terrified and ran past it) did actually stop long enough to see the whole show.

Here's a shot of the well witch as she looked last year. Catherine did some fixing up on her and got her looking much more... inviting? :-)

And here's a shot of how the whole scene looked at "show time"!