PANEL: Halloween Horror Nights at Spooky Empire

0:08 Halloween Horrnites revealed details on stage at Spooky Empire that's coming up on today's show. Welcome to the show. I'm Philip on the ah N Show. We bring you the news and information you need to prepare for Halloween. This show is just one small part of what we do, and the best place to find everything is in our free weekly industry newsletter. Check the link for that at our website or in the show notes. Okay. The creative team for Halloween Hornites at Universal Orlando Resort took the stage a last weekend at a Spooky Empire to discuss some details about this year's event. Of course, not everything, because they never do it that way, but they did tease a few things and go into more detail about one of the original houses that they announced there. Today we're playing that entire panel for you, and if you want to watch a video version of the panel, we have a link in our show notes provided by Kevin heinknek Okay, here we go in three two one.

1:04 How need a Mordonze panel underway? I just want to kindly ask that you please do not live stream this event. This is special for your us here this weekend at Spooky Empire, and before we get things under way, I'm going to hand the things off. He is the assistant director of Entertainment Production. Let's get clown, Let's getty. Oh my dann shit, Well night, Welcome to the Halloween Hornized panel. Everybody, We're incredibly excited to be here. I'm hoping you're all excited to be here as well as k Cade said. My name is Dan Shaw, and I am the assistant director of Entertainment Production, and I've been a producer. I'm Halloween Horonized for so many years now and NHT ten has been a part of my life for almost twenty years. And I'm just so incredibly excited to introduce you to some of my colleagues that I get to work with all the time, and to really take you on behind the scenes look at how we design, develop and produce h ten. Is that sound like something you want to hear about? That gonna be pret three you. Let's give a more round of blots for all the rest of our analysts. Have them come on out here. Paddy Brown, Well, well let's kill that again. Collines been round of the box

2:35 for everybody, all right, So we're gonna take about thirty minutes or so here to just kind of talk you through, like I said, that behind the scenes look of how we design, develop and produce such an incredible event. And then we're gonna hopefully have a little bit of time for a Q and A at the end and maybe have a little surprise or two along the way. That sound great, right? It was sood. So we're gonna kick us off. We're gonna start with Nicolette here, Niotte. Yeah, it's actually we're gonna do a quick introduction. I think that's a good place to start. Let's start with Ramone first, if you want to just tell us a little about yourself. Hey, everyone, how's it going. My name is Ramone. I am a show director with the creative development team at Universal with Entertainment, and currently I'm working on Halloween Horney's twenty twenty four, which we're all really excited about, right, And they get to work with these awesome people on the daily, So I'm very very fortunate. Hey everybody, I'm Nicolette Singer. I'm the producer of Halloween Hornites from the Entertainment production team. Just like Dan love Halloween Horenites. It's been my whole career that you know ever since I started at Universal, I actually started as this character, so this is really full circle for me and I'm really excited to be here. Hi, everybody, this is super exciting. I'm Kelsey. I am the production manager for Halloween Horrnites this year, so I work closely with Danna Nicolette and also very closely with everyone up here. I'm one Euthenek.

4:08 I'm a lighting designer and technical entertainment been at Universal for thirteen years now, so I love Halloween or Nights. It's a passion project. This is my first time is bookiemyer though, so excited to be Hi, guys. I'm Patti Briswell. I'm a senior manager with the Technical Entertainment Team. One of my co workers is Wendy Finnick. I work with an amazing group of hundreds of technicians that make Halloween happen. Managers and then designers like when do you help make sure that this is a reality for you? Guys? Thank you.

4:49 I'm Melissa Hill patrick Field, scenic producer for Halloween Ortonites, and I'm fortunate enough to get to work with some of the most creative people on the planet. Been at universals just sixteen years, a lot of wild and fun stuff and looking forward to seeing some more wild and fun stuff coming out this year. Hey guys, I'm Nick Collins. I'm a senior CD designer the Entertainment Department and been with the park about thirteen years and worked on a lot of the houses. You guys have probably gone through one hundred times, and I sweat a lot, but I'm not a stick arts Nikola. We obviously starts really early on in the process. It takes us a long time really to get things going. Can you talk us through how early these are?

5:31 Yeah, so, believe it or not, we've actually started on HHN twenty twenty five already. So it's about a fifteen month process. And we sit down with our creative development team and our technical entertainment team and we figure exactly how long we're going to need to concept all of that out, and then how much time we're going to need our urn to figure out the how to bring that all to life. And we can't really do that until our lovely friends over here in a creative development starts to concept those things. That's really the first step. So I'll pass it over to Ramon to not through that. Yeah, Vermone, I think that'd be a great thing. So if you can talk us through that concept phase really where we have an idea, we all have an idea of what we want to do, but you start to flesh out what that loves. The process is so collaborative. It usually starts in one big room with like twenty to thirty people all coming together throwing ideas on the board to figure out what concepts we want to move forward with.

6:24 Right, they're show and rankers in that room, and they're seeing designers, costume designers, a whole myriad of people who come together to come up with ideas to see what we can move forward with. Once we design what concepts we want to move forward with, then a show to writer and a designer are assigned to that hunted house, for example, and then from there they meet and start to flesh out the scene by scene, what are the environments we're looking at, what are some cool scares we can do? And then from there the thing that just kind of grows and grows and rows, and we get to a point where we can then start passing stuff off to our costume, makeup designers, lighting designers to start to bring all of those elements to life. So it starts with the spark of an idea again, people throwing things on the board, see what we gravitate towards, and then we pick our concepts, move forward and then fleshed out the rest of it from there. No, that's fantastic. And speaking of flighting designers, we happen to have one here on the panel. Needs so in this early concept phase, obviously, as Ramon said, some of the tech designers are also coming up work. Can you talk us through what that looks like and how you guys are integrated into a process. Sure, that's one of my favorite parts of the process is we're given the environment, we're given certain asks, but we're able to add our layer. That's when like all these tech layers start getting added and oh, it would be cool if we could do this.

7:35 So what if we, you know, created this thing over here. And then the collaboration kind of starts to grow and grow and grow, and we all kind of bounce off of each other. So we also, you know you've been there, you know your your path is. We like it to be nice and cozy, so it's super scary. We all have to figure out how do we all co exist in here? How are we delivering the scares, making it look cool, making it interesting, but keeping it immersive where you're not focused on the mechanics of things. You're still in the vibe of the house, but you're also entertained and then so part of that design too. Again, obviously the tech design is starting to be fleshed out nick the scene design as well. Obviously at this point it's starting to be clashed out, and you're in as a scenic designer, you're also in some of those early concept conversations. Can you talk us through and what it looks like on your end? Sure, After we finish the creative development, we go we kind of incubate for a little bit of all the ideas that we've talked about. All the ideas that we've talked about, we'll go. We'll do research period style. If there's an IP which is an intellectual property, whether it be a movie or a film or a book, we'll do research with that video game, and then we'll start doing sketches. We'll work with our other designers to find out other things that we need to accommodate, like you know, putting speakers in a room so that you don't see them.

9:00 Things like that, talking about color palettes, all the all the things you hear but when you hear design. But then one of the cool things that we do is we lay out the houses in a program called sketch Up, which is a three D modeling program. And we've recently, maybe in the last three years or so, thanks to one of our designers, deal in Cola I think is here today kind of got has turned on to using a little more technology, and we're using metaquest virtual reality glasses like this Oculus. It's so cool because we can walk through the haunted house months before we ever see it. We can we can physically walk through look at every scare.

9:41 And the cool thing about that is it really helps us design smarter because when we walk through, if you turn around and you're in seeing three, you're like, oh, no, I didn't know I was going to see part of scene seven over there. So it's a way for us to kind of do checks and balances and really informs how we flash out the design that we'd give the best product for you guys. Yeah, and that's a that's a great question maybe for Ramon as as a show director, as we're doing some of that previ previs and especially getting to leverage some of these technologies like VR from from a concept of scares, like what are what are some of the things you learn early on in that process from a scare standpoint? Sure, yeah, Nick said, getting to walk through the actual model and see the scares that you conceptualize months prior to right, there might be certain scares where you're like, in my head, I feel like this is going to be super super effective, but when you walk through the model, you're like, actually, the way we kind of turn that corner gives the scare away a little bit. Let's revisit how we design the scene of the scare. So that's the benefit of programs like that is that it can kind of tell us and show us what might work and might what might not work as well as we hoped. And it's also really fun to mess with people when they have a VR headset on. Really fun awesome. So so Nicolette, we at this point in the process, we've we've done some some conceptual work. We know what the concept of the house is being done design work, We know what the scenic design ideas are, what the tech design ideas are and so we know what it is that we're trying to accoulish. Right as the producer

11:13 of the events, one of the things you have to work on is figuring out that how we are going to achieve that. So what does that look like from your perspective at this point in the process. Yeah, it's a contagued collaboration that everybody's talking about up here. Truly, these are the experts and what they do, So it's my responsibility to kind of keep that communication flowing. Okay, we've got this really cool idea, it's exciting. Let's take it past that exciting point and make it reality. A really good example I could give is who remembers dueling jagons to choose their faith? Super exciting, how super cool concept. We all saw it and we're like, whoa, this is awesome. We're going to bring this retired attraction back to life in a spooky way. But then we all took a moment and paused, and we were like dragons in a haunted house. We figure that out and that took months of you know, collaboration and conversation. You know, what materials are we using, How are we going to accomplish the technical elements that need to go inside of that, what material doesn't need to be made of, how do people get up there? How do we still make it scary?

12:15 So a lot of that is just collaboration across here and then figuring out those really outside of the box things. That's kind of how I look at my role to support these people. We have these really creative ideas. I want to take that off their plate and clear the road for them so that we can truly make it happen and continue to hopefully impress all of you. So I'm gonna look at you, Melissa at this point as kind of the keeper of a lot of those things, at least on the scenic design end. What does that process look like for you? As as all of the design teams are just starting to kick out all of these ideas and drawings. It's pretty wild, you know. I don't know if anyone wants ever ordered furniture online and it came in a really small box with some really big instructions. It's kind of like that, but times of thousand. So we did know hundreds and hundreds of pages of detailed drawings that take these huge ideas and quantify those into two dimensional building instructions, and then we hand those to a bunch of artists and now we take something two dimensional and turn it into something three dimensional, which is quite amazing. But we start with quite a few palets of lumber and then next thing you know, we have amaze and the next thing you know, we have a dead man's pier or carnival graveyard or some kind of crazy thing that certainly didn't. It's much bigger than the box that it came in, and we often have a lot of extra pieces left over and that we still can't figure out where they go. I thought you were going to say that we started with all the palettes of lumber and then it became all of the drawings that we cut the other that's a different pressure.

13:46 That's awesome. Sure, yeah, So sticking with this same idea of Patty, similar question for you on the tech design end of things, because the technical designers are continuing to generate drawings and models anything like that, So what does it look like from the tech design end of things. So we have been really working hard to integrate our tech designers into that process much sooner so that they can work with people like Nick and make sure that we are able to integrate those ideas and at the appropriate times, and we're not sitting there looking at this giant facade and going ooh, how do we do that? Now? You know, we are working at lightning speed, and the amounts of collaboration and on the front end, all the things that have to happen because we might only have literally two hours to get something installed, especially if it's in the streets, and we have daytime guests coming in the next day, So it's an immense amount of work that goes in on the front end, and that design and collaboration piece so that we can then produce all this paperwork so that our management team and our technicians can start pulling all that together to make that a reality. Awesome, Melissa, at this point, we're really, like you said, we're starting to move into the build, right. We have our designs, we have our plan from the production and we're starting to move into the build. And one of the things that you're uniquely responsible for as the scenic field producer is to keep our vendors on task,

15:18 but also to make sure that what they're building is achieving our original design intent. So can you talk us through what it is you do out in the field to keep things moving in that direction. It certainly challenge, you know, as you guys know, you can't really quantify art. And one of my favorite lines of a production designer told me a long time ago when he was being rushed and says, art doesn't come out of a can. He just has to evolve. So really, we let the artists do what they do. If we feel that we're starting to back up, we kind of choose our battles. You know, you guys walk through as a guest, you have a certain facing views, so we want to give you the big spots, the things, the hero moments, and then we'll fill in the rest later. But it's really it's quite a challenge because you know, nothing ever assembles quite the same as you hope it will. Plan A is a mythical creature that I've never encountered. I hope to one day. So yeah, we just do the best we can to make it come out as well as we can. But on time, Nicolette gets really happy when we do that. And meanwhile Nicolette is generating, helping generate plane to BC, you know, all the way to Z. So similar question for you Nicolette, as we're as we're moving through this this part of the process with the build and and again trying to keep the vendors moving in the same direction and all really all of our tea you've been in the same direction to to achieve that creative intent. What does it look like from the production and the things as far as trying to keep everything moving in the same direction. Yeah,

16:52 it's it's it's a lot of spinning plates right and making sure that they keep spinning in some way, shape or form. I truly look at us as a resource and a support system for the group that's out there. Melissa is obviously the expert of what's on those pages, and she'll collaborate with us and talk to us about how that's going. We'll go out and support her in those conversations with vendors. We'll all work collaboratively with the technical entertainment team who comes right behind those vendors to figure out how we can come up with some creative solutions to make sure that everybody can get what they need and stay on task and get to that finish line so that we can put out a product that we want to put out that we're really proud of on time, and then you have Kelsey there next you trying to catch all the places they're starting to fall and put them back up on feties Florida. It's right, that's right. Kelsey is really the true owner of that process, and I try to support her as best as I can. And some of those things I've become those bigger like how tos because I'm a little more removed than Kelsey is.

17:47 I try to offer that guidance, but Kelsey's really the owner of the piece. So Kelsey, during this part of the process, again, we have some unique challenges that come up, So it's one of the things, one of the parts that you're responsible for is really helping come up with various solutions to those problems. Right, whenever something comes up, everyone turns to production and says, what do we do? You know, and you're really at the front line of that. So what's the process from the production end of things when when those do come up, when we when we have to come up with on the spot. Yeah. So really, again, I couldn't do any of this without all of the incredible people up here and our wonderful teams that we work with, our partners, so a lot of it is just communicating with everybody, So I'm trying to keep track of where we're at and if something's being delayed or if we're needing to adjust a schedule.

18:42 That affects everybody, right the schedules, all of the schedules we do are like puzzles and it's like a domino effect. So a lot of it is, you know, getting meetings together and trying to find the little gaps where everybody's available during all of our busy schedules and just trying to come up with solutions. And like Niko Lett mentioned already, our team is really really there like to provide that support and be that resource and make sure that things are getting done. But the experts are the ones who we have to invite to those meetings to you know, see what everybody's ideas are, to make sure that we say on the on the right track awesome. So so at this point, as we're moving again through the process, we're obviously still in the build phase what we call the build phase. But but really at this point, if we're working through this, the construction is done, the scenic is done, the decor has gone in our lovely to core teams have added their their layers, which really brings everything to life. You see Melissa year in a month. We love our to core teams. They're awesome. They absolutely are looking at the technical end, which is just the next layer that goes in wheny can you talk us through what it looks like to to to bring all of those elements together and one of the unique parts you're responsible for and the entire tax team really is responsible for making sure everything works and is delivering on the creative intent. What does that look like from here? So it's a very symbiotic process. As Kelsey and Nikola were saying, we have to

20:14 be in communication with each other all the time. Where are you at on this process? What are you waiting for? What do you need? And we're all helping each other get what we need to keep. It's really like a train. Once a train leaves the station, there's no stopping it, right like once the first construction starts in the first house, that thing, that piece moves on and then scene it and then lighting where lass So we're kind of where the last car and the train. It's a really cool thing. I think the paperwork that gets generated in the beginning It might sound boring, but it's really crucial because we have to be organized. I have to know that there's a speaker going there so that I don't put a light there, or you know, we have to know that there's an effects guy going here, and there are safety measures that have to be taken. So everything has to be accounted for so that we can get in there and do it once correctly, hopefully the first time, and not cause any delays. So after after we're done, then we start doing reviews, which is I really love it because now the collaboration happens in the three D environment where we can really look at, oh my gosh, we made this thing and here it is, and then it's like, how is it working? Like I mean, seeing it come together is I think for all of us really is the best part, right, Yeah, and it's it's incredible when we're able to do that. I still want to I want to stick on the topic of the technical insults and the question for for Petty. We're we're talking about a

21:47 lot of different layers that go in, especially on the technical and things. Can you talk about some of the other technical layers as well at this point? So sure, when we talk tech. You know, most of you guys know that your video, your lightning, audio effects, show control, you know, all of that's coming together, right, But we also have some technical aspects that we lean on other partners within Universal to help us out with. You know, whether it's an engineering piece or even our attractions partners. You know, what is it that we're doing from a technical perspective, that is in meeting the parameters that those teams know or write by our guests.

22:29 So as we work through our process, and I will say I think over the past five years, we've gotten really good partnerships with like our EHS teams and things like that to really make sure that you guys have an uninterrupted experience. And it really has been an amazing process to watch. And I think that you know, those collaborations as they build, it only helps us be able to deliver bigger and better things to you guys because we know that we can do it safely. Right. So those are some of those like technical aspects that maybe we don't think of so much, and it might be a little a little on the boring side for some people, but it's because of those collaborations that we're able to really amplify on the on the tech side, Well, we're really going through too and remote maybe you can speak to this a little bit. We're really going through as we're as we're building things that we're developing things and learning what works and what doesn't work and trying to catalog that for all of ourselves. We know, Okay, we're working on twenty twenty five. This is working really great. Maybe use this in twenty twenty five if I can. He talks through Roman a little bit about that what that looks like, because I know we have some some go to things that we use and things we know that we're what does that look like?

23:45 Yeah, Oftentimes the things that you think are going to go one way based off previous experiences in Halleen Hornet's always go in a different way. Right, So you think that, you know, we do learn from our past experiences, but the event is so unpredictable in that way, right, And I think that's why we always say that for creatives working on an event like how we ornates, the key thing that you have to have is flexibility because things are always in flux and changing on a day to day process, right. So I think having that flexibility understanding that the thing that you thought would go in this way might not go in that way, and then when you realize it doesn't, being able to shift gears right. So having that flexibility and being able to lean on our partners to help us make the product the best that it can be, I think is an essential component. Yeah, so what you touched on it briefly, But at this point in the process, we're looking at reviews and really trying to make sure that what we are seeing in front of us right, what we have put together is checking the box of the original creative intent. So one of the first reviews that we have is a design review. Can you talk us through that a little bit?

24:49 Yeah? I love the design review. So show directors there, scenic designer, lighting designer, audio designer, effects designer, I mean, everybody is there, a designer to court teams. We're all looking at everything. Finally in one place, we're walking through in show conditions and you know what's working. Does it need to be bright or does it mean loud or does it need to be scarier? Do we need to move this actor over here? Like it's really it's really fun to get to kind of judge it in person. You know, it's it's so much better than just doing it on a piece of paper or computer. And then we bring in people who are kind of outside of our team and they can experience it and we can see their reactions too, and like, oh, well, you know, to remote's point where you have to be flexible, you have to be ready to turn on a dime. Things change quickly. But sometimes things work out in ways we didn't even expect, like better, and it's like, wow, that just happened. Cool, let's do that again, you know. That's like when that happens, it's I think there are so many times where where each of us have gone into a design review or a tech review or what have you, and sometimes we have just an idea in our minds, like it's you know, this is going to be what it's going to be, and then we walk through I'm like, oh my gosh, it's so much different and so much better than what we even thought it was going to be on paper. Those are the great moments that I think we we all enjoy.

26:12 Yeah, so so seeking with the same theme, Petty, we have a we have a design review, but then we have a tech review as well, where we're going through and trying to make sure again checking that box that does it deliver around the technical and you talk through that a little bit and some of the things we're looking for sure. So as we walk through and we're looking at all these you know, technical elements coming together, you know, for the for the most part, up until that point, a lot of us have only seen this one element going or that one element going. So to Wendy's point, when you see it all come together. We bring along a team of a team with us too, that are they're all looking through a different lens, right, they all bring something different to the table.

26:57 They've all had different experiences, different backgrounds, and that's one thing that's really unique to our team because of all those different backgrounds, all those different viewpoints when they walk through there. Even though I've walked through it fifty times, at this point, I'm like, oh my god, yeah, you're right, totally didn't think about that when but how could I have missed it? And it truly does take that many times of walking through and making sure that you know, I don't want to say that we've become jaded or anything like that, but it's like anything else, you know, you drive down I four every day going to work, it starts to become muscle memory. Right, So, as we're going through and doing all of these installs and all that kind of stuff, like we're passing by stuff and not even realizing that the core is now put in an immense amount of items and so now we need to go back and take a look at that and see if we can make sure that we're highlighting that so that you get to experience it.

27:53 So, yeah, those tech reviews, that's really where we start to get into the nut and bolts of is this all coming together? Is this is there something that we can do to enhance the guest experience? And also from an operational perspective, that's something that maybe you don't think of when you're walking through, but I mean think about the immense amount of people and hours and days that these effects are happening, that these triggers are going off. Is it going to work the entire time? That's huge. It's a lot of abuse on this tech gear and that's one of those things that we're also trying to calculate as we do these installs in these tech reviews. And it's really great at this point because we're, like we said, we're really starting to see it come together and this really at this point, once we're hitting these design reviews and tech reviews, it's ninety five percent exactly what you, as our guests would see, which is a great Again, it's great. It's great to be able to walk through that and catalog some of those moments of life. This is working so much better than we thought. Going to use it again and having those moments is fantastic. But at this point, the one crucial element that we're missing, of course, are our scare actors.

29:10 Right, So, as we're going through this process, really, as we're coming up on the tail end of the process, Kelse, I'm going to look at you because, like we said a little bit, you're responsible for overseeing this process, the rehearsal process, getting all of our hundreds of performers rehearsed and ready to go for this event. Can you talk to through a little bit about what that choreography looks like and just bringing all of that together in such a short amount of time. Yeah, absolutely so. I mean that's that's when it gets super exciting, right, because we're having all these performers start to come in for the rehearsal process, and everybody's finding out maybe where you're at, or people who have been there previous years, a lot of better performers. This is a really exciting time when we're like, Okay, this thing's about to open, but rewinding months before that. Just like I already mentioned with many things that we do in this process, the rehearsal schedule is built months before rehearsals actually begin, and then we start casting.

30:11 When I say we, not me, but we start casting and then those hundreds and hundreds of performers are being cast and then hand it over to our team. So throughout that process, we then bring on our seasonal leadership team. They find out, you know, what areas they will be managing for the year, and then we throughout the process, we'll tweak that rehearsal schedule as needed, you know, based on our partner's input as well. But then we gear up for rehearsals. We have our leadership team, they're reaching out to the performers, they're making sure they're aware of the dates, getting them scheduled. Oftentimes, when a rehearsal actually begins, we may have multiple groups there on the same night, so it's a lot of organizing and making sure that things are being done, and we're using that minimal time that we have to make sure everyone's ready when the operation actually begins. So well, it's an incredible dance, right, Like if you ever get a chance, I mean, and I see some scareacters out in the audience is getting around and blots for them to love the arc and it's such a rediate because if you've ever seen it, just seeing our wonderful consuming and makeup teams getting everybody fit into their costumes and handing it off to our show direction team. Ramon, can you talk us through a little bit about the rehearsal process from the show direction and what you're looking for and trying to achieve. Yeah, the rehearsal process for me is my favorite part of all of it. Right, Like Kelsey said, it's not until our scaracters come in and actually try on

31:41 the costume, wear the makeup and getting the bootholes to do their scares that the haunted houses in the event comes to life, right, And we as show directors feed off of their energy because they come in so excited and that boosts our excitement in turn. Right, So it's such a cool process. It's a very collaborative process. We have a team of performance coordinators that are extensions of the show direction to Eve, and they work hand in hand with the scar acters to block and work through what the scares look like right. And again, we work with a lot of veteran scare actors, so there's a lot of collaboration there and kind of taking their feedback and seeing what they feel works and what you know doesn't work right, and just making that a fluid process. So it's so cool, it's super collaborative. And again, it's like that final march to the finish line right before we open, right, it's it's my it's my favorite part of the plot, and it's where we put a bow on it and say this is ready to go for our guests to see. And then it's again that's that's just another level of excitement for all of us. It's done, it's ready, let's see what they say, and it's a great part. So that is that is really our process of designing, developing and producing these these houses, and the same process goes for our scare zones and our shows. We follow the exact same process for everything we do and and so that's that's the process. What I wanted to do before we turn it over to a little bit of Q and A is we all were talking and we wanted to acknowledge the fact that we're just a small fraction of the amazing team that puts HHN together. So I would

33:12 love to just get a round of applause going for all of the other teams to get really defends together, for all the whole audience stories, hard type of teams, under your audio video effects, all of our intimate team, all of our designers, all of our short production and then of course our performers. So then it's starting to beziers of people that gets the company event to make this ding events happen. So we're we're incredibly excited to just share this with with everybody and and to really rely on each other. As we said, it's an incredibly collaborative process beginning to end. So we're going to open it up to a little bit of question of Q and A. So I think what we talked about is anybody that has a question, will have them come around to the side here the stage, and then we'll have the mask ask the question of me and all we'll get some answers going, so we'll give a minute for anybody with questions to come on up. Try to come on that waste I think I want turned around, right question. Yeah, that's a great question. So the question is all of our houses are are filled with a lot of stuff, and where do we stored that head throughout the year. I'm gonna look to Melissa on this one to help answer Dan. We need more space. We do more space. We have an off site warehouse and you would be amazed at all the things that are there.

34:43 I don't think we even always know everything that's in there. And it's like Christmas. Sometimes you go and open a palette and you're like, oh, I remember that from this house fifteen years ago. Let's use it a hand. It'll be fun. And sometimes why is it still here? We can use it again. We all always can use it again. Yeah, great question. First of all, thank you guys so much for everything to do EXPAN is what's been the most challenging rich house? Okay, it's a good question. So the question, if you had didn't hear it, what's the most challenging original content house that we've worked on before We're going to and take some one. Yeah, I think for me personally, i'd say Fiautas, which we did a couple of years ago, and the US say that as some challenges because we were trying to take strides that we hadn't taken before.

35:29 Right, Like we we cast a full cast of Latino performers, so I had to work hand in hand with those performers to make sure that the authenticity of that house was what we wanted it to be because we were so proud of what we were presenting with that haunted house, with it being what it was and what it represented to So that process all of our houses kind of require quite a bit of attension, but in that particular instance, it was a it was a unique challenge and we felt that it paid off. So I say, off the top of the head then, and I think that's a great answer, because you can you talk us through a little bit about how we really end to end made sure that that authenticity carried. Can you talk through that a little bit? Yeah, I think it was all the teams that came together to make sure that it was authentic from every standpoint.

36:10 The entire management team were LATINX individuals. So from that standpoint, everybody who was working on it from a production standpoint, we tried to make sure that it was authentic in that way too, And again, like I said about casting, we made sure to cast LATINX performers in those roles so that they could again bring those characters to life in an authentic way. So we tried to look at it from every different lens and every different angle to make sure that we were doing our due diligence to prevent something that was diverse and cool. Love that we love the challenges. It's a great question, what's the process of getting into the creative aspect of things remote? You want to touch on it a little bit, and maybe Nick as well. Yeah, totally. It's so funny because everybody on the show direction team, we all have different pathways how we got to where we are right, but the common thing that we all share is a passion for the content and a passion for creating. So I would say, try to figure out what it is that you like to do, whether it's directing, writing, designing, constant design and makeup design, whatever it is that you want to do specifically within the created level, find out what that is and take tangible steps to move forward in that direction. Right. Again, a lot of us started as scaracters.

37:15 I think everybody currently on the show direction team started as performers at Universal, So that's an excellent gateway into the universal level, right, So you can get your foot in the door with things like scare acting for Halloween Cornet's Yeah, and then just find out what it is you want to do and just take those tangible steps to get you closer and closer with your goal. Awesome. And then another pathway, of course, is in some of the other design elements, Nick, can you talk us through that pathway? Sure, being able to communicate with a piece of paper is fair amount. You don't have to know like all the craziest software and things like that, but just being able to sketch on a napkin is really helpful to be able to explain your ideas. A lot of people come to us and say, oh, I'd love to design hunted houses and say, well, what hunted houses be designed it? They're like none, And I'm like, oh, well, you have to start in some place. So even even big up a fake on a house and put it together. And that's that's how some of our designers that currently are working with us that started with us. They just had a passion. And if you want to do exactly when we do, just look at what we do, look at the content that we created, and think in those terms, but don't put any specific things on a pedestal.

38:22 You have to soak up a lot of things and do a lot of research. There's no way you're gonna know sorry, I'm not a tech guys. There's no way that you're gonna know everything there is to know about, you know, certain architecture and things like that. So you do a lot of research and soak up and just learn everything you can about a little bit of everything, and it'll really serve you well, especially when the creative an our favorite prop that we've used in the house before. Let's see, I'm gonna look to what you maybe give us, maybe what you'r thos. You know, there's so many good ones it would be really hard to choose. It's gonna be a rare answer. I'm a fan of the Pugers. Whenever we have I think it Billy is that the name Billy? I don't remember, but the name though, you can stand, yeah, yeah, thank you awesome. Anybody else going to let you go sure, I'm actually going to go to Chublicbra because that was my first project as a production manager and figuring out how we can bring that creature to life was really exciting. And then seeing it come on property and exist in the space and really tell the story of the Chublicabra, which I also grew up with, which was very exciting to me. So that's probably mine. Yeah, the creatures that we do are incredibly challenging to get them to work the way that we intend,

39:52 but when we do, it's so gratifying. I think for everybody everybody here, it's one of the best things that we can when we can see them. I think we got time for one more question. What advice would we give to a character for the first time? Maybe Ramone and then Kelsey. So one of the top things that we look for in our auditions is energy. We can feel your energy through your video, through your in person audition, and we get to feel for your personality and we can kind of start to figure out where we can place you. That gives us a good idea of how you would perform as a character. So I'd say kind of overall, energy and personality are two big things that we look for from our people that are auditioned awesome else the D I mean, I would say definitely mean heavily on our show direction team for the casting process and then we take over after that. But I would say availability too because I have to make any all right, I think we are about at time for questions. We want to thank everybody for this incredible opportunity to take away. I thought there was one more thing we wanted to talk about. Did we have one more thing we had to talk about? Like, it's something we wanted to share with everyone? Yeah? Right, I thought we had something to announce. That's

41:23 right. We were gonna make the first official announcement for Halle right right? Is that something you all want? Without further adod, we are thrilled to announce our very first original content Haunted House for Halloween, Hornet's thirty three, the sequel to a fan favorite Very Man Tell three t Hell's Breaking Loose.

42:28 That's right, We're going back to the very driving for Slaughter Cinema too again, a sequel to a fan favorite, Haunted House. We're so so excited to present you this house at Halloween Cortin. It's thirty three We're exploring eight brand Newslaughter Cinema films in this house, one of which is Heavy Metal Health three D, which is where this characters from. Well, what aside from the new stuff we're presenting, we're also calling back to some fun things from the first Slaughter Cinema that you the fans will will appreciate. For sure. Charles Great, Dylan cole Ath and everybody who was involved in bringing this project to life pourts so much passion into making Mishunted House everything you've wanted it to be for years, and we cannot wait for you all to experience it only and Halloween hornit's thirty three. What we want to maybe a shot were discoming.

43:20 The Empire for Alping has made this awesome announcement. This is the first time we've announced an original Haunted house out of panels or we're super stoked about that. But we are now officially in announcement season right, so make sure to keep your eyes peeled on Halloween Horneight's Orlando socials for future announcements. We'll see you in the thought. Today's episode was edited by me Philip Hernandez, with post production by David Swope and original music composed by Chris Thomas. Support for today's episode comes from Gantum Lightning hand Controls. Gantum eliminates attractions worldwide with the world's smallest intelligent spotlights. From Dark Hour to nether World, Super Mario Land to Hagrid's Bike. Gantum goes where other fixtures can't. See what you're missing With a free demo sign up at gantum dot com slash demo. That's scantum dot com slash demo. The h a N Team includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and Omniadventures. Until next Time, Stay Scary. This is a Haunted Attraction Network production