This file is one of the Wolfstone archives of the Halloween mailing lists. You can
find out more, and reach the entire collection here:
  http://www.pobox.com/~wolfstone/_r/HalloweenArchive.html

This is a copy of Don Bertino's archive from 
  http://www.calweb.com/~bertino/halloween.html
on the subject of "mazes".

Minor changes have been made, mostly removal of E-mail headers and signatures,
but the germane content is unchanged.

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Date: Mon, 31 Jul 1995 11:38:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Bertino <bertino at netcom.com>
Subject: maze segments/mirror mazes

Hi Dave!

A while back, you wrote:

> Easily built/knocked down and stored maze segments or walls
> Easily built, *CHEAP* mirror maze segments or walls

I would like to here about your (and others) ideas about mazes...

I have used black plastic and cardboard carpet roll centers (say that ten 
times quick :)  I would like a *hard* surface as well as a mirror maze 
portion would be fun too..

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Date: Mon, 31 Jul 1995 15:09:27 -0600 (MDT)
From: Berrett Maynard <bmaynard at xmission.com>
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes

> I would like to here about your (and others) ideas about mazes...
> 
> I have used black plastic and cardboard carpet roll centers (say that ten 
> times quick :)  I would like a *hard* surface as well as a mirror maze 
> portion would be fun too..
> 
I have never tried a mirror maze, but the haunted house I have worked at 
for the last two years we have used simple theatrical Flat frames covered 
with burlap instead of muslin painted black. last year we also used 
4x8'x4" platforms on end to make more solid walls, On them we painted 
checkerboard, and other psychadelic patterns in Red and green and used 
red and green lights linked to our light board and alternated fading in 
and out, which had a really nice changing wall and floor effect.

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From: dbell at cup.portal.com
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 95 18:55:41 PDT

don (bertino at netcom.com) writes:

>A while back, you wrote:

>> Easily built/knocked down and stored maze segments or walls
>> Easily built, *CHEAP* mirror maze segments or walls

>I would like to here about your (and others) ideas about mazes...

>I have used black plastic and cardboard carpet roll centers (say that ten 
>times quick :)  I would like a *hard* surface as well as a mirror maze 
>portion would be fun too..

Hi, Don, and gang!

  Several years I've had a maze set up, in one form or another.
The last time, we built a grid of 1x4's on edge over the driveway,
and dropped black plastic (Visqueen sp? here) in half-a-dozen
straight rows, from the grid runners. I put 1x2's on the ground
and stapled the plastic to those to stretch it a little. Then,
we hung another strip of the same plastic across each end, making
a set of North-South corridors, with closed ends. A final pass
with a razor knife let us cut archways in the walls, resulting
in a meandering maze. Dim "pearl" frosted Christmas lights
strung along the top provided a bit of blue and green lighting,
just enough to show up stuff spray painted (mostly stencilled)
on the walls...

  Here's the idea, in ASCII:
   First, the "blank" maze      Then, knock out doors

     (Garage door)             (Garage door)
     _____________             ____________
       _ _ _ _ _        <----    _ _ _ _  |
      | | | | | |  (To the      | | | | | |
      | | | | | |   Great       |   | | | |
      | | | | | |   Egress!)    | | | | | |
      | | | | | |               | | |   | |
      | | | | | |               | | | | | |
      | | | | | |               | |   |   |
      |_|_|_|_|_|               |_|_| |_|_|
                                     ^
                                     |

  An earlier year, we used "clear" Visqueen, painted fuorescent
ghoulies on the walls, and hung a theatrical blacklight high in
a tree over the maze.

  Another success was a tunnel, built with black plastic
stretched over bent 1/2" PVC pipe hoops, the ends stuck
down into holes drilled along the borders of a built-up
boardwalk deck. The deck was made of 4x8 framed units,
with 2x4 on edge sides, and old fence lumber nailed across.
The frames were laid down end-to-end, the pipes bent
in place, and the plastic stretched over and hot-glued
in spots. (This assembly was borrowed from props made for
our son's highschool grad night party, the previous June...)

  What I *really* want to do sometime, is to build a largish
mirror-maze, with tightly stretched Mylar on frames I can
easily set up and re-configure. The maze would be built
along the lines of classic European mirror mazes, on a
hexagonal grid, with the corridors at 120 degree angles,
and little diorama cells in out-of-the way spots, that
get imaged all around. There was a great article, many years
ago now, in Scientific American. Seems like in the early
eighties. It set me thinking about ways to build one for
a show or party, and (naturally) about ways to design
a CAD system to help lay it out and pre-visualize the
rsults...

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Date: Tue, 1 Aug 95 07:53:20 CDT
From: jeffh at oakhill-csic.sps.mot.com (Jeff Hunsinger)
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes

>   What I *really* want to do sometime, is to build a largish
> mirror-maze...
> There was a great article, many years
> ago now, in Scientific American. 

I think I went through this one in Switzerland. It was really disorienting. 
I loved it. The mirrors made a twisting, winding passage leading to an exit 
looked like a straight hallway.

Aside: Does anyone know where to get those green flourescent tubes used in
all the sci-fi movies? I love the way they look.

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Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 11:07:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Bertino <bertino at netcom.com>
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes

On Mon, 31 Jul 1995 dbell at cup.portal.com wrote:

Hi Dave!

Thanks for the great ideas, I have a few question thou...

>   Here's the idea, in ASCII:
>    First, the "blank" maze      Then, knock out doors
> 
>      (Garage door)             (Garage door)
>      _____________             ____________
>        _ _ _ _ _        <----    _ _ _ _  |
>       | | | | | |  (To the      | | | | | |
>       | | | | | |   Great       |   | | | |
>       | | | | | |   Egress!)    | | | | | |
>       | | | | | |               | | |   | |
>       | | | | | |               | | | | | |
>       | | | | | |               | |   |   |
>       |_|_|_|_|_|               |_|_| |_|_|
>                                      ^
>                                      |

How high were the walls?  Did you put a ceiling on it?  If you didn't put
a ceiling on, I guess that answers the what if it rains question? :)

I too, like green lights.  I going to have to try blue too, to see the effect.

>   Another success was a tunnel, built with black plastic
> stretched over bent 1/2" PVC pipe hoops, the ends stuck
> down into holes drilled along the borders of a built-up
> boardwalk deck. The deck was made of 4x8 framed units,
> with 2x4 on edge sides, and old fence lumber nailed across.
> The frames were laid down end-to-end, the pipes bent
> in place, and the plastic stretched over and hot-glued
> in spots. (This assembly was borrowed from props made for
> our son's highschool grad night party, the previous June...)

I went to a couple of highschool grad night party open houses and was
amazed! (at my niece's schools in Northern California)  I mean, one school
spent $80,000 on props and the other $65,000.  I looked great!  (all this
money was rasied by the students and they keep adding to it each year.
They also rent them out to other schools)

>   What I *really* want to do sometime, is to build a largish
> mirror-maze, with tightly stretched Mylar on frames I can
> easily set up and re-configure. The maze would be built
> along the lines of classic European mirror mazes, on a
> hexagonal grid, with the corridors at 120 degree angles,
> and little diorama cells in out-of-the way spots, that
> get imaged all around. There was a great article, many years
> ago now, in Scientific American. Seems like in the early
> eighties. It set me thinking about ways to build one for
> a show or party, and (naturally) about ways to design
> a CAD system to help lay it out and pre-visualize the
> rsults...

Yikes....  Now if we just had a barn to store all this stuff in. :)

I would like to see some peoples overall designs for their halloween
displays/haunted houses...  Please *DO NOT SEND THEM TO THIS LIST*
but draw something up in, lets say PC paintbrush (.bmp) format and
email it to me (uudecoded)  I'll put them in my ftp site for anyone
who is interested.

Black and white only.

For those who don't have paintbrush or can't do .bmp format, email me
and we will work something out.

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Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 14:20:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Nathan Kahn" <po!smokin!nathan>

> 
> Aside: Does anyone know where to get those green flourescent tubes used in
> all the sci-fi movies? I love the way they look.
> 

You can order them from most any electrical distributor, or place that
specializes in light bulbs.  But its cheaper to buy the colored plastic
sleeves, and stick with cheap white bulbs.  You can get these colored sleeves
at electrical distributors also (generally).

Nathan at Theatre Effects
nathan at theatrefx.com

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From: dbell at cup.portal.com
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes
Date: Tue,  1 Aug 95 12:59:19 PDT

Don, et. al.:

>Thanks for the great ideas, I have a few question thou...
Ideas are eay - it's the implementation that takes the time!!

>>   Here's the idea, in ASCII:
>>    First, the "blank" maze      Then, knock out doors
>> 

>How high were the walls?  Did you put a ceiling on it?  If you didn't put
>a ceiling on, I guess that answers the what if it rains question? :)
I put the grid a little over 8 feet above the ground, so I would
have sufficient overlap to wrap 10' Visqueen over the grid members
and staple it. I also made sure I could wrap some excess around the
floor 1x2's as well.

>I too, like green lights.  I going to have to try blue too, to see the effect.
Yeah - these were really neat; I found them only a couple of years
ago as a new Christmas item. They are small (7/16" ?) frosted
spherical lamps in series strings like the clear mini lights. I
found green, blue, red, and I think yellow and white "models". The
strings were all one color, by the way, and I think 50-lamps...

>I went to a couple of highschool grad night party open houses and was
>amazed! (at my niece's schools in Northern California)  I mean, one school
>spent $80,000 on props and the other $65,000.  I looked great!  (all this
>money was rasied by the students and they keep adding to it each year.
>They also rent them out to other schools)
Our school didn't have that kind of budget, but they did really
well with a lot of slav\\\\volunteer labor! 

>Yikes....  Now if we just had a barn to store all this stuff in. :)
Ain't that the truth!!

>For those who don't have paintbrush or can't do .bmp format, email me
>and we will work something out.
How do people feel about PostScript, or some other vector language?

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Date: Wed, 2 Aug 95 08:15 PDT
From: bdosfx at wimsey.com (Brian Oberquell)
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes

>I have used black plastic and cardboard carpet roll centers (say that ten
>times quick :)  I would like a *hard* surface as well as a mirror maze
>portion would be fun too..

It's not _quite_ what you had in mind, but I have used reflective window
film on standard sheet glass to make one-way mirrors; these can be fun to
use in a haunted house and the cost is reasonable -- a 2x3 ft. mirror cost
me $25 instead of $75 for a "real" one-way mirror (the $25 included 2
sheets of film because I assumed I'd screw up on putting it on the glass
the first time -- which I did...).

Brian

Brian D. Oberquell
The Wizard's Den SPFX Studio
210 Cornell Way
Port Moody, B.C. CANADA  V3H 3W2
(604) 931-6298

"15 years in the business and we still have all our fingers"

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Date: Thu, 3 Aug 95 17:24:30 EDT
From: wurst at eng2.uconn.edu (Karl R. Wurst)
Subject: maze segments/mirror mazes

>> 
>> Aside: Does anyone know where to get those green flourescent tubes used in
>> all the sci-fi movies? I love the way they look.
>> 
>
>You can order them from most any electrical distributor, or place that
>specializes in light bulbs.  But its cheaper to buy the colored plastic
>sleeves, and stick with cheap white bulbs.  You can get these colored sleeves
>at electrical distributors also (generally).

I've also seen the colored plastic sleeves at pet stores in the aquarium
section.

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Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 12:30:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Don Bertino <bertino at netcom.com>
Subject: Re: maze segments/mirror mazes

On Tue, 1 Aug 1995 dbell at cup.portal.com wrote:

Hey Dave!
> 
> >For those who don't have paintbrush or can't do .bmp format, email me
> >and we will work something out.

> How do people feel about PostScript, or some other vector language?

Sure, no problem.  I think I have some type of converter around here
somewhere...

Please send them to *me*, not the list.  I'll put them in the FTP site
for everyone to grab.

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Date: Sun, 6 Aug 1995 09:07:10 -0700
From: milwiron at ix.netcom.com (D.D. )
Subject: RE: Mazes/Green fluorescent tubes

 Another way to color your fluorescent tubes if you have trouble
finding colored sleeves or bulbs is to check out a local card, gift
and party shop. Around here they sell transparent, colored
plastic gift wrap. It used to be cellophane, it may be
Mylar/polyester sheeting these days. Years ago they only sold it
at Easter but now you can find it in many colors year round. 
 By wrapping and taping a sheet around the fluorescent tube it
becomes a very cheap filter or gel. The temp. of a fluorescent
tube shouldn't be high enough to cause any trouble.

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