Saturday, March 30, 2013

Backstory or Legend?


I heard Revanant from Hauntcast talking once about the importance of creating a backstory for your haunt. It was a very interesting piece as most of his haunt lectures are. Admittedly I gave it some thought, but couldn't come up with anything unique,  and I moved on to other matters of interest and it never got further attention.  Such is the frustrating limits to my imagination at times...

Recently I was looking at some You Tube videos and came across the videos posted by Brad Goodspeed for his "The  Butcher of Provincetown" haunt, and the topic of backstory importance resurfaced. 

Mr. Goodspeed has taken the art of creating a backstory to a whole new level. Using social media he managed to create and publicize a backstory that was based on so much historical fact and familiar geography that the majority of his visitors believed it was the telling of a real legend of the area. I'm thinking to myself, how much scarier is your garage or yard haunt when the people believe it was built around an existing legend, when in fact the story was made up just to enhance the haunt?

If you watch his You Tube videos it's not hard to recognize that Mr. Goodspeed's occupation is a graphic designer and he is very familiar with Adobe After Effects software, but aside from that, his ideas of using your local historical society for photos and factual data, coupling it with social media to develop a "legend" instead of a backstory, is really quite good.  Even his haunt characters get a backstory and people follow them on Facebook for the purpose of helping to make their characters come to life and believability. 

Check out Brad Goodspeeds videos if you think a backstory is important to your haunt. I don't think you'll be disappointed. It's still a "thinking" time of year for us, no prop building yet, creating a "legend" is certainly something that deserves more time than we have given to it though.






10 comments:

  1. Mark, thanks for putting me onto this guy! Just finished watching his "Skull how-to" on his blog. He is a Canadian so Yay...I can find all the supplies here!

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  2. Those ARE amazing, those how to videos is what first caught my attention and got me interested in his haunt ideas. I'd love to do a couple of the skulls but I'm thinking it might be better left to you sculptors!

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  3. I think a back story for a haunt is such a fun idea and the concept of incorporating real local history is awesome! Have you done any research into true local legends in your area? That's probably an interesting exercise regardless of haunts. Every area no doubt has some sinister history to uncover if you start looking.

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    1. I pretty much know the history of our area... It's the most boring history ever! ;)

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  4. I have noticed that a LOT of haunters have back stories for their haunts AND individual props. I struggle with back stories. I guess I just go for what feeling that I want my haunt or prop to exude. Sometimes I look to legends for my inspiration.

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    1. I think it's an especially nice touch if you have a walk through haunt. We keep dabbling with the idea of a garage haunt but so much other stuff we'd like to do with graveyard... I agree though, it's about the overall feel.

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  5. Thanks so much for this post! To be honest the backstory is one of my favourite parts, and it's far more fleshed out than anyone knows. I just love to imagine all the directions it can go, and the haunt gives me an excuse to keep imagining.

    Again, thanks for watching, and happy haunting!

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    1. Thanks Brad! Your videos have given me a lot of inspiration and I think you may have set the standard for skull corpsing! Looking forward to seeing how the backstory evolves...

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  6. First of all, thanks for posting this. I started a back story for my haunt that actually resulted in some very real and creepy history of my property. It turned out well and I will be posting it closer to Halloween. Secondly I just watched the home haunters DVD and caught your video... I HATE YOU! Your haunt is like head and shoulders above the rest (mine included). What I wouldn't give to be your neighbor. Amazing job last year! Can't wait to see what you got going on this time around!

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    1. Thanks Ked, coming from you, that means a lot! I'm still tossing around the backstory issue, can't seem to get anything original together. Looking forward to reading what you came up with. Brad Goodspeed does have some excellent ideas about selling the backstory I think, I look forward to his latest videos. Maybe it's not as important unless you have a walk through haunt with scare actors and everything, I'm not sure, still another fun aspect of putting together a haunt though.

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