Back in 2007, Jeff Maher, a co-worker of mine at Comcast, asked if I’d like to help out on a public access show called “Spooktackular! Spooktacular!!” His plan for the show was to cover various haunted houses. Being a big fan of Halloween, I told him I was in. We had a blast covering five different haunted houses that year. However, due to certain circumstances, the show didn’t actually get edited and air until the following Halloween in 2008. Regardless, the show turned out great, and I saw potential in the concept. I always thought it would make a good show for CN100. Well, in 2011, I made it happen.

Up until this point, I most commonly worked on the show Community Connection, as studio crew and occasional segment producer / videographer / editor. Myself and the others working on the show have created a lot of interesting segments over the years. The show has always covered a very wide spectrum of things: theatre, music, community events, cooking, non-profit organizations, fundraisers, animals, product demos, authors, fitness, etc. I’ve always thought about whether or not this much variety was a good thing or a bad thing. I always thought that a viewer that might be interested in one segment wouldn’t be interested in the rest of the show.

I always wanted to put together a more focused show with an overall theme. Spooktacular was my chance. I took on this project entirely by myself and started working on the show long before ever getting approval for it to air. I figured, if worse comes to worse, I could just air it on public access. I titled the show “Spooktacular Chicago” because I thought it rolls off the tongue a little bit better than the original title. The show would be a single program that would cover haunted houses, but also any other Halloween and horror related events happening around Chicagoland. The plan was to have it air around Halloween.

I first decided to step up the production value and shoot it all in HD this time around. The decision created an additional challenge in the production process since I could no longer use the cameras I had at my office in Waukegan. I had to reserve and pick up the HD cams from the Elmhurst office. Not convenient by any means, but well worth the picture quality.

I knew I’d be working my ass off on this show come October, since that was when all the haunted houses would be up and running. So I scoured the internet to see if there were any horror related events in the off season that I could shoot and edit in a leisurely manner. I came up with several ideas, the first being Zombie Walk 2011. This event was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon in June. Basically, hundreds of people dress up like zombies and parade around downtown Chicago. What made it particularly appealing is the fact that it was going on in June. No one expects to see someone dressed up like a zombie in the summertime.

I headed downtown with Stephanie Brooks (my field correspondent) and an HD camera package. The zombies were gathering by The Bean in Millennium Park. This event was a goldmine for video. There zombies everywhere! And a wide variety of different kinds. We did some interviews before the march started. We actually got some good ones. I loved the fact that there were zombies intermixed with tourists, and even wedding parties that had come down to the park to take pictures.

When the march began, I would say that there were at least 500 zombies, probably more. I came prepared to be very mobile on this shoot. No tripod, just a backpack with necessities: batteries, microphone, etc. And the camera of course. The HD cam was light enough to easily carry around all day. It was a pleasure to shoot with.

On this shoot, it was pretty much impossible not to get great footage. Most zombies hammed it up as soon as you pointed a camera at them. The most challenging part was keeping up with the march, and trying to get in different parts of the line, so you’re not shooting the same zombies the whole time. I did a lot of running.

I was very fun to see the reactions from the regulars on the street. The zombies seemed to catch everyone off guard. At one point we tried to take a shortcut to get back to the front of the march. We lost them for a little while because they diverted slightly from the original march route. It was kinda comical running down streets, cutting through alleys, trying to get back to the zombies.

The shoot was pretty much perfect. Lots of great footage, lots of great interviews, Stephanie had great presence on camera, and the weather was nice.

The next shoot was scheduled for September. I contacted Weird Chicago Tours about shooting a segment with them. Basically, I wanted to feature one location that could be seen on one of their tours. A place with a good story, and that we could get access to for shooting. They were excited about being involved with my show and knew the perfect place to feature. It was called Flounder’s Bar and Grill in Chicago. They actually did an investigation there, which turned up evidence of paranormal activity.

They said that no one had taped a segment there before, so we would be the first ones to tell the story. They set up the shoot with the bar owner and we were good to tape on a Tuesday afternoon. Stephanie and I cruised down there in a Comcast van, brought in our camera gear and started taping some interviews. We interviewed Ken, the owner of Weird Chicago tours, about the history of the building. A pretty crazy story I must say. He was very well spoken.

Then we interviewed Sunny, one of the Weird Chicago tour guides. She talked more about the investigation that they did at the bar. Finally, we interviewed Matt, the bar owner. He had countless stories of unexplainable things that have happened over the years. Ken and Sunny had to leave early, but we stayed at the bar for a while with Matt to get some b-roll. The bar was closed at the time, so we had a free run of the place.

At one point we ventured into the creepy basement. I really wanted to see the hidden room that was uncovered during the investigation. Matt allowed me to go back there with the camera. He and Stephanie stayed behind. It involved walking over a bunch of stuff tucked in nook, and then climbing through a small hole punched into the drywall. It was super dirty, super creepy, but super fun!

I also convinced Matt to let us explore the abandoned apartment upstairs. It also had quite the creepy vibe to it. After shooting some more video inside and outside the bar, we grabbed some Pequod’s Pizza from next door and then hit the road.

Towards the end of September, things really started rolling with the show. I got the green light to air it on CN100, which was great! Haunted houses were opening soon, so I knew things were about to get busy. The Dungeon of Doom in Zion was actually doing a special event their opening weekend. The building that they use for their haunted house is actually supposed to be haunted for real. So they were bringing in a psychic to do a late night paranormal investigation, and they were selling a limited amount of tickets to the general public to join them. I tried contacting them to get the okay to shoot the event, but never heard back. Then, reading the description of the event, I saw that they actually encourage people to bring their own cameras to record their own experiences. So I just decided to buy a couple tickets and just show up with a camera.

I went with Colleen that night. The whole event was very disappointing. They split you off into groups and took you into several rooms with the psychic. They used something called a ghost box, which supposedly turns any ghostly energy into words so you can actually communicate with the spirits. Well, in reality, it just sounded like a lot of radio interference. Kinda like turning an analog radio dial back and forth between stations. The investigators claimed to hear certain words after they asked questions to the ghosts. All I heard was a bunch of static.

After going through some rooms in smaller groups, we all gathered in one large room for the séance. Seeing the process first hand was kinda interesting. But nothing really happened. Just more ghost box BS. I was really hoping to have an experience that night. But nothing happened. I recorded video the entire time, but it was a waste. I didn’t even bother to do any interviews, because I didn’t really want to make a segment out of it since nothing really happened. A total bust.

I told the Dungeon of Doom owner that I was still interested in doing a piece on the actual haunted house and that I would contact him. Of course, no response. Whatever dude, there’s plenty more haunted houses that I could cover. If you don’t want the free advertising, then I won’t give it to ya.

A couple days later we went to the Basement of the Dead in Aurora. It was the 1^st weekend in October, so it had just opened. I headed out there with my friend Sammie Nieves who was going to be my field correspondent.

We had planned to get out there an hour before they opened, but we ran into some traffic, and then had a little trouble finding it since it was in a little bit of a strange location downtown. By the time we got in there, it was about 15 minutes until they opened. Luckily, it was a Sunday night and a little slow. So we were able to do a few interviews backstage, and then walk the haunt with the camera rolling before the general public started to go through. I decided to walk through the house with the Frezzi light on the entire time. Sure, it ruined the experience for myself, but at least I captured video that you could actually see! Haunted houses are so dark that your footage will most likely turn out like shit if don’t have some type of external light source. After the walkthrough, we interviewed one of the managers outside, got a little crowd footage, and we were done! They were very accommodating. I think it took us less than an hour.

I’m still amazed at how efficiently this shoot went. I think I learned a lot from when we did the original Spooktacular in 2007. The first haunted house we shot that year we had a crew of 4 people. We had 3 cameras going, some at the same time, so we had a lot of redundant footage. We taped way too many interviews and we were there for hours. I knew exactly what we needed to put this segment together, and what we didn’t need. My years of editing packs for Community Connection probably also contributed to my extreme efficiency.

Since we got done pretty early, we had time to grab a beer at Ballydoyle’s Irish pub, which was basically connected to the building where the haunted house was.

The next weekend we covered Psychosis Haunted House in Elgin. I could not make it out that weekend since I was standing up in my friend Alex’s wedding, so I got Fernando to be the videographer and Stephanie as the field correspondent. They did a pretty good job.

By this time I had posted an ad on Craigslist for a show host, and had many, many responses. There was a wide variety of people. You can tell that some were just models with little to no TV experience. First and foremost, I was looking for someone who had some TV experience. With limited time for this project, I needed a host that wasn’t going to have to do 15 takes of every line of script.

The front runner was a girl named Tierza. I liked her look and she had a good camera presence so I set up a meeting. At the meeting, we immediately hit it off, exchanging stories about ghosts and haunted locations. I knew she was going to be perfect for this. It’s always a plus when the host is actually into the subject matter of the show.

We made plans to shoot the wrap-arounds on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-October. For the location, I had decided on the Comcast building in Libertyville. The building used to be a customer service center and offices, but now is basically abandoned. The only thing that remains is some headend equipment and a small playback system for a government access channel. There is usually no one around.

I knew I wanted to shoot outside, and I thought that the back parking lot would work out great. It was gated off, so no one had driven on it in years. There were tall weeds growing though cracks in the pavement, rusty fences with barbed wire, etc. I thought it would make excellent ambiance.

I got Fernando on board for the wrap-around shoot, which helped me out tremendously. He ran camera, so I was able to focus on the script and make sure Tierza was getting all her lines down. It was also great to have him there as another set of creative eyes when it came to the framing and the angles of the different shots. The day would not have gone nearly as smoothly if he was not there.

What also helped too was Tierza’s ear prompter. I had never heard of such a thing before. Basically, she was able to record herself reading the lines of script onto a small digital recorder. And then she listened to them back with an earpiece while we were shooting. No memorization, no cue cards, brilliant!

I came up with the idea to call the field correspondents “Horrorspondents”. We decided that this would work fine for graphics, but it was too awkward for the host to say out loud when introducing them. It sounded too much like she was calling them whores.

We shot the wrap-arounds in six different locations; four different areas in the old parking lot, and two on the railroad tracks behind the building. I was hoping for an overcast day, but it actually started off quite sunny. Some clouds eventually rolled in, but it was back and forth between sun and shade. Every time the clouds rolled in I would roll quickly to try and capture the shot before the sun came back. There were other obstacles as well, like the horde of landscapers armed with mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers, all taking care of the surrounding buildings in the business park. This wreaked havoc on my audio, so we actually had to alter one of the shooting locations because it was just too damn loud. We also were interrupted several times by passing trains. However, we did manage to wrap up right on schedule. The footage turned out great!

At this point, everything was shot, except for the final haunted house: The Realm of Terror in Round Lake Beach. I went out there with Sammie. This was probably my favorite haunt out of the 3. I really liked how you were almost a part of it while walking through. You had to open doors to get from room to room, and there were some rooms that you actually had to walk around props and actors just to get through the room. You really couldn’t get by without brushing up against them. They also did great with the asylum theme throughout the house. Even with my frezzi light on the entire time, I still got startled a few times.

That was it for shooting. Now for editing. I had gotten Josh Price on board to create a show intro. I knew he was skilled in After Effects, so I was confident that he could put something together pretty cool. I gave him some footage and still images, and he went to work. When I saw the completed piece, I was floored! I had never expected it to turn out that good. I was extremely happy with it.

When it came to editing, I was on my own for everything else. I had already finished the Zombie Walk segment, but I still had all the others to finish. I worked day after day editing the show, until it was perfect. As usual, I spent a lot of time trying to find the perfect music for each segment. The most challenging part was to fit everything into a 30 minute show. It was so tough! I was literally going through everything with a fine tooth comb, seeing where I could make cuts. Even doing as much as cutting out a pause or an “um” between someone’s sentences, just to save a second. In Community Connection, if we are running over on a show, we could just take a segment out and use it in the next show. But since this was a special, I did not have that luxury.

I finally got the show done and was very pleased with the result. I mastered the show in HD and burnt a blu-ray copy for myself. I had to create a standard-def version for airing though, which sucked because it looks so great in HD! It would be nice if we were able to broadcast in HD someday.

The show started airing the week before Halloween and was on once a day until November 1^st. It was supposed to go On-Demand as well, but there was some kind of “technical issue” and actually didn’t get up there until the first week of November. That kinda pissed me off, but at least it got up there.

The response from the show was good, and I felt like I spent a lot of time promoting it. It’s too bad it only aired a week though. Overall, my role as the producer of the show was a great experience. It was lots of fun, but also very time consuming. I felt like I spent entire days sending email, calling people, and searching the internet, all for Spooktacular Chicago. I was setting up shoots with haunted houses, coordinating those shoots with field correspondents, searching for a show host, securing airdates on CN100, setting up a Facebook page. Even after the show was complete, I was still hard at work promoting the show on Facebook, burning and sending out DVD’s, encoding the segments and putting them online.

It was a lot of work, but it was a labor of love. Can’t wait for next year!