No clue what year this was, but it’s definitely not one of my finer moments. A small trick-or-treater, wearing a Casper mask, surrounded by zombies (where one of them has the boy’s pant leg in its teeth).
I recall kids and visitors really enjoying the humor element, but I think I was bothered by the stillness of it all. The fact that this moment, which should have movement and flailing and horror, appeared frozen in time really detracted from the point of it all. I think that was where I started to process just how does a person make a static prop appear to be something other than a snapshot of a moving object? And that’s where building a prop that appears to be at rest is the key – a creature that has momentarily paused. Maybe a better presentation would have been if a bunch of the zombies were cradling a dead or unconscious child. Like a bunch of hyenas protecting a fresh kill? I kind of like the idea of seeing all those boney arms and hands clasping a motionless figure.
Some observations about the photograph… You can see a standing zombie in the background. I hung it from a rope and made the limbs very loose so it would sway in the breeze and appear to be a reanimated corpse. The wind never came.
You can see me to the right, standing up (dressed as Michael Myers). If I had to guess, I was rising to tell my mother to stop taking flash photos, as she was ruining what little atmosphere there was.
And my dad’s garage door desperately needed some paint (though that definitely was adding back the atmosphere my mother was destroying).
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