The Albertson Halloween House is built by many people each year – friends, family, neighbors, co-workers. This year, we had the privilege of working with a new group of artists – Options for All.
Options for All is an organization which provides vocational opportunities and life skills training to individuals with developmental disabilities. We worked with Options for All Productions, a division of Options for All which specializes in the areas of film and media. At Options for All Productions, they write, direct, film and edit media pieces, as well as build props/set pieces, do graphic design, provide on-set crowd management and communication support, and more!
We were contacted by Trishia from the Options for All Film and Media Studio in Sunnyvale, who said that their crew had heard about our Halloween house and would love to help out. While many of the services they provide are a perfect fit for us (on-set crowd management, video documentary production, etc.) because of the different nature of this year’s Halloween house (we won’t have a large in-person crowd of visitors this year), we ended up engaging with just their set-building crew. And what a crew it was!
We brought three projects to them: 1) The painting of a spooky graveyard fence, 2) The design of quirky wallpaper for an ‘interior Christmas morning gone awry’ scene, and 3) The painting of the low stone wall which encircles Halloween Town.
Shannen Ngo and her sister Celeste Ngo tackled the monstrous task of painting some 40 poles and 100 ft. of irrigation tubing which will be used to construct the graveyard fence.
Shannen and Celeste also tackled the painting of the faux wallpaper (lavender) which then had a floral stamp pattern applied to it.
Deborah Ramos did the two-part painting of 4 carved Styrofoam ‘stone’ wall segments – painting darker colors in the recessed areas and lighter colors on raised areas to produce the effect of depth.
Trishia worked with each group, providing management, support, help, guidance and encouragement.
The crew completed the projects with quality and speed! The pieces turned out amazing and will be ready to greet visitors to the house on Halloween, helping those who drive by or walk by to experience the Nightmare Before Christmas in a fun, 3D way!
We look forward to future projects with Options for All – hopefully being able to access more of their film and media services. If you have projects you need help with, give them a call! Thank you Shannen, Celeste, Deborah and Trishia! Amazing work!
