A Haunted House

The house is vacant in the West Adams District in Los Angeles.  I have been to this house before for the movie The Soloist.  This time a TV show wants to use it and has asked me to make it look a little haunted.  But I only have one day of prep time, which seems normal these days for TV.  Never enough time, never enough money.  My budget was set at $1200 in materials.  You can buy rolls of grapevine in 25ft and 50ft, or you can get the larger stuff called starter vine.  I thought the 25ft rolls would be the easiest to deal with.  Imagine trying to unwrap and giant wood slinky with small tenickles while standing in a condor lift.

 Luckily the vine did not need to go all the way to the roof line.  The production designer said the camera will not be looking up that high.  Thankful... as it was I had a difficult time even reaching around the column.  Twisting a double line of stovepipe wire in the electric drill motor makes for a stronger tie line.  An eye bolt was previously installed on the back of the column.  My first few wraps of grapevine would then hide the wire.  The larger vine is the first layer, and then starts the process of layering more vine over one another to create the effect.  If there was more time I could have added dead leaves.

Silverberry comes in pots and can be so wild that is covers it's own pot (self masking) but to help with the wild and unkept look I will buy cut brush, like wild Oak or brush Cherry and use it to help hide the pots.  Needing to think outside the box, what can be brought to the project to sell the idea of a haunted house?  The brush cutter can be a big help to your project.  He has old ranch's or farm land where he has access to acquire any type of plant you can think of, even weeds.  Yes I buy weeds.  

More vine was added to the front window by using Chinese Elm branches, which makes for a great flat vine look.  Again it would have looked much better had I had the time to add old dead leaves.

 Once the sign is placed out in the yard, some dirt sprinkled around the posts to hide the plywood base, then a layer of old leaves and wild Oak, and you have the look of a haunted house.