How to be a Zombie : Preparing for Frightmare
I love Halloween and anything scary. When we were in USA for Halloween we went on a haunted hay ride and my mum was screaming her head off it was hilarious.
When I was invited to Over Farm to see how they are preparing for Frightmare I jumped at the chance of taking my mum as I could do with a laugh.
Over Farm is in Gloucester so about an hours drive from my home in Bristol. They hold an annual Halloween festival called Frightmare even though it is only September they have been preparing for months and invited us along to show us how they train their actors to be Zombies, Ghosts and anything ghoulish.
The farm is a lovely place to visit at any time of the year as they have a delicious farm shop and some animals. As you may know I adore pigs so was fascinated to see the breed they have there and also the llamas. They also hold other events throughout the year so it is worth checking their website to see if they have anything going on, they recently had a open air cinema.
We did some acting techniques on how to be the perfect zombie. We learnt how to walk and move and the most important part of how to scare the patrons without touching them. I thought my mum would hate this as it is really outside of her comfort zone but she loved it and she was the perfect zombie. One point she was a ghost and for the verbal technique she actually scared me by whispering “Help me Help me”
We then had out make up done by special effect artists SynysterFX who will be doing the actors make up for the festival. We looked incredible, I think we made really good zombies.
After the make up artists and spent so much effort on our faces we didnt want to wash it off for our journey home so we went home looking like zombies.
This was OK until we remembered that we had nothing in for dinner so we had to go shopping. Luckily we went to the farm shop and they must been used to seeing zombies and didnt bat an eyelid although we did get a few strange looks from their customers but it was really fun.
We did get a few strange looks on the drive home but luckily I didnt cause anything untoward as I dont know how I would have explained two zombies driving on a sunny afternoon.
I cant wait to go to Frightmare as it looks amazing and I want to see if I can be scared now that I know a few backstage secrets. This year they have got 5 live attractions in October you can see the dates and prices on their website. Let me know if you go and what you think.
What do you do at Halloween? Are they any Halloween festivals you would recommend?
Thank you to Frightmare for teaching us how to be zombies and for a scaretastic afternoon
