Halloween Diorama

John Carpenter’s Halloween title screen shot

It’s literally gonna be a Halloween (1978) diorama, in particular the scene when Michael Meyers briefly appears from behind the hedge.

Shot from Halloween when Michael Meyers appears from behind the hedge

The bav-o-rama has had the Grady sisters of The Shining fame gracing its presence for the last 4 months, but they tell me its time to move on.

Sadly, The Shining diorama has run its course after four months

Not gonna lie, it was hard to say goodbye to the sisters given I think that diorama represents a potential high-water mark for the space, but Tommy assures me the best is yet to come, so avanti!

Apart from taking apart The Shining diorama we mapped out the Halloween diorama, figuring we would be able to recreate a piece of the shot physically in three-dimensions and then Tommy will paint the background and side-view around the centerpiece. Below is a cropped image of what we are planning to build:

Cropped shot from Halloween when Michael Meyers appears behind the hedge

This shot will essentially be what you see when you walk by the window. A bit more subtle than the twins, but for me it’s iconic not only because it’s the first time you get a good look at Michael Meyers as an adult in the film, but also given how well it captures the ambience of Halloween (the holiday) in a suburban town with fall in full swing. That’s what we’re shooting for with this diorama: communicating to our Italian audience a sense of the magic of that moment when Halloween arrives in a Midwestern suburban America town.*

Highlighting this moment is also iconic for others, here’s a silkscreen of the moment created by an artist (link from image for more)

It’s also pretty magical because Tommy is fully partnering up on this one with me, so I’m turning this into a family business. We’ll soon be making dioramas all over the world together 🙂

Having mapped out the floor and its incline for this piece, I’m now investigating reproducing the hedge, tree and sidewalk (I already have the grass figured out). To get a little help on the hedge identification I threw the image in ChatGPT and got the following:

I obviously fell down the rabbit hole of what time of year, what time of day, is that dog poop or a leaf? etc. It seemed accurate enough claiming it was shot in early to mid autumn (that’s what the director wants you to think at least) and in the later afternoon/evening (that’s when the girls are walking home from school). ChatGPT was also able to quickly ascertain this shot was in Southern California (something the director was trying to hide) rather than the Midwest.

In fact, this hedge is one of the more famous in Hollywood, or South Pasadena to be precise. It not only still exists, but it has become a popular destination for fans, which is a blast and further re-enforces the iconic nature of the scene.

That said, the imagined world of Halloween is the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. For me as a Long Island kid the way Carpenter captured that sense of anywhere suburbia America during the 70s was a huge part of the power of this film.

And while the scene was shot in the spring, lighting and the placement of some fallen leaves and toned plants quickly belies that fact for creative effect. In fact, we’ll be trying to do the same in our diorama with much less to go on. Hopefully knowing those are ash trees and the hedge is a boxwood (something I kinda knew) will help a bit with some modicum of verisimilitude.

Image a of a deeply concerened Jamie Lee Curtis after seeing Michael Meyer disappear behind the hedge

If we can get at least one passer-by with the same reaction that Jamie Lee Curtis has in the screenshot above, I would call it a success.

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*As an added bonus, the Halloween in the film land on a Friday as it does this year, so I love that chronological symmetry.