The series covers the strange adventures of a normal young couple who move into a neighborhood filled with some kinda\u2019 unusual people. You have an eccentric inventor who\u00a0is married to what may be\u00a0an alien disguised as a 1950\u00a0 \u2018June Cleaver\u2019 housewife.\u00a0 There is the \u2018Men in Black\u2019 style FBI agent and his men constantly trying to expose the strange goings-on. And more!\u00a0<\/p>\n
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My son Nathan (aka \u2018Nate\u2019 on this production) shared that he had some unusual items to come up with for the newest batch of episodes. One of the\u00a0show calls for the FBI agent, Danford, to raid the garage of Archeval, the inventor, seeking evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Danford and the Agents walk across the street to the Archeval <\/em>house. He BANGS on the mad scientist\u2019s garage door.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n DANFORD<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Archeval! Open up! You and me, right now!<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n The garage door does indeed raise. As it opens, Archeval is <\/em>glaring face to face with Danford. In the workshop is a DEATH RAY. \u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>The production needs a Death Ray<\/span>!??!\u00a0 I can\u2019t pass that up! Wow! I just gotta\u2019 build\u00a0a death ray weapon!\u00a0<\/p>\n My son, Nate,\u00a0and I started brainstorming.\u00a0\u00a0We went on on-line and looked at a number of 1930\u2019s and 40\u2019s movie props as well as comic art.\u00a0 We both liked the long cylindrical look with long gun barrel out the front.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0I came up with a few sketches and ran them by director, Nathan Blackwell.\u00a0 He liked this one.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Approved "Death Ray" concept <\/p><\/div>\n Because of extremely limited budget we had to have Blackwell decide which way the gun would be pointed so we only had to detail out or finish one side of the weapon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nate Stipes began a phone search for repair stores with dead canister vacuum cleaners and old hoses. He scored two old vacs. We both liked the Electrolux with the rounded front. As near as we can tell it was the model 9000 or similar. It had the advantage of being a later model made with a plastic cast skin, not heavy metal of earlier machines.\u00a0<\/p>\n Electrolux in action<\/p><\/div>\n It was still pretty heavy so the first operation was to gut the poor old thing. With motors, recoil devices and wheels removed, it was a lot lighter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now that we had approved concept sketches and a basic body shape we could go about to the local Goodwill and \u2018Dollar-discount\u2019 stores for parts and shapes. It was a bit hit-or-miss but sometimes serendipitous.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0This is a design \/ construction approach that I learned from a terrific visual effects designer and model maker, Tom Scherman,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/tomscherman.blogspot.com\/2010_04_01_archive.html<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Tom was a master of finding discount objects and turning them into cities, submarines and flying machines. So I did my best to channel Tom as Nate and I went scrounging through stores.\u00a0<\/p>\n A disgustingly nasty chair from Goodwill became the base of the gun after removing the cushion seat and back.\u00a0 A high pressure water sprayer became a basis for the gun barrel. Some strange, what-is-it, open grill containers became the frame for the required glowing gun barrel chamber.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Death](\"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Weird-gun_left.jpg\" "\\"Weird")
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