In August 2008, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor released to theaters nation wide. The third movie in the series, Alex O'Connel, son of famed mummy fighters Rick and Evy O'Connell, unearths the mummy of the first Emperor of Qin - a shape shifting entity cursed by a witch centuries ago.
This particular film provided me with the opportunity to get a little darker with my promotion technique. For the opening night of the film I dawned a mummy costume, purely made from scratch. Days before the premiere, I took two separate bed sheets and used every possible means to drag, smear and shred the material. After creating a degraded, aged appearance, I then stripped the fabric to create the wrappings needed to make the costume.
Three hours before the first showing, I began covering my entire body in the wrappings. The whole process took two highly uncomfortable hours. Black makeup was applied to darken out my eyes, and as a last measure, soot was patted onto various areas of the costume.Once at the theater, I would hide in the foyer of theater hall two prior to each showing of the movie. There I would use screeching, wailing sounds and motions to scare patrons as they turned into the corner of the theater hall. Afterwards I would drag myself down the main isle during the theater checks to mess with and high-five guests. Afterwards, I would sit motionless on a stool in the main lobby so as not to unravel the ensemble. Twice, a group of patrons would walk through, assuming I was a prop before getting a scare. I did this routine for five showings. Some parts of it were miserable, but after a great crowd reaction, it was worth the hassle.
In addition to the costume, I also used the Cool Edit Pro audio mixing program to create an hour long CD track of sounds used in the first two movies in the Mummy series. The track was then played on the speakers in the main lobby prior to each showing.
