The Human Butcher Shop

I helped host the photobooth tent at RPM Fest 2026! My half of the tent was The Human Butcher Shop, a horror set inspired by Cannibal Corpse and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I knew for this set I wanted to have a few RPM Fest easter eggs to look for in the background. To prepare for the photobooth I spent the summer taking several new lifecast molds of staff and volunteers for the fest! The set was built with all people that visitors could recognize from around the fest. New props were molded after Brian, Gulow, Sasha, Pixie, Tara, Arthur, and Ryan! Check out this article to see more about the lifecasting process and these new props!

I planned for this set to be a butcher shop or cannibal kitchen, so the set was decked out with hanging body parts, a chopped up body on the table, jars of preserved body parts and spooky spices like pus mustard and blood ketchup and a shaker of flies. Prop knives and axes would be provided for people to pose with in their photos. One of my favorite touches were the kitchen napkins covered in blood that read "The secret ingredient is love" because all jokes aside about the killer cannibal cooking human remains with love, RPM Fest totally is a huge labor of love from all the people involved with it!

Before the fest while about half of the props were still in progress I did a test run in my own home studio set up so we could get some promo photos to announce the photobooth to people and show an example of what it would be like! The test run came out so good that I was even more excited to put the bigger set together at the fest!

We arrived to the Miller Falls Rod and Gun Club a few days early to help with set up and assemble the full set before the fest. The final touches were provided by LeatherPixie, who brought the canvas backdrop that I splattered with blood before the fest and the awesome mummified deer skull on the top shelf!

Above Photo by Josh Esan

 

I had so much fun putting this whole set together and seeing people come through was a huge highlight of RPM Fest for me this year. It was a really great way to bring people up close and personal to some practical special effects on a larger scale, and I had a lot of fun both with taking people's photos and with chatting with people and answering their questions about the props!

I loved having a spot where all the friends who wanted to say hi to me at the fest could come and visit me! And it was also super fun when all of the people who had donated their body parts to the set came on by to see how they were used in the end!

Huge thanks again to everyone who let me take molds of their faces, hands, and feet for this project! 

The secret ingredient really IS love!! 

And thanks so much to the bands, drag artists, and other performers who got their photoshoots done in the set! I did some shoots and a few of the other fest photographers were also able to utilize the set, which is super exciting for me too! I can't wait to see how the other photographers staged and edited their photos!

And once again thank you SO much to RPM Fest for asking me to be a part of things this year and helping to make this set happen! See you next year!!