...or the lack there of... Vision is one of the five senses, duh. And no I do not believe in any more than five. Haunts can be broken down into three types. Right, wrong and wronger (wrongest?). Seldom do I see right, so let us investigate the other two and from this you may glean right.
Dark hallways have their place, black hallways maybe, but a haunt using a single flashlight for lighting is a sure sign of lack of forethought. Proper illumination is part of scene design, which is based on overall haunt design. Light, its color, placement, intensity and space it fills are a major part of scene design. When should a customer see? What should he see? Where should he see it? How should it affect him? What happens when he can no longer see it? How long should he be in the dark? How dark? How intense should the illumination be? From where? Many questions. The answers will come from your own unique style. First things first, design a scene. This includes all aspects: customer entrance and exit; the set and props; number of actors (if any); theme (part of a themed haunts story line or not); lighting and sound. The room I have chosen for purpose is a collapsed mine shaft. Large beams fill a vast space (20'x20'). The path is obvious, requires some ducking and the exit is unknown, due to the winding path. The beams are made from 1x4s and 1x6s boxed to form a larger beam. Some are full boxed others two or three sides, depending upon their orientation to the customer path. Black convention taffeta is draped to form a tighter space and can be draped around sprinkler heads. One of the scares is the infamous customer duck down; actor is now above and behind customer. This actor may control an air ram for moving one or more beams… in the wrong direction, an air horn, air jets, big board for banging, bean cans, etc. This scare should be near the end of the scene and have clear running room for the exit. Do nothing special to mask the actor, continue with the taffeta draping and make this duck down look like one or two before. What were we talking about? Oh, lighting! A thin mist of fog will add to the collapsed feeling and enhance lighting. I have set lighting several different ways for this scene. The first was pure theatrical. Little spots creating pools of light, chasing down the sides of beams, bleeding through cracks, looked great, but… Strobes played cool, too. The most effective and dramatic was pure white light. Two sources. The entrance to the beam room was illuminated from behind and at floor level shinning up. The customer's entrance blocked light, created shadows and concern for things that were not there. The exit provided blinding light directed into the customers' face. This distraction accomplished three things; additional cross lighting of the beam room (complete with shadows created by the customers exiting for those now entering), clear view of the exit and set the stage for the next scare in near darkness with the customers iris near closed down. A side benefit was for those customers brave enough to turn around and look back after the duck down scare. When ever possible I used a little girl as the actor. This had the added effect of customer amusement at the thought of a child scaring them. The entrance light was on the floor in a Boo unit. These are special units I have designed that make use of lost triangular spaces common to the 60-degree method. Boo units have openings top, middle and bottom. I have several of each style and place them as needed. The exit is illuminated from another Boo unit. The beams are painted in dark tones, but added to this are streaks of bright white paint. They help shape the beams and provide reflective surfaces for the white light. The customer shadows playing across the white streaks provide a unique and ever changing distraction. Colored light looks cool and very theatrical. It does not accomplish the scare effect. That is not to say the beam room does not work with colored light, it does. It is to say that the room is more effective with bright white light and provides the set up for the next scare. Lighting is more than bee bopping down to the hardware store and scooping up some clamp lights. Lighting is customer manipulation at its best. How about a grain of wheat bulb that suddenly appears near your face, in the dark?Mad Hatter
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