FEAR
And what are you feared of? My experience has led me to believe that mentally young people are easy to scare while mentally old people are not. I do not use age as a reference because I have had a six-year-old girl waltz through my haunt giving the actors directions on how to do a better job, while her mother jumped at her own shadow. And I have had adults refuse to enter or take the first exit. The mental state of mind is important.
We in the haunt biz try to scare our guests. We call them victims, fresh meat, lambs to the slaughter, etc. The greeter sets the stage with a prepared dialogue, tries to intimidate and creates conversation with intent on learning a name or two to pass on to the actors inside.
Our scenes use blood, guts, bones, sharp looking objects, animals that evoke emotions like rats and snakes, masks from movies, scenes from movies, spinning motion, miss-direction, vibrations, sound, music and more with the intent being to get a reaction from the guests. Pinhead, Jason, Freddy, Dracula, The Mummy, etc. all developed by writers and movies and used by us as an easy scare. Or are we being used to promote the movies? And does it make any difference who is exploiting whom?
My trend towards fewer masks has led to the exploitation of (various aspects). I no longer put masks on females or males, that helps serve as the distraction in a scene. (I mainly use masks on dummies). By revealing my actors faces you can see the animation of the character that they create. Their emotional response also helps serve the customer's fear by allowing a closer contact with the character.
I would be a fool not to use all of the elements available to me to produce my show. I would be inviting a law suit if I did not provide equal opportunity for employment to all races, sexes, orientation and abilities. I believe in equal opportunity exploitation. I design my scenes around the talent available and allow for variations. I maintain an open and flexible mind and will try almost anything once.
Trying to examine why people are afraid of things is difficult at best. Some things frighten us more than others. Spiders, bugs and the like have an effect on some and not others. Strobe lights will terrify one and not the other. Sound effects will evoke terror from one and not another. Visualization is the same as imagination in the scare biz.
Of course fear is relative to where and when you are. My drill instructor reminded me of James Cagney. He was short, might have weighed 140 pounds soaking wet and had a strange sense of humor. Our training platoon began with 45 lost souls. We graduated 15 original members. AWOL, insubordination, assaulting an NCO, etc. brought our numbers down during the twelve weeks. My drill sergeant was the scariest thing in my life, since then it has been a breeze, stormy maybe. Translating that into a haunt scene misses a lot in the translation. Godzilla was my squad leader. One day he decided that he had had enough of the Sarge. He did not graduate with us either. Recruits assaulting the Sarge accounted for more than half our numbers reduction. Much like Yoda, "…judge me by my size…" The Sarge gave a new meaning to ants and rubber tree plants.
Irrational fear is my favorite. You are afraid for no reason at all. Irrational fears are cultural. That is: created by our peers or our environment. I saw this frequently as Spiderman. I have a good relationship with animals. A chimpanzee did not know what to make of me. She grabbed one of my hands, pulled and ran to the end of her leash. The Spidey suit is one big panty hose, it stretched, the chimp freaked, let go and we became the best of friends. The chimp could not understand how my arm could grow about two feet. His reaction was irrational. People do the same thing, usually with snakes. Sneaky Snake (so called because she refused to stay in her basket) was a pet I would take along on Amusement Park and Comic Convention appearances. I would wrap the nearly seven foot Python around my neck and sign autographs. Children thought it was cool, but a few adults did not. Their child would touch the snake and they would lose it. I was at the Dallas Zoo when another guest had a bad reaction in the reptile building. A large parrot flew overhead, landing on its perch about three feet away from the guest. She lost it and made a hasty exit with her male companion.
Irrational fear can come in many forms. I can understand the fear associated with an actor wearing a Freddy mask, after all Freddy is the dream stalker and comes complete with movie magic baggage. An actor with no mask, running around in street clothes, a derby hat or shades scaring the bee gee gees out of guests is, is irrational. But irrational or not, I will take advantage of all that the guests will give me in my quest to produce a better show.
Scene Study List