Victorian Haunting

[razor]

Hi all

 

 

I'm looking for some advice/tricks. One of the groups I havebeen working with are hoping to do a Victorian Haunting where we are going to turnthe hole building of our local theatre in to a hunted tore and ghostly show atthe end. Now I have never done any lighting or sound for something like thisand was wondering if some of you might have some tricks up there sleeves.

 

 

Thanks

 

[GridGirl]

Do you mean a haunting? I did something slightly similar years ago - it was Edgar Allen Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" and we discovered fairly early on that sound was very important - you can go to town on soundscapes. If you have the ability to place small effects speakers all over the place and rout effects to specific speakers, you have the ability to draw people's attention one way then whack in something creepy sounding unexpectedly from behind them, which will almost guarantee to make them jump. Maybe try and find some video of the Disneyland Haunted House for ideas too?

[dbuckley]

The Americans take Halloween very seriously, and a google for that keyword will bring an embarrassment of riches on how to do hauntings. Up to and including robotic things tha throw the unwary over a wall into a hedge...

[Superpants]

Have a look at the Halloween Monster List- loads of info on creating Haunts for the Halloween mad Americans:

Monster List

[cedd]

I do an event every year that's very similar to this. The slight difference being it's outside, on a ride-on miniature railway. So the audience are driven around the mile long track in the dark, whilst I scare the pants off of them with various tricks I've built. Ask Boswell and Russ83 - they work on it with me too.

 

Some of my favourite effects;

Surround sound whispers - a trigger is made when the train gets to a certain section of track. A whispered voice comes out of a speaker positioned front left, then the same rear right, then other whispers start from front right and rear left. To start with you're made to feel like the "spirit" who did the whispering has moved around you, then as it builds you realise there are several of them all around you. It's dead simple to do using multiplay and a bunch of follow on cues assigned to different outputs.

 

I've also done triggered screams with equal effect. Their beauty is that they're an easy scare that doesn't require a member of cast to be there, freeing them up to be somewhere else.

Lighting-wise, personally I don't think you can go wrong with a load of festoon, dimly lit and flickering occasionally. When you walk around a place realising this stuff is your only source of light, having it occasionally flicker or threaten to go out is pretty scary! It's used to great effect on the ride Hex at Alton Towers.

 

I have a box full of interface devices that allow me to pull shows like this together (it's becoming a bit of a specialism now!) and they allow me to trigger various effects from various triggers, building up a modular control system. I'm about to film a video blog about it for the work I'm doing on The Narnia Experience so once it's filmed and done, I'll provide a link. It includes light gates and switches as triggers, mains, 24v and closing contact output devices, along with specific interfaces that fire my smoke machines, make keystrokes on a PC, and I'm just working on a stand alone mp3 player with several different inputs, each one triggering a different track to play back.

 

If you want to trigger a PC remotely from contact closures then I've had success hacking USB keyboards, but most recently I've found Ultimarc, who make parts for arcade machines. They make a few configurable interface devices which appear to the PC as keyboards, but are configurable really easily in software to set which pins make which keystrokes. I particularly like their U-HID Nano. Don't be fooled by the prices in dollars, they're a UK company and their customer service is great.

I find that electric garden gate light gates make very good triggers.

 

Edit to add;

I've also discovered over the 5 or 6 years of doing this event that silence doesn't work! It might sound like a good idea in the planning stages, but it's a sure fire way to shatter an illusion. As soon as you get a bunch of people in a room together in silence they'll become aware of the noises each other are making, and also start hearing noise from the outside world, so rather than the silence making them feel isolated it actually does the opposite, it reminds them they're with other people, and there's still a real world out there.

Tones, rumbles, wind noise, dripping water, music, anything to cut them off and stop them from hearing anything you don't want them to hear.

[paulears]

Sub bass - if it's very low it can be felt, rather than heard and things will start to rattle and people won't be able to tell where it's coming from. You can also make people very on edge with +16KHz tones that the younger ones will get very frustrated with, especially when older people steadfastly state there is nothing there.

[dbuckley]

The Dutch PCStage distributor has used PCStage to do many interactive museum type attractions with audience interaction. This side of the full blown show controllers and dedicated systems, PCStage is pretty much unbeatable for this sort of work, as its designed with this task in mind, stage shows are comparatively straightforward.

[cedd]

It's very "consumer" but The gadget Show did an episode where they applied some "tech" (their words, not mine) to create a haunted house at Tamworth Castle. They were using a lot of sub bass and high frequency tones to create just the effects described above. Also did some crafty work with an image in a window akin to Pepper's Ghost (an effect well worth researching, can have a lot of fun with it!).

 

I can't find video of the actual episode online, but there's a behind the scenes video

which shows some clips of the effects at the end.

 

When is the show out of interest?

[razor]

Thanks for all the help I haven’t got the exact dates yetbut believe it is around 31 Oct 1 Nov

 

[bigclive]

And for real scares... Actors (students) in suitable attire chasing, screaming and generally being quite scary. Much more effective than expensive automated effects, even though the automation aspect is fun.

 

As the others have mentioned, Americans LOVE Halloween as much as Christmas (if not more) so looking at some of their haunts on youtube will provide lots of inspiration.

 

I'll also second the use of background audio theming. It really makes an atmosphere.

[Wingwalker]

Years ago I was involved with the first of the Alien War tours based on the film Alien by UIP. Very simple setup with effective use of colour (mainly red and green) along witrh a couple of strobes, rotating beacons and smoke. The scenario was you were trapped on board the spaceship and were being taken to safety by the "Marshalls" - every once in a while you had an actor leap out at you dressed in a few green rags and an Alien type head based on the film. I first got involved by servicing one of the smoke machines on site that had gone down. At the time I was wearing a dark blue set of overalls so was told to stand in a darkened corner and watch what happens. One of the Aliens who was crouched by my side, looked up at me and grinned and all I could see was his teeth in the dim light as well as the rows of teeth on the costume head. Right on cue the audience were shunted through the set by marshalls wearing combat gear, the strobe goes off and my new found friend lept into action snarling and growling at the crowd whilst wildly waiving his arms. Needless to say I think more than one person needed the use of the nearby conveniences after they finished :D

[Superpants]

The best part of a haunt I was involved with was incredibly simple and consisted of a sheet of Lycra stretched and secured between a couple of flats. The visitors walked along what they believed was a normal passageway (in very subdued lighting), periodically someone would press/ lunge at the lycra from the rear whilst someone was passing & shouted or screamed at the same time- never failed to make them jump!

[cedd]

A single wet piece of string dangling just where it'll brush someone's face as they walk under it is a cracking trick! Especially if they're part of a group as the chances are they'll be the only one who feels it and screams, which is all the more scary!

 

We also had a play with an airzooka - a kids toy that launches a blast of air across a room. They're great as the effect is invisible but feels like someone's just stood right in front of you and blown in your face. Give one to an actor at the other side of the room and you're away.

[the kid]

I think there are some bits online about how universal do the Halloween haunts in florida. I think there is a odd and weird thing where they hang fishing wire and you walk in to it. its just odd and unnerving.

[bigclive]

The dangly string trick was a staple of the earlier British ghost trains. The most unnerving thing about it was pondering how many grubby children it had already trailed across prior to making contact with you.