# wasted space or setting the atmosphere



## funhousewizard (Oct 23, 2011)

so in the pro haunts you run or you have been to, how much wasted space is needed for atmosphere. the few i been too this year seem to be lacking in the jump scares, but over saturated with creepy settings. dont get me wrong, at least 2 i went to had a grave yard, nothing scary but a grave stone moving like somthing was comming alive. they were pretty cool, but then another i went 2 had like 4 scenes with just stuff to look at. it was full of deranged hillbilly stuff( i think this is wayyyy over used) anway is it because we do this stuff and want to be a critic and know how it works or is it lack of the quality of their trails/houses..

not to rant just want yall opnion.


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## QueenRuby2002 (Oct 23, 2011)

The one I was dragged to had to much space with nothing going on. I mean place where we could have been scared there was nothing and the few scenes they had set up weren't that impresive. In the end we had a rather nice walk through someones corn maze and learned something about what not to do.

At the same time if you got to much going on or to look at it takes away from the scare as well. I think it's a balance that can be hard to get right. Just hopeing ours has hit that.


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## funhousewizard (Oct 23, 2011)

yea, it is a balence, i mean some of the stuff i saw, was pretty cool and actually had spirirt and party city props, that were mixed with do it yourself stuff but it worked


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## BioHazardCustoms (Aug 5, 2009)

Personally, I'm a HUGE fan of the creepy atmosphere, and jump scares bore me. Don't get me wrong, I still like to see how well scares are executed, but the "jump out and yell "blah"" thing annoys me more than anything. One of the best scares I've ever seen was a silent one. You're walking through a giant "empty" room and a person somehow gets in line behind you. You glance around and there is suddenly a guy there. Works better than the "psycho" with a chainsaw, IMHO.


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## QDance (Aug 16, 2011)

I think it adds to the suspense, and then you get that big scare. But I'm easily scared...


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## sluggo (Jun 16, 2010)

BioHazardCustoms said:


> Personally, I'm a HUGE fan of the creepy atmosphere, and jump scares bore me. Don't get me wrong, I still like to see how well scares are executed, but the "jump out and yell "blah"" thing annoys me more than anything. One of the best scares I've ever seen was a silent one. You're walking through a giant "empty" room and a person somehow gets in line behind you. You glance around and there is suddenly a guy there. Works better than the "psycho" with a chainsaw, IMHO.


I couldn't agree more. People seem to forget that there is a big difference between "scare" and "startle". Most haunted houses are full of startles, not scares. I am occasionally startled at a haunted house, but I don't believe I've ever been scared at one.


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## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

FHW, I think it's a combination of the two things. Yes, we get a bit jaded in our views because of our experience and knowledge, but there's also the fact that others may not have the imagination, time, or money to fill out their spaces as well as they could, and they may not be as into the scare aspect as much as we are.


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## funhousewizard (Oct 23, 2011)

yea, not into the boo, either, more of a silent myers approach, i like the step out approach or the head tilt, with my funhosue project i believe the babbling and nonsense will work better


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## BrotherMysterio (Nov 25, 2011)

BioHazardCustoms said:


> Personally, I'm a HUGE fan of the creepy atmosphere, and jump scares bore me. Don't get me wrong, I still like to see how well scares are executed, but the "jump out and yell "blah"" thing annoys me more than anything. One of the best scares I've ever seen was a silent one. You're walking through a giant "empty" room and a person somehow gets in line behind you. You glance around and there is suddenly a guy there. Works better than the "psycho" with a chainsaw, IMHO.


JB Corn talked extensively about _anticipation_ and _pacing_, calling those two elements both _critical_ and _lacking_ from most Haunts. He's been gone almost 10 years, and I still think he's right.

I appreciate all this now more than ever, since I've started studying his books. With my short time with him, I never got a chance to get that deep into this, since half of his time was spent in the box office running ops for Hawkwood Halloween and trying to get the Trail of Terror up and running.

In one of his Advanced Design books (not the one named Advanced Design, but the other one), he goes into extensive detail on this subject with an "Area 51" type themed house. In it, there are really only 3-4 actual scares, but there's loads of production value and lots of solid _anticipation_ and _pacing_, so that when those scares come, they payoff big-time.

The other great thing about this approach is that it's very easy to tell a story that you don't have to pedantically explain to the patrons. It's self-evident. Much like a Norman Rockwell illustration, you see the logical flow of events evidenced by the various artifacts on the canvas. Because you are not being chased out of every single room, but have a chance to take in what's happening, you learn the story without having to be blantantly told it, nor do you have to wait around long to figure it out. Thus, when the scare comes, it only has hit with you only being a few seconds into the room.

This also goes back to what Alfred Hitchcock said about suspense, which essentially is about 90% anticipation and 10% payoff (my breakdown, not his).

The subject once came up in context to making thrillers on whether or not there was a distinction between "suspense" and a mere "surprise" (startle, jump scare, etc, [insert favorite Haunt analogue here]). The question was asked during Hitchcock's being interviewed by Francois Truffaut for his Hitchcock biography named, simply, Hitchcock.

Hitchcock defined the distinction as such:



Hitchcock said:


> There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.
> 
> We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"
> 
> In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.


In essence, a "surprise" or a "thrill" is four guys playing poker, there's a bomb under the table we may or may not know about, and it goes off; suspense is four guys playing poker, the camera shows us a _ticking_ bomb under the table, and it _*doesn't*_ go off . . . it just ticks and ticks and ticks.

In the same way, when going thru JB's hypothetical alien invasion Haunt, we know what's up from the very start. If the first room, with all it's war-torn, scorched-earth, scientific-looking, secret government lab type equipment, doesn't tell us the full story, then the next room definitely will.

Obviously whatever "aliens", "disease-induced-zombies", or "genetic-mutation-experiments-gone-wrong" that were being worked on here in this now-demolished, scorched-earth lab probably weren't really happy with whatever decisions were being made on their behalf regarding their well-being, and now they are looking for some payback. (Got a surplus of gorilla costumes? How about a "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" theme, or something like that?)

Not only that, but if these entities happen to be particularly carnivorous, they may also be looking for _lunch_. Not really a situation most people would want to find themselves in. As to incidentals such as to what type of monsters they are or what they look like, well, we'll no doubt learn those details soon enough. Right now, _we need to be more focused on *survival*._

It's that preamble of alien apocalypse (proceeding whatever actual scares may come) with which we start as we head thru the Haunt, and that is all self-evident without any extensive backstory necessarily laid bare in the lobby or queue line. A lot of money, time, energy - just a lot of resources in general - are often used to do elaborate queue-line "news reels" or "newspaper clippings" about whatever alledgedly happened in a given production's backstory. All that's great if you have the resources to do it, but if you can communicate that quickly and effectively at the beginning of your Haunt, that makes your job a whole lot easier. Anything else on top of that is all gravy, and something you can work towards after you get your Haunt where you want it to be.

And that kind of set-up can't happen if you have kids in masks chasing you out of every room from the word "go".

More later . . .

BM


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## Spooky D (Oct 4, 2011)

I think the atmosphere is key. If the sets are really great it helps you lose yourself in the experience. The added bonus to that is if someone is fascinated by the room they are in they will be somewhat distracted by the scene itself and not notice that guy sneaking up on them, making for a much more effective scare.


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## Bascombe (May 18, 2010)

I'm a fan of balance. Set up a backstory for your haunt, a theme if you will, then let the atmosphere set up the scare, startle, surprise or suspense.

Creepiest haunt I ever went to was in an old Victorian state hospital that all the mental patients were the ghouls in. That all by itself made the place scary. It was scary from start to finish, even the big guy with the trench coat, hockey mask and chainsaw without the chain (trite now, but very scary since I knew the actor was really a mental patient).


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## BioHazardCustoms (Aug 5, 2009)

Balance is where it all comes back to. This entire industry revolves around scares. Be they "startle type" scares, or the "get in your head and give you the willies" scares, at the end of the day, that's what patrons pay for. Atmosphere can set you at ease, or vice versa. Allen calls it "Anti-fung schway"(I know it's misspelled, but I have no idea how to spell the japanese art of atmosphere design, so there) but I've always called it creeping a room out. No matter what you call it, it's about setting the room up to make people subconsciously uncomfortable. If they're uncomfortable without realizing it, they're more susceptible to scares of whatever type. The creepier the room, the more likely the patron is to be scared by your actor or animatronic. This can be accomplished with sound, lighting, set design, or any combination of the above. Usually it works best with a combo of the three. Set up correctly, a room with no actors can creep someone out to the point that an actor in the next room can cause a puddle problem.


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## BrotherMysterio (Nov 25, 2011)

Before we go further, could we come up with a definitive (or at least effective) working definition of "balance", as it applies to this thread?

BM


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## robert padilla (Nov 9, 2011)

sometimes less is more. imagine a scene from jack the ripper....long stone streets...low lighting and a nice layer of ground for some low playing organ music and at the last moment in your path a figure emerges from a dark doorway. no booo bo yell just stepping right in front of you. that would scare the crap outta anybody! hahaha


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## Allen H (Feb 13, 2010)

There are some really good posts here- I could talk about this for hours and hours untill I got carpal tunel from typing about it. But...I will just answer the question asked.
"Waste of space or setting the atmosphere?"
My answer is yes. To some customers that is a waste of space and to others it is building atmosphere. An awesome thing happens when a haunt has been around long enough- the customers who like their style keep coming back and the customers who dont like it dont come back. So you are training your audience by thinning them out a bit with time. you cant make everyone happy- so a "balanced" middle ground is the safest bet. If you have a 6,000 sf show and six scares but alot of atmosphere then you will attract the atmosphere crowd as the adrenaline jocks will not come back. On the flip side if your 6,000 square ft show is all black walls but packed with boo jump at ya actors then you will get the other crowd.
Most haunts fall in the middle so they get a clientel that goes there every three years or so- becuase they arent polarized enough to a super favorite- they just do everything pretty well so they are worth seeing again.


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## BrotherMysterio (Nov 25, 2011)

Allen H said:


> "Waste of space or setting the atmosphere?"
> My answer is yes. To some customers that is a waste of space and to others it is building atmosphere. Most haunts fall in the middle so they get a clientel that goes there every three years or so- becuase they arent polarized enough to a super favorite- they just do everything pretty well so they are worth seeing again.


What do you try to accomplish at Screams?

BM


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## stagehand1975 (Feb 22, 2010)

Here is my view. What may just startle people like us, may also scare the fluids out of someone else. I have seen customers enter a room and freak out just becuase of the atmosphere. I have scared the crap out of someone with a sound effect without intention. A haunt is like a band, every instrument working together to make the show. I have had customers come to get scared on one day and come back the next week just look at the sets.


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## BrotherMysterio (Nov 25, 2011)

A Haunt is also like a magic show (or lack thereof). What will amaze (or scare) the lay-audience will not necessarily amaze (or scare) us.

In fact, currently, there is a debate going on at the Magic Cafe (online forum), where some magi are opining that they won't do an effect unless it at first "fools" them. The same guys who purportedly can't be "fooled" because they know how all the tricks are done because they know "all the secrets" will only put a new piece in their active performing repertoire (assuming if they actually perform) only if it "fools" them. 

(Not to tell tales out of school [mystery school?], but such oxymorons are prevalent in the world of conjuring.) 

Well, I don't perform for magicians . . . I perform for lay audiences. And I may have the most sophisticated, award-winning, 10 phase "coins across" routine in the world (where one coin after another goes from one hand to the other, as the title suggests), but if they're yawning after the first or second coin has jumped from one hand to the other, to them it's just ho-hum "big deal, whatever". To them, I'm simply repeating the same trick 10 times over (which, in fact, I essentially am).

Magicians, who have "x-ray vision" or perhaps "sleight vision", and can see what I'm doing, are frightfully impressed, and enthralled to the very end. They know what I'm doing and how hard it is, and a few times I really do "fool them", and they are impressed with that. You may have been good at jumping a stack of 2x4's and a plank of wood with your dirt bike as a kid, but it's still impressive to see Evel Knievel do it.

However, while you and your friends are really impressed with ramping your bike a few inches off the ground, or Knievel jumping the Grand Canyon, the rest of the neighborhood just doesn't care. Likewise, you might be able to do a "coins across" routine mentioned above, make the coins jump a few times, and the build comes from them progressively getting harder, with the last coin being initialled and then ending up in a spectator's wallet or pocket. That version might play.

But lay audiences just don't care when you just bore them to death endlessly with repetitious routines (doing it 10 times) designed more to impress you and your friends than to entertain said lay audiences. For them, the "Invisible Deck", where a named card turns out to be the only turned-over card in an otherwise normal deck, that trick to lay audiences is an absolute _miracle_, and one they will tell their friends about. The technical term for that type of trick is "a reputation maker".

_Nevermind the fact that it's an $8 trick at any magic shop._

Likewise, just because we may or may not find something scary doesn't mean it will necessarily be effective or not. The Haunt doesn't happen in our heads. It happens in the audience's heads, and that's where our attention needs to be if we are going to have a paying audience want to come through, part with their hard earned dollars, and participate in our show.


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## Bascombe (May 18, 2010)

I remember the first time I went on the ride, "Star Tours" at Disneyland. They could only put 20 or 30 people on the ride at any one time, so the line was forever. They combatted that by digging out a couple of old Donald Duck animatronics, stripped the feathers off of them and created a routine for these naked robots to keep the crowd entertained and also to keep them excited about the ride while waiting in a very long line. As I recall, the routine was about a half an hour, so I didn't see it loop more than once.

What BrotherMysterio says is right. You show the audience the same thing over and over again to set up the payoff.

I have an idea for my haunt where I'll have a Flying Crank Ghost in my front window, another FCG in my garage where the patrons will see it as they walk by and another in the mausoleum in the back yard. By the time they see the fourth one, I hope they are yawning because the fourth one will be the FCG body puppet that will come at them. It won't be as effective a scare if I don't set it up with a couple of regular FCG's though.


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## BrotherMysterio (Nov 25, 2011)

Bascombe said:


> the fourth one will be the FCG body puppet that will come at them.


Is that the extended, "reverse marionette" with the pvc rigging that floats up and out from the puppeteer at the same relative height as a regular FCG? If so, I love that one! I've seen video of it and I can't wait to do it.


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## Bascombe (May 18, 2010)

That be the one, Yaaar

(Dang where did the piratespeak come from?)


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## funhousewizard (Oct 23, 2011)

wow, i forgot about this thread, super replies i loved it thank you all for the imput


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## Allen H (Feb 13, 2010)

At SCREAMS with 5 houses I tried to make each one strike a different nerve. a creepy graveyard, a high startle scare asylum, and an uncomfortable "talking crew' in the castle. Each attraction meant to be a different type of guests favorite. It worked this season too, our exit surveys had the 3D house clearly in the lead and the others pretty neck and neck. The 3D house will always be first because its the easiest to remember (bright colors) and two killer effects in it.


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## BrotherMysterio (Nov 25, 2011)

Bascombe said:


> That be the one, Yaaar?)


Indeed! Can't wait to do it. I'm also going to do something interesting with some Flying Crank _Spiders_!



Bascombe said:


> (Dang where did the piratespeak come from?)


Which, funnily enough, brings me to my next question . . .



Allen H said:


> At SCREAMS with 5 houses I tried to make each one strike a different nerve. a creepy graveyard, a high startle scare asylum, and an uncomfortable "talking crew' in the castle. Each attraction meant to be a different type of guests favorite. It worked this season too, our exit surveys had the 3D house clearly in the lead and the others pretty neck and neck. The 3D house will always be first because its the easiest to remember (bright colors) and two killer effects in it.


I think I was there the first year you were there, and there was the 3D Pirates, or something of the sort. Is that the 3D one you're still doing? And what are the two killer effects? Also, what are the 5 houses? 3D, Asylum, Castle, Maze, & Graveyard, iirc? Are you still doing those B/W Universal Pictures Monsters?


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