# What's an effective way to light props in a dark maze without lighting whole maze?



## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

First i wanna say sorry if it seems i'm posting a lot of questions. It's only my second year home haunting and haunt season is coming up! Last year i put props and stuff in my dark maze in my garage but problem was after i did it you couldnt see any of the detail. So i was thinking this year to have just enough lighting on each prop or section without illuminating the entire hallway or maze. Any idea's how i can do this. Also keep in mind i'm working with black plastic walls stapled to 1x2 frames. Maybe like cheap lantern's or flash lights aimed at them? I dunno i really have no idea.


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

Small LED spotlights are great. You can make your own low voltage DC current ones, or buy them.


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## joker (Sep 25, 2007)

We use clamp lights with low wattage colored bulbs in our maze, but space them out so that you can see where you need to go, but far enough apart to keep areas for the actors dark.


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## MildAvaholic (Aug 11, 2009)

Maybe even flicker lights, which could give intermittent lighting and almost act as a stobe
light.


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## deadlyivy (Sep 10, 2012)

If I were you I would so check the $ store mine has a large selection of cheap mini flash lights and book lights with lamps. All you would have to worry about is battery's. But hey it's only a couple of days you need them. I'm also lighting all the tombstones this way.


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## Bone Dancer (Oct 7, 2005)

Single LED spot lights of you have the time and I think would be the best way to go long term, but the dollar store led flash lights work to for a bit bigger areas.

http://lighthouseleds.com/

I got my leds from these guys. They are prewired (a major plus) an they have them in differing voltages as well.


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

Awesome. Thanks for the advice yall


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## scarynoyes (Sep 6, 2011)

Allen Hopps at Stiltbeast Studios has a great video on YouTube on how to build your own LED mini spot lights. They are cheap and really quick and easy to make.


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## Allen H (Feb 13, 2010)

I will also recommend mini spot lights. You can even use my mounting system if you go the flashlight route.


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

I used AllenH method last year and it worked well. I did use multiple colors though to light things by added 2 or 3 in a cluster to get a different effect. I found one blue and 3 red made an awesome purplish erie shade for lighting certain things.


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## scarrycher (May 30, 2012)

I'm using Allens mini spots also, very easy and I got my leds from lighthouse also orderd on saturday and got them on tuesday!


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

I'm not gonna have time to actually make anything. I was just thinking more along the lines of a few colored filters , duct tape and mini flashlights or something haha. I dunno.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

Mini LED flashlights should do the trick. We've been using them in our yard display for a couple years now to highlight individual props. You can make shields out of cardboard to help direct the light beam and disguise the flashlight. Paint the shields black and they virtually disappear.


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

*Though i'd share my super cheap way to light props..*

So i asked and then got some cool idea's then kinda thought up some of my own and came up with this super ghetto, super cheap BUT EFFECTIVE way of lighting individual props inside a garage haunt or dark maze. Basically focusing the lighting to only illuminate the individual prop instead of the whole damn hallway/maze corridor etc.. I'm sure some of you have already done this but to me it worked and i ended up buying a bunch of $1.00 flashlights and these plastic color rulers, broke em into a shorter piece , added tape and wala!!..Check it out for some pictures..


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## debbie5 (Mar 2, 2007)

Beware: in my experience, the flashlights only last one long night, and then need fresh batteries. I did that one year and got sick of blowing $$ on batteries. Test them out.


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

I only do my yard haunt 1 night. So it's okay. But ya you're right this would be a temporary thing and not something for a 3 day haunt or longer without changing batteries lol


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## Bone Dancer (Oct 7, 2005)

Nice job, they look great. And next year all you need to buy is batteries so it will be cheaper yet.

You get the Cheap Haunter Award.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

We're fans of the flashlight as well because you don't need to run wires and they're extremely portable. You can often find packs of the LED flashlights on sale at places like Home Depot and Lowe's, especially around Christmas time when you find them in the "under $10 stocking stuffers" bin.


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## Hairazor (Mar 13, 2012)

Nice trick, thanks for sharing


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## BioHazardCustoms (Aug 5, 2009)

If you can find those LED flashlights like Roxy is talking about, You can get a battery operated strobe light at Wal-mart and take the color gels from it to add color to your flashlights.


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

Thanks ya'll. I tried looking at my walmart because i usually do by a few mini strobes each year. I have several of them. However the ones i seen this year didn't have any color gels with em. These work just about the same i would imagine. Same colored plastic material. I will def look at home depot come christmas time though!


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## Palmdale Haunter (Mar 3, 2012)

You may want to try picking up a lighting gel sample book from a theatrical / stage lighting supplier... I bought a couple for under $3.00 each... They come with like 100 differnt colored gels that would fit on the lens of a small flashlight easy.... If you watch th eprint adds Harbor Freight actuall will give you a free LED flashlight about ever other month too...


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## JohnnyL (Aug 17, 2006)

Maybe even highlighting the props with UV reactive paint and then using a black light on them.


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## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

Johnny L beat me to the punch with the suggestion of using the UV paints on the props and using blacklights to illuminate the maze. Some people may have something on that will glow, but for the most part, you will get an spooky violet glow as an ambient light, and the props will really pop out (visually). But keep in mind that you aren't limited to using one type of light in your haunt. Mixing them up can give you some great effects.
Having a black light on all the time, and then a flickering standard light basically makes the UV painted effect disappear while the standard light is going, but really makes the stuff stand out when those lights go dark. Changing how you have stuff painted with the UV paints or true glow in the dark paints can make the prop or scene look very different from one light source to the next.


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