# Haunt Lighting please help!!!



## Night Watchman (Aug 15, 2009)

It has probably been asked and discussed, and if you can point me in the right direction or thread that would help. I have looked at the Skull and Bones set ups. The street light is to the left in the SnB diagram, mine is directly in front of my house and across the street. I have two blue 100 watt floodlights that I will use. The frontage of my haunt is 23', and the depth to my porch is about 28'. I am thinking of putting the floods in the front two corners kinda pointing in and toward my house. What else should I use for lighting? The other problem I guess I have is that my outdoor plugs are on a 20 amp breaker. I have 2 400 watt foggers and the 2 100 watt floodlights. I also have a row of skull lights (have to check the watts on them). I can probably run an extension cord out of my garage to get an extra 10 amps. I had thought about using some LED tea lights around a few props and maybe a small strobe to give secondary lighting. I don't know if it wiil give me enough light or the right light. If you can, please give me some suggestions on what may work best. The budget is slim so I can't go crazy with the spending.

My haunt is a graveyard with tombstones and static props.

The front of my house, fence is 23'.


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## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

Fighting ambient light is a pain. Lighting your whole house would be quite a battle - you might think about highlighting your props & not worry too much about the house. You might try red or green - they'll contrast more with the light from the street light than blue.

As far as power goes, the foggers and floods you have now will only draw 8.3 amps, so you have a little room to work with.


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## jaege (Aug 23, 2009)

Nice fence. I always liked that type. Assuming hedg is correct on the amp draw ( I am not familiar with the amounts from a fogger) as to power you could nearly double what you are using now, and you will be okay, 20 amps will run a lot of lights. 

SNB sort of indicated that less is more. Dont go overboard trying to fight the ambient light, work it into your picture.


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## debbie5 (Mar 2, 2007)

Our house is almost 100 years old, so we have power issues. We have looong heavy duty extension cords that we run from *everywhere* to distribute the power throughout the breaker panel. I shove extension cords out the cellar & house windows and stuff the opening so no critters get in. We did pony up some $$ a few yearts ago & had an electrician install two outdoor electrical boxes on our front porch for easier accessiblity. I don't remember how much it cost, but it was well worth it. 
As for the ambient light thing, try standing outside for a while when it's dark (so your eyes are adjusted to the light, like a TOTers would be) and try out the lights. Stick up a few tombstone sso you can see how the light hits them and how the street light interacts. I find that the ambient light isn't as much of a problem as I think it is (I have both an orange streetlight and a church across the street whose floodlight is so bright that I can READ by it in my bedroom). I do put up large "walls" of fabric on the left & right of my porch to cut down on light significantly & cut down on wind (especially for the fogger, which is on the porch). Enclosing the porch really helps keep the blacklight effect I use strong & not bleeding out all over the place. You could probably zip tie fabric to your columns; I use binder clips to secure the tops to my vinyl siding trim as well. They are super strong and quick to put up/take down. I pick up fabric (old tablecloths, curtains & fabric remnants) at yard & estate sales.


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## Lauriebeast (Feb 27, 2007)

I too, have a streetlamp almost directly in front of my house across the street. I find that it actually helps light up the area, so I don't worry about it. As you can see in this pic, the floodlights will light up the house without even trying.










It's kind of hard to see the fence in that pic because it was taken from across the street but you can see the fence quite well when walking in front of it on the sidewalk. Here's another pic taken with the flash. I also love the haphazard wooden cemetery fence.










Another thing that will help with your lighting is to use some kind of baffle to hide any unwanted side glare from the spotlights. I used plant containers and they worked beautifully. Here's the link to the thread I posted last year on how I made them http://hauntforum.com/showthread.php?t=13684


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## Night Watchman (Aug 15, 2009)

Lauriebeast what colour floods do you use? I see green, amber and blue hues in the first picture. Do you just use flood lights or do you add in other lighting? I think my biggest concern is what type of secondary lighting I should use and I am looking for some type of ideas from people who have tried it. I am not too concerned about the fence itself. It will have it's own lights. I have 4x4 posts for the corners and I just put skull heads on the top of them today. Inside the heads I will put a flickering LED tea light, just tried it out and I was extremly happy.


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## Lauriebeast (Feb 27, 2007)

I used blue and green to light the tombstones and white on the character props because I didn't want to distort the skin and clothing colors. I had tested the other colors on them and really didn't like the look, so I just used the white. In the back area of the graveyard, I have my scarecrow which was the only prop where I used a yellow bulb. Here's a pic of that










Then on the side of my display across the driveway, I used green, red and blue. This pic shows the side glare from the green flood without the baffle.










Here's how the red looked










And how the blue looked










And this shows how the white looked on two of the characters in the graveyard


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## Night Watchman (Aug 15, 2009)

Thanks!


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## Spider Rider (Nov 8, 2006)

I use compact flourescent bulbs, (the swirly ice cream looking ones). They only use around 11 watts of power but are equal to 60 watt incandescent bulbs so you can put a whole bunch on one circuit and use skinny, cheap extension cords. At Wal mart I bought an armful of squeeze clamp-on reflectors to hold them. It makes for easy mounting and dismounting on tree limbs, prop bases etc. I painted the outside of the reflectors flat black to help hide them. I have orange, red, blue, green and white bulbs. You can see 2 of them mounted to my spider in this pic.


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## dynoflyer (Oct 8, 2006)

In addition to standard spots I use compact fluorescents but I spray the CF bulbs with Krylon to get orange, green, blue colored floods which I use for background lighting. CF's don't make much heat so the paint doesn't burn off. CF's work great in a homemade coffee can reflector, too. I place lots of homemade LED spots in front of tombstones, zombies to highlight them. I also use the colored CF's inside the house making the house glow green or blue when seen from outside, every little bit helps.


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## Night Watchman (Aug 15, 2009)

Dynoflyer you must have been reading my mind. I played around with some cans and came up with a way to make Par Cans. I have two sizes one for flood lights and another I am going to put compact fluorescents in. I think I will have enough cans and light sockets to make around 5 100 watt spots and 5 smaller cans for CF's. I am going to try and layer the lighting to create as many shadows as possible. I will probably follow the Skull and Bones idea somewhat to try and get the results. Probably alot of trial and error over the next few weeks. If anyone has any ideas throw them at me.
Thanks to everyone for the responses, it has pushed me in a better direction than I was going before the thread.


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## Dead Things (Apr 4, 2009)

What I try to do is use the cooler hues(blues, greens) in floods and accent using oranges since many halloween lights come in orange. As well, just added red to the back of the haunt and it makes the yard pop. I find I do have to put more blues and greens on the haunt than red. I work with a guy who was a pro lightman and he suggest backlighting props in lower wattage hot hues.. As i have a couple of coffee can reflectors, I will give it a try. Thanks Dynoflyer for the tip on spray painting CF's


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