Workshop Lesson: The Animated Haunted House

Table of Contents Creating the Experience Sound Movement Light Fog Bringing It All Together Projects   Creating the Experience Creating the perfect haunted experience consists of mixing sound, lights, and motion to create mystery and suspense. These sensory experiences create an atmosphere of anxiety and anticipation needed to have your guests on edge and ready to be scared. This article will show you how to use Animated Lighting’s Monster Brain and Lighting Controllers to create the perfect haunted experience.   It's best if your haunted house has a general theme to tie everything together. Is it a true haunted house with ghosts? Or is it a mad scientist's laboratory with a Frankenstein creation? Mixing themes is not recommended. The entire experience should center on a single theme or story to keep the guest engaged in what’s going on.   In a classic spooky mansion, the only residents are ghosts, so try to make the place look old and neglected. Throw sheets over the chairs and furniture and put up some fake cobwebs to suggest that the human owners have abandoned the house. Hang all the pictures at crooked angles and fill some vases with long-dead flowers.   Another classic look is a graveyard with a picket fence. This scene affords all kinds of possible animated scares including heads popping out from behind gravestones and bodies popping out of caskets. You can also include the archetypal black cats and rats.   Once you have a theme, you should lay out how your guests will move through the haunted house. You should have props and scenery in each room that tells a story, and each room should also have a focal point that draws the guest's eye toward it. This can serve one of two purposes. The first is to draw attention to it in preparation for some scary activity directly associated with the object. The other, of course, is to draw attention away from something else in the room that will scare your guest by surprise.   One common technique is to always scare from behind. This has a bigger scare effect and also tends to keep people moving forward through the house or maze.   Return to Top Sound Sound is the most important element of the haunted experience. You can prove this to yourself by walking through a haunted house with your hands over your ears. Without the sound, the experience is obviously much less thrilling.   You need two kinds of sound for a complete haunted experience. First, you need background or ambient sound. This can be a number of different sounds including outdoor sounds (wind, crickets, hooting owls, etc.), thunder and lightning, low wailing and laughter, footsteps, and any other sound fits the theme of your house. This ambient sound should play continuously to help create anticipation in your guests.   Sounds like this can be recorded and stored on Animated Lighting's MP3 Controller, a stand-alone sound controller that can reside anywhere and doesn't require long speaker wires to be connected to it. It is also "solid state", meaning it can't be damaged or lost like a CD. Also, because it is triggerable, it can change sounds depending on external events, such as someone approaching.   There are several places that sell speakers that look like rocks. These are excellent ways to get sound into a graveyard without being noticed. You even can place them around the haunt area to get a "surround sound" effect.   The second kinds of sounds are direct scare sounds that are usually timed with a prop action such as when a guest has something jumping, grabbing, or blowing at him. Usually a speaker is located near the prop so the sound appears to orginate from it as it is deploying. Computer speakers are an inexpensive way to get amplified sound for your prop. They are also easy to connect and are already in an enclosure so you don't have to find a place to mount them. If necessary, you can use a spare stereo receiver or commercial amplifier to get more power.   Return to Top Movement You can make your prop move through several ways. While each option has its own advantages and disadvantages, you can use Animated Lighting's digital control boards to control and synchronize whatever methods you choose to precisely time your effects with sound and lighting. Pneumatics: Pneumatics involve the use of air to move pistons and cylinders. Pneumatics can be very fast and strong and are often used to make bodies jump from caskets or heads pop-up from behind gravestones. Pneumatic props are a great way to get maximum scare. The down side of pneumatics includes added hardware complications and having to have an air supply (compressor) and air hose running to your props.   Air Blast: One of the simplest and most effective props is a simple air blast. This can be as simple as an air hose with an electrically controlled valve to blast an unsuspecting patron with a shot of air to the back of the neck.   Motors and Solenoids: Motors and solenoids are a good way to get movement using electricity instead of air. Motors can be used to rotate things or to shake things with cams.   Servos: Servos are useful for small or repetitive movements. You can use servos to move the eyes in a skull, for example. Return to Top Light Light is the third facet of a good haunted house or prop. Using the various lighting effects built into Animated Lighting's light controllers can add a lot to an otherwise dull haunted house.   Light can be used to create an eerie atmosphere or to disorient and scare the guests. One of the more disorienting types of light is the strobe. A dark room with a flashing light and scary sounds is a perfect setup for an eventual jumping skeleton.   Black lights are also somewhat disorienting, although not as much as a strobe. A black-lit room gives an eerie feeling and can sometimes even be amusing.   Blue or green lights give an eerie feel to a room — especially if they’re constantly changing brightness. Flickering chandelier lights are a classic haunted house effect. This can be accomplished using an occasional flicker effect on one of Animated Lighting’s light controllers. You can also simulate fluctuating electricity with occasional brief blackouts.   LEDs in the eyes of props are common. They give an eerie glow. LEDs come in many colors, but red is probably the cheapest and scariest. There's nothing worse than scary red flickering eyes!   X10 controlled lighting is a simple and convenient way to change light levels in a room, and it can be permanently left in place to use everyday. Animated Lighting's Monster Brain can control X10 lighting in an entire house, continually varying the brightness to make the house look haunted.   Return to Top Fog Fog machines are a great addition to enhance any spooky scene. Fog rolling out over gravestones, for instance, is a classic effect.   Fog machines work by heating a fluid into a vapor. They must be plugged in constantly to keep the heating element hot. Most fog machines come with a manual hand-held switch that causes the machine to emit fog. When the switch is pressed, the machine sprays fog. This switch can be automated by connecting it to a Monster Brain with one of Animated Lighting’s Digital Controller boards. This will allow fog to be emitted randomly or when a guest triggers a sensor.     Bringing It All Together Now that you have an idea of what your Haunted House should have in it, we can talk about how to control it all. Below is a list of Animated Lighting's controllers and how they can be used in your haunted house: The Monster Brain: Animated Lighting's Monster Brain is the ideal controller for a haunted house. It can control lights, sound, and mechanical devices and also coordinate various inputs and triggers with animation sequences.   MP3 Controller: The MP3 Controller is capable of playing crystal clear stereo sound in a number of situations. Thunder and lightning effects are a great application for the MP3 Controller and a lighting controller. The lights can be programmed to look like lightning that is coordinated to the thunder.   Background sounds in the haunted house are important for ambiance. The MP3 Controller can be used to constantly repeat background sounds such as screams, howling wolves, thunder, organs, or scary music.   You could use the MP3 Controller to play scary door-knocking sounds when the doorbell is pressed. Then the sound of monster foot steps can be played until the door is opened (with a creak).   The MP3 Controller can also be used for the scary sounds associated with props and animatronics. For example, the scream while a corpse is jumping out of a casket is an ideal application for the MP3 Controller. Using the stereo effect you could have two props talking with one another, each having its own voice and speaker.   Digital Input/Output Controller Board: This board is useful for sensing the presence of a guest and triggering a sequence of events, such as a prop jumping up with a scream. There are several devices that can be connected as trigger sources such as a switch mat (triggered when stepped on), a motion detector (triggered when it senses movement), or an infrared beam (triggered when its light beam is broken).   The outputs of the digital controller board can be used to control many types of devices including valves, lights, motors, smoke machines, or any other device that requires a switch closure.   Light Controller: Animated Lighting's line of light controllers can be used to control many different kinds of lights including incandescent lights, X10 lighting, and DMX light fixtures. To recap the many applications for lighting control in a haunted house: General lighting can be flickered and varied randomly to create an eerie effect.   Chandelier lighting can be flickered to emulate power outages or candles.   Lights can be synchronized to thunder played on the MP3 player to create a storm.   Props generally need some type of instant bright light when they jump out.   And anything else your imagination can develop!   Servo Controller: The Servo Controller is used to control small movements such as a moving mouth or eyes.   Projects Here are a number of projects that can be built using Animated Lighting's series of controllers: Scary Doorbell: Use the Digital Controller to detect when the doorbell is pressed and you can play knocking sounds and footsteps on the MP3 Controller before the door is answered.   Air Cannon: Using the Digital Controller (and a switch mat) to detect when a person is at the front door, a valve can be opened to startle the guest with a compressed air blast.   Pop-Up Heads: When a guest is detected, a pneumatic activated head pops up from behind a gravestone shrieking a hideous laugh. This project would use the Digital Controller to detect when to trigger and activate the valve controlling the pneumatic cylinder. It would use the MP3 Controller to create the sound.   Casket Jumper: This project uses pneumatic cylinders to launch a corpse from a casket. It could use the Digital Controller and MP3 Controller.   Talking Skeletons: This project has two skeletons talking with one another. The MP3 Controller would be used to create the effect of the sound coming from the skull that is talking at a particular moment. The Servo controller would be used to control the skeleton's mouth movements.   Eye-Popping Skull: This project would use two servos or two pneumatic actuators to make the eyes pop out of a skull — kind of like a cartoon character. It would use the Digital Controller and MP3 Controller.   Thunder/Lightning: Using the MP3 Controller and a light controller, you could create a virtual storm inside or outside a house. The sound and lights can be accurately synchronized for realism.   Jumping Coffee Table: Using pneumatic cylinders, you can create a haunted coffee table that jumps off the floor. The Digital Controller would be used to control the cylinder action.   Rocking Tombstone: A rocking tombstone can be created with servos moving the tombstone. You could add moaning or other scary sounds using the MP3 Controller.   Haunted Rocking Chair: A haunted rocking chair can be created with a small servo invisibly moving the chair. The Servo Controller Board would move the servo. A Digital Controller board could also be used to sense the chair's motion and move the servo at precisely the right time.   Thrashing Books: Using pneumatic cylinders, you can create a haunted bookcase where the books jump out of position like you see in many horror movies. Each book would be connected to a cylinder and be pushed out and pulled back quickly. A Digital Controller board would control the cylinder firing order and speed.   Drop Panel: This is the classic dropping panel with a scary face behind it. A non-descript panel in a wall is easily overlooked until a guest approaches. This is easily done with a pneumatic cylinder pulling a sliding door open to reveal a ghoulish ghoul behind it. This could also be a picture.   Thrashing Doors: Two cabinet doors are attached to pneumatic cylinders so they can be open and closed quickly and loudly.   The Crate: A wooden crate with "BEWARE" stenciled on the outside sits idle until a guest triggers the action. The crate begins to shake violently and someone inside yells to get out. Suddenly, the top pops open revealing a scary monster. Pneumatic cylinders controlled by a Digital Controller are used to shake the crate and pop the lid. The MP3 Controller takes care of the sound effects. Return to Top