Haunt Lighting Tips:

These are some simple things you can do to make the lighting of your haunt more interesting and effective in setting the mood.

-Use a lot of smaller lights that highlight your main props and leave a lot of the background dark instead of tryig to light everything with one big spotlight. Focus the light as tighly on what you want to light as you can. This is especially useful in hiding things in the dark that you don't want your guests to see, without actually having to cover them up. Shadows are our friends!

-Hide the lights as best you can from the viewers, either with other props, scenery or bulb shades/reflectors (I make them from aluminum flashing). You don't want your guests to be easily able to tell where the lighting is coming from, just as you want to hide all of the other mechanical and sound equipment. You want your guests to believe the experience is real!

-Don't just light from above. Place some of your lights on the ground, shining up at the props. This will give an exagerated shadow effect similar to holding a flashlight under your chin. It will also irrily light up any tree branches above against the dark sky. Use clear bulbs in order to get the maximum harshness to the light and shadows.

-Try to put some of the lights at angles to the props so only one side is lit and the other is in shadow.

-Try to see how low a lighting level you can stand. I light my tombstones with 7.5 watt candelabra bulbs and dim them to a sepia tone. This tends to create a more realistic, not overlit, very spooky mood to the graveyard.

-Try to mix different colors either on the same prop from different angles or to highlight a prop in one color light from a background washed in a contrasting color. Try combining opposite colors on the color wheel, red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple to really make things stand out. This technique is not as realistic, but does add a lot more visual interest. I use mostly 25 watt colored party bulbs with the aluminum flashing shades/reflectors.

-Since I have mentioned them more than once, the aluminum flashing shades/reflectors are just cones of aluminum flashing which is wrapped around the bulb socket and taped with a wrap of electrical tape. I usually paint the outside of the shade and the socket flat black, but leave the inside shiny. These really help to hide the source of the light and allow you to focus the light just on the prop you want to illuminate.

-Try backlighting a prop so you can only see the dark outline. This is especially interesting with some fog surrouding the prop. Again, use uplighing from the ground and hide the light source behind the prop.

Check out my pictures in my gallery to see examples of how these techniques look.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Good luck with lighting your haunts!!!

Victor