[SML] Unaskable Haunted House Question

[Dorian Kelly]

If you have some short lengths of Argon filled (green) neon strung along the prop wire and get the control gear adjusted correctly you can make  moving artefacts in the tube. Hard to explain, but its as though dark shadows were moving about inside. A neon company would now how to  do this although they would normally spend all their time repairing such faults!.  Add  a length of white addressable LED tape along the wire  to make darts of electricity at pseudo random timings.  Add a few tiny strobes and you are away. You might want to point a video projector at the the switch gear  with some nice spooky explosive content and then some led strip  behind a gauze programmed to look like falling sparks.. Then add a couple or three big strobes  on a fast one shot chase behind the riders heads makes their own shadows dart about the room.  I am assuming you can’t use pyro, ( although you can cheat and add some for the press launch!)  But it important that its all in the sound effects and the timing.

Just an idea


On 21 Sep 2014, at 05:07, Jeremiah Minh Grünblatt via Stagecraft <stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:

> Folks:
>  
> Please understand, before I even ask the question, that I am not going to let the following occur. There is no chance of it actually happening. And yet – the kids I’m working for on this uber-hip haunted house next week have asked me to suss out the technical gimmickry behind the tough mudder electro shock obstacle. Again, I am not going to rig a live mesh of 10,000 volt wires as a gauntlet for the unsuspecting public. However, I am interested in thoughts as to how best to fake this gag (i.e., a big scary single-pole switch box that crackles and looks like it is sending live current through suspended wires) and am ACADEMICALLY interested in how we think the actual tough mudder obstacle is fabricated.
>  
> I completely understand if no one wants to touch this question with a ten-foot insulated pole, but I couldn’t think of a better group to ask.
>  
> J. Minh
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