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Lighting for Haunters 9
LIGHTING FOR HAUNTERS
Part 9 : Lighting with Fog
By Robyn Burns
What’s a haunted attraction or dark ride without fog? Every spooky movie, book, and story involves a graveyard, forest, or even open ocean where fog plays a major role. Fog has become a staple in the Haunted attraction and dark ride environments but have you ever thought about why? Fog is really a versatile tool that can be used to safely accomplish the creation of vapors (steam, smoke, fog, etc), to obscure vision, or to create an interactive link between your set and living people, all of these are accomplished by using fog as a backdrop for lighting effects.
Vapors are key elements to many sets. Adding a vapor element like steam to a boiler, smoke to a fire, noxious green gas to a chemical spill, fog to a graveyard or body of water, can really change a static set into a living, breathing organism that the audience can not only see but smell and feel. When designing haunt sets I often tell people “motion creates emotion”. Vapor effects can add that motion that makes the scene come alive and people actually feel it. If a 55 Gallon barrel were lying on its side in a puddle of green goo it would be obvious there had been a chemical spill. If that same barrel had a noxious green smoke bellowing out of it that spill is suddenly alive and active and poses a “danger” to the audience. It’s a little like the difference between a dormant volcano and an active one, you’d go hiking on one and flee screaming from the other. Lights placed strategically in the barrel or nearby can color that smoke to be whatever you’d like and as long as people don’t see the lighting fixture the fog, gas, or smoke itself appears to be giving of the color and light.
Obscuring vision is another important use of fog that gets overlooked. Fog is seen as “scary” to people for just that reason. People are afraid of the dark because they don’t know what lurks within its inky blackness, and are afraid of fog because they don’t know what lurks within its cloudy midst. Fog can be used to hide actors, props, or even areas of a set that the audience shouldn’t see. A pop-up prop coming out of a fog filled corner can have amazing results as people are comforted by physical veils or curtains because they offer a physical separation between prop and audience but fog moves both as the prop moves and as the audience moves. This serves to make the prop feel closer and less “safe”. Another way fog can obscure vision is by filling an area with so much fog that the existing lights are not enough to overcome it. This plunges the audience into a murky world with few reference points to guide them. Sudden disorientation can cause extreme panic and I have even been told this is too intense for most haunt patrons. Lighting a scene where Fog is intended to obscure vision requires careful planning to ensure there is the correct amount of both light and fog. The combination of a fog machine and lighting fixtures that both utilize DMX control can make this process much easier as you can find the right combination and repeat it for every group.
The fourth wall as it is called in theater is the Line between the set or stage and the audience. It’s the plane through which the story passes but the actors do not. When an actor addresses the audience directly it is referred to as “breaking the fourth wall”. Haunted attractions and dark rides strive to tear down that fourth wall and immerse the audience in the scene or story. This element of haunted attractions is what draws most audiences to them and as such this should be encouraged wherever possible. Interactive sets accomplish this very well and adding fog to a set can make it interactive just by being there. As the audience walks the fog moves, as the actors walk the fog moves and is felt by the audience, as fog flows down a hill and into the audience it reminds them of their place in relation to the set. The key to allowing your audience to feel the fourth wall coming down is to allow them to see the fog flowing freely between them and the set. This is accomplished by lighting your fog intentionally. Too many set lights before fogging a set or don’t even think about how fog will affect their lights. I urge you to not only think about how fog will affect your lights but how you can use lights and fog in combination to create an ethereal Link between set, actors, and audience!
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