Huffington Post: City Tech’s department of entertainment technology has been working on the animatronic sets of the Gravesend Inn Haunted Hotel. It’s high tech haunting built on an old cemetery of Brooklyn’s first settlers. Real ghost-sightings may ensue.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
New York Haunted Houses 2011
Huffington Post: City Tech’s department of entertainment technology has been working on the animatronic sets of the Gravesend Inn Haunted Hotel. It’s high tech haunting built on an old cemetery of Brooklyn’s first settlers. Real ghost-sightings may ensue.
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7 comments:
I always loved going through haunted houses when I was a kid, and when I became interested in theatre, I started to wonder how much it took to create those haunted houses. I always wanted to work on a haunted house just so I could see the technology and creation process behind it. I hope to sometime soon in the future.
The Gravesend Inn seems to make it onto the GreenPage every October. Maybe we could pull up the interview with the director from last year?
In show control, we're learning about the ways to make non-linear shows like these haunted houses work. There's a challenge in keeping everyone on track when the show has the potential to change based on the tempo of the crowd through the rooms. I'd be interested to find out which technologies they're using (since it's the haunted house For The Techies) and if they've had challenges in creating the shows using them.
Until a few years ago, I never considered haunted houses as something similar to what theatre technicians do, but I realize now that so much of it is the same! It must be a really great experience to work on something like a haunted house. So many effects and also the thought process about the journey a person takes from the beginning to the end to maximize their experience must be such a fun process to be a part of. Haunted houses are so theatrical and fun, and although many are disjointed, the ones with a story line are particularly entertaining.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, and although many a times i consider myself a scardy-cat, I have a great appreciation for haunted houses- all the effort and theatrics that are involved. I have a great respect not only for the decor, lighting, and thought process that goes into transforming a space, but also the fact doing so can be so difficult! When creating such a setting, you have focus on so many more elements, not only the practicality of walking in such an interactive space, but the choreography of effects and illusion to insight a great amount of fear within someone. For that I greatly commend those who work on haunted houses- I will continue going to them and would love to do some design work for any themed house one day!
If I can make it to New York over mid-semester break then Gravesend Inn is on my list of places to see (actually, it's the main reason I'd be going, seeing AES and a couple of shows would only be an additional benefit). As someone who has worked on the technical side of haunted houses for years I can't wait to see it at some point. I've seen Huntington's descriptions of his attraction on his blog and in the show control mailing list makes it look like something that would be great to see, it's definitely in my list.
Hopefully I'll make it to the Gravesend Inn this Saturday while I'm at AES. The haunted house industry has a lot of cool technology essentially aimed at achieving asynchronous show control on the cheap, and a lot of its equipment and techniques are relevant to theatre. Haunters and prop masters also have a lot of overlapping interests with regard to molding, paint treatments and finishing, etc.. Many haunted houses rely on a central compressed air system to run a lot of their effects, and the way they distribute and use pneumatics has exciting implications in scenery automation. I was introduced to these people and their methods at Hauntcon last year with Tom.
The Lafayette House is interesting because it doesn't really seem to be masquerading as a haunted house at all- its website, if vague, makes it seem more just like a normal New York boutique hotel. This makes me wonder, alternately to how interesting working on a fear inspiring haunted house would be, how/if scenic designers could find work in designing hotels? Particularly if they have a more complicated or in depth theme that they are trying to portray, I feel like a designer with a theatrical background would be able to work more convincingly than just an interior designer.
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