Frame Design
by Richard Martin-Leep
The most interesting technical feature of the many Disney
attractions is the ride’s ability to physically direct an audience’s
attention in a desired direction. Using some type of vehicle to move the
audience through the attraction allows the attraction designers to make use of
sight lines and scene placement in relation to the physical viewing point of
the audience.
The ‘Doom Buggies’ in the Haunted Mansion are by no means
subtle in the technique of physically directing audience attention. The design
of the vehicles, vaguely resembling a wingback chair one might find in a
private library, prohibits the field of vision of the riders and blocks their
peripherals so only that that is in front of the buggy can be seen. As the
ride progresses the buggy rotates or turns on its track to physically point
the riders at each scene in the angle at which the designers want the scene to
be viewed. Just as important, the buggy turns the riders away from what the
designers do not want the riders to view.
Thus, the Doom Buggies create
the same effect as the panning camera, filming a motion picture. Each scene is
presented only from select angles and forced sight lines as if viewed through
the camera lens. Also like movies, nothing outside of the frame of the camera
is seen. In the buggy nothing except what is (framed) directly in front of the
audience is seen.
The principles used are those an artist uses in a painting or a
cinematographer uses to frame a scene. Magicians are also notorious for
controlling the angles from which their illusions are viewed. To the same
extent as the aforementioned artists, a magician makes use of a framed design
but allows for broader angles than a cinematographer. The magician counts on
the audience being confined to their seats.
Other dark rides are subtler in the techniques of physically
directing attention. The vehicles, in which the audience sits, are open
meaning the rides have a 360° view. Although the audience can see all around,
most will follow specific behaviors, of which the designers are aware: Most
riders will focus forward in the direction the vehicle is moving. Riders
seldom turn and look directly behind them (especially if someone is sitting
behind them) also, most will not turn their heads to the extreme left or
right. Looking straight up is also rare unless given a reason or cue to
do so.
Some vehicles and attractions
like the Pirates Of The Caribbean and the Indian Jones ride (See
issue # 13, Haunted Attraction Magazine), are designed to direct the
riders attention to the sides, however, they also follow the rules mentioned.
Occasionally vehicles are designed to physically seat the riders facing out
the sides of the vehicle, again directing their attention in front of them.
The Nautilus submarine ride at Disneyland not only seats the riders
facing out the sides but also makes use of individual portholes to frame
(like a camera) what the viewer sees.
At this point you are probably wondering what vehicles have to do
with your walk-through attraction. There are two separate concepts, albeit
working hand in hand, that are described here. One is the physical placement
of the viewers (participants) in relation to the sets and action,
involving traffic flow. The second concept is the physical placement of
the sets and action in relation to the viewing angle of the participants. This
is called a framed design. Thinking of your participants as a sort of
vehicle, a walk-through is not much different in the use of design principles
and techniques than a ride-through.
Much too often the track participants walk within each room
is a direct path from one door to the next. In many designs that I have
experienced, the shape of the room and the placement of the doors seem to make
little difference. The path from entering the room to the exit remains a
semi-straight path. This is a poor use of the space, in that the audience
frames the exit, rather than the sets. One way to avoid this is to use the set
pieces in the direct path, to force traffic flow to route around them. This is
much the same as creating traffic patterns in ones home by placing furniture.
The diagrams a1, and a2, show an overly simplified example of
rerouting traffic flow by placement of set pieces. In this case the placement
of a long dining table, changes the flow. Diagram a2 is more desirable for
many reasons. Two of the most obvious are; the participants must actively
navigate around the room rather than walk through passively. Secondly, viewing
the room from a variety of angles is more interesting than a relatively
straight to the left view, as in a1. Dramatic changes in the relationship
between the participants and the scene (and even the environment) can be
significantly affected by the simple placement of set pieces altering the
traffic flow of the participants.
A good example of the second technique, a framed design, is the
Peppers Ghost illusion. This illusion requires strict viewing angles not only
for the illusion to be seen but to hide the side stage being reflected. To do
this effectively the viewer needs to be physically placed at the proper
vantage point and the set must be designed to conceal the side stage from
where the viewer stands.
At Castle Of Fear in Denver, Colorado one of the Peppers
Ghosts under went a face-lift for the 1999 season. The illusion was viewed as
the spectators walked past, looking down a secondary hall (fig. b.1). The set
up provided no reason for the participants to stop their progressive flow
forward and unless they did so precisely at the vantage point the effect was
lost.
To give the illusion more impact, the traffic flow was rerouted to
physically place the viewers in front of the illusion. The scene was then
designed to conceal the reflection stage when viewed from that angle. The
ghost now appeared to be blocking the hall until the participants reached the
corridor leading off to the side and out of danger.
Designing the scene from the viewing point when coming down the hall
is a framed design. From that specific angle the elements of the design
focus the viewers’ attention to the reflected ghost and away from any hint
of the concealed reflection stage or seams from the glass pane. In a framed
design the lights, power cords, sound speakers, even access doors can be
concealed in the same fashion.
After experiencing several rooms with actors jumping out from
nowhere, participants start to enter each room on guard for the next
“Boo.” As they submerge deeper into the environment with their eyes
checking every way they can, it becomes increasingly harder to catch the group
off guard. To overcome this desensitization a designer needs a few tricks to misdirect
the participants' attention.
Misdirection is one of
the oldest gags used to distract the participant from what is actually going
on. Magicians and Fakirs have been using it since the beginning of recorded
history. By using something like an animatronic figure, a Jacob’s ladder or
perhaps a bubbling tank holding a brain, it becomes easier to surprise or
frighten a patron from behind or above, because they are misdirected from the
scare.
This technique of focusing the participant’s attention on
something other than what is about to scare them, or away from where
the scare will come, is a valuable tool. Unlike traffic flow or a framed
design, misdirection does not necessitate the physical placement of sets or
the participants. Magicians rely heavily on misdirection and have developed it
into an art form. Borrowing from them, here are the five basic principles of
misdirection, (also known as audience cues), slightly altered in their
wording for consideration in haunt situations;
1. The participants
will look where the guide or other actors tell them to look.
2. The participants will look
where the guide or other actors look.
3. The participants will look
toward a noise or disruption etc. (audio cue).
4. The participants will look
toward a sudden movement, flash of light etc. (visual cue).
5. The participants will look
toward something in motion, or set in motion, and continue to track it until
given a reason (another cue) to stop.
The Haunt designer can use these cues to direct the attention of the
audience as in framing, without the physical requirements. Use them in your
next design and watch as they look at exactly what you want, when
you want them to. It is extremely effective!
The principles discussed here are used by a variety of artists in a
variety of fields. The attraction designer can think of the attraction as a
three dimensional painting or motion picture, in which the view is always
controlled or framed. The designer physically designates composition, focus
point, sight line, and other elements of the design, so that the audience
views the set from a vantage point designated by the careful plotting of the
traffic flow through the attraction. This concept can also be used to direct
the attention of the audience away from the scare for greater effect. The
understanding of how the techniques of frame design, misdirection and traffic
flow are valuable weapons for the Haunt designer’s arsenal.
Richard Martin-Leep is an
independent Hauntsultant ™ and has recently become one of the permanent
staff at DiaboliCo in Denver, Colorado. He can be reached at 303-254-5824.
Scenic Brick Made
Easy
A quick and easy technique for brick or stone wall
treatments.
Have you ever carved a really cool tombstone or
gargoyle out of Styrofoam, only to have it corrode away when you try to paint
it? If the paint has any kind of solvent in it, the foam will dissolve your
piece away right before your weeping eyes. A lesson earned the hard way, but
there is a way to use this unwanted effect to your advantage.
Every once and a while in a Haunted Attraction,
there is a need to scenically produce the look of laid brick, be it the wall
of an unfinished basement or a bricked up tomb. There is Masonite paneling
available from most home improvement stores that has the look of brick, but it
has little color variation, and the mortar lines are too smooth and shallow to
be real brick. It would not fool anyone that it was real brick even at a
distance, and you have no control as to how the bricks are arranged. The
solution to this is an incredibly fast and easy technique using dense
Styrofoam insulation boards and spray-paint.
Materials
-
Plywood or Wafer-board Scraps.
-
Foam Insulation, (1/2” – 3/4” thick, pink or
blue)
-
Spray Paint (preferably metallic, but any color will
work).
-
Sealer Coatings (Sculpt-A-Coat or Wood Glue)
-
Flame Retardant Additive (See Local Officials for
requirements)
Simply stated, the technique is to ‘mask off’
the face of each brick and to liberally spray what is left uncovered with
spray paint. Any color paint will work, but some do better than others and the
metallics seem to do best. Before you get started, study the way real brick is
laid. Most brick is done in a ‘running bond’ this means that each brick is
lined up with the middle of the brick below it, making a very strong
overlapping system. At the bottom of an opening the brick is turned on its
side to form a ‘sill’ and over an arch, the brick is set sideways in an
arc to form the curve. Patterning your brick to match the way real brick is
laid will greatly increase the realistic look of your finished faux brick.
Cut 15 pieces of
1/2” wafer-board to desired size of brick face, you may also need
some half bricks to use around any openings. To get an old brick feel, rough
up the edges of the brick forms with a grinder. Now, lay out a sheet of foam
insulation, (1/2” thick, pink or blue) on the floor or a table and arrange
the brick forms in the desired pattern. Do not worry about them being lined up
perfectly. The more crooked you make the coursing, the more haunted it looks.
Once you have an area laid out, shake the spray paint can to mix up the
propellant. Start at the edge of the foam board, and spray down in-between the
brick forms. As you do, the foam will be eaten slightly by the paint and
deform to look just like brick mortar, while the area protected by the brick
form remains undamaged. As you complete an area, ‘leapfrog’ the brick
forms to new area and repeat the process until the desired size is completed.
You could stop here, but the faces of the brick that were protected from the
paint are too pristine to look like real brick.
What about a
stone wall?
This same technique is not limited to brick. It can be
done with larger pieces of wood in various shapes to create the look of
cinder-block, cut stone and natural rock. The only other difference would be
in the colors you choose for the final paint job.
Sprinkling acetone or paint thinner on the finished
insulation board creates pits in the brick face. A grinder can also be used to
scar the brick faces for that weathered look. Use ‘finder washers’ and
sheet-rock screws to attach the faux brick to the plywood wall, sucking the
washer down below the surface of the brick. The washers can then be covered
with caulk to hide them before painting. Now we have come full circle
and it is time to paint the foam without dissolving away our detailing
efforts. You can seal up the foam with several layers of latex paint, but if
the finished piece is to be positioned in close proximity to patron’s path
in the attraction, more durability is desired. You can seal the brick with
commercial product called Sculpt Or
Coat, (available at Sculptural Arts Coating, Inc. <http://www.artistschoicepaints.com/>).
A flame retardant like FR-1 (available
at Rose Brand <http://www.rosebrand.com/>) should also be added to
decrease the flame spread of the surface. Check with your local Fire Official
to see what his flame treating recommendations are. A less expensive solution
would be to cover the foam with a generous coat of wood glue.
With the foam sealed and in place, you are finally
ready to paint. Using the color chart at your paint store, chose a good gray
color for the grout, and several reddish browns for the brick face. Use a
paintbrush to paint the grout lines and a short nap roller or a sea sponge to
paint the faces of the brick. In painting your brick you can become very
creative. Real brick seldom has only one color in it, and no two bricks seem
to ever be exactly the same color. These characteristics should be reflected
in your faux brick as well. Older brick may have been painted white at some
time, and now only patches of the original brick color show through. And then
on top of all this, there is the art of distressing the brick with water
stains and rusty drips and moss, and… Well, that is a whole other article in
itself!
There never seems to be enough time to do
everything we would like to do to our Haunted Attractions before opening day.
This faux brick technique is fast, easy and provides remarkable final results.
It can even be done off site and off-season for later installation, and best
of all, it really is fun to do!
He Who Pulls the Strings
By Jim Warfield
Each year at that there Transworld
convention, I stare in awe at all the wonderful, marvelous things there for
sale! Call me cheap but to be quite honest, few of them are in my price range.
The special effects in my Haunted Attraction, the Raven’s Grin Inn, were built on a ‘shoe string’ budget. In
fact, I can’t even afford shoestrings, so I had to go with fishin’ line
instead! If I need to part a curtain, wiggle a wig, or puppet some random
object from a long distance, the heck with motors and pneumatics, the
Raven’s Grin method of choice is fishin’ line!
I place fishing line right up there with duct tape as one
of this Millennium’s engineering marvels. It is available in various
strengths, thickness and colors! There are some tricks, however, to mastering
the art of fishing line. You see the hard part is how do you keep it from
waddin’, tanglin’ and generally becoming a worthless mess? The answer came
to me in a dream, plastic water pipe. You see, I once dreamed that I was
trapped with a big ugly spider in a PVC pipe that was sprayed with silicone,
and it was so slippery that I could not get away. I know it was only a dream,
but was it my dream or the spider’s?
Anyway, to keep the fishing line from foulin’ I run it
in a pipe system. My pipe of choice is the very inexpensive 1/2” PVC pipe.
The kind that already has a couplin’ formed on one end. Now this would be
the end of the story, but to run the pipe around, beside, through, and under
obstacles would eat up all my low budget savings in fancy PCV fittin’s, so I
came up with a way to mold the pipe to my way of thinkin’…twisted! I use
an electric heat gun (you know they make it for strippin’ paint) to warm the
pipe in the area that I need a bend, turn, dosido, or allemande left. I then
gently bend the pipe avoiding true 90-degree angles and kinks. A little
practice is needed to master that art, but talent is not somethin’ I am
particularly known for, and I can do it, so I am sure you can too. You have to
be careful, on account of the plastic holds the heat a long time. So have a
cold wet rag or oven mitt handy to cool the bend once you get it just how you
want it.
By bending the pipe yourself, you wont need to buy any
fittings and the line will pull better than if you had a bunch of fittings in
line. To secure the pipe to the wall or ceiling I just use 3/4” metal
conduit hanger clips. If camouflage is necessary, a little roughing up the
surface with sandpaper gives the spray paint a better grip.
Now comes the neat
part.
So you have this self bent PVC run from here to there and
you are thinkin’ “Okay Mr. Smarty Pants! How do I get the fishin’ line
to thread through the pipe?” First you use a needle and thread to sew the
end of a full spool of thread to some kind of fuzzy ball. Almost any fuzzy
ball will work, navel lint is my favorite, but dryer lint is more plentiful.
Stick the thread spool on a wire or a nail or somethin’ so it can
turn freely and stuff the stitched fuzz into the end of the pipe. At the other
end of the pipe use the hose on your mom’s vacuum cleaner (Don’t use your
wife’s vacuum cleaner, cause if you mess it up, she’ll kill you!) and
place it over the fuzzless end of the PVC. You may have to use a rag to wrap
around the pipe to get a tight fit. When you turn the vacuum on, the fuzzy
ball and thread get sucked into the pipe. I once pulled 30’ of thread
through 5 bends in about 10 seconds! I have a friend who used this method with
yarn to fish electrical lines through 130’ of buried conduit!
Now you can tie the thread to the end of your fishing
line, and pull it through. You can use silicone spray inside the PVC if you
think you need it, but it makes it harder to get away from them spiders. This
pipe bending technique can also be used to form elbow and knee bends when you
are building a dummy. (Ever noticed all the 1/2” PVC on the wall behind
politicians? It makes you wonder who is pulling their strings? )
It ain't fancy, but fishin’ line and PVC gets the job
done faster and cheaper than hunting all over for that certain motor or air
cylinder, and it does the same thing only better. You see scarin’ people is
like telling them a joke…It’s all in the timing. And I never have seen one
of them high dollar air driven monstrosities that could tell a decent joke!
Well there you have it, but it is time for me to get back to hauntin,’ I
feel someone pulling on my fishing line! (I hope there are no spiders in there
this time!)
Jim Warfield is the proprietor and main character of
Raven’s Grin Inn, an ’actually haunted’ year round Haunted Attraction in
Mt. Carroll, IL. He lives in the turn of the century house with his lovely
wife Christina, and a collection of critters. Jim can be reached for further
comment or to purchase his patented navel lint at 815-244-4746
