Lighting the Dark

Matt Green has been friends for a long time with the Netherworld Haunted House owners. For their 2013 season they wanted an updated commercial and reached out to Matt.

Matt loved the opportunity and reached out to me to help him. We drove over and talked to Billy and Ben and got a good idea of what they were looking for in a commercial. Pretty much show the fans a glimpse of what they would see when they came to the haunt for the fright of their lives.

The problem I had was how do you light an environment that is meant to be 90 percent dark?

If you've ever been through a haunted house you know that the darkness IS a character of the haunt.

We decided we'd try to minimally light the environments and creatures.

We did a video on the first weekend the haunt opened and I worried even more since you really couldn't film what was going on in front of your eyes. So Matt and I decided that we'd light the characters and environment in full light so that people would get a glimpse of the haunt.

On the day of principle shooting I showed up with my arsenal of lights and right away we didn't like the results.

Luckily, Ben had some theatrical LED lights he had purchased and I really fell in love with them. The Chauvet SlimPAR HEX line of LED lights really allowed me to add various colors to each scene.

With these lights and some of my lights, we were able to "light the dark" of the haunted house in a visually appealing manner.

Since these LED pars are so light, have a long battery life and have such great color variety, I purchased three of them and now I never go onto a job without them. I don't always use them, but it's nice to have in case I get into a pinch.