Thread: Changing the tone of your decorations during the night

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In my introduction thread, I mentioned I do spooky (What's that there in the darkness?) vs scary (That guy has a bloody knife! Run!) decorations, but my wife and I have been discussing if it would be possible to have the tone of our decorations change as the older kids and some adults come around later in the night. Has anyone done anything like that before?

Torqumada

Not on Halloween night, no. That might get seriously tricky, unless you have help.

I've led up to scarier-and-scarier as the weeks go by, though. I'm getting ready to add in my cemetery next weekend. Then I'll be REALLY creeping it up those last two weeks before H'ween.

The night just passes too quickly for me to want to do that. I like being able to hang, watch a movie, eat stuff and hand out candy...and just in general enjoy the night, rather than fretting about putting out a whole new array of props at a certain time.

Just display what you want to.

As for the weeks leading up...I'm like the above poster. I tend to add a new prop or small scene every week. Just put out a creepy steer skull scarecrow, but am countering it with some fairly benign tree ghosts so the parents around here don't get too mad at me

I like your thinking about changing props as the night gets later. We don't do that per se, but rather change our script/interactions with TOTs depending on age. For example our theme is a nuclear storage facility with an accident. As the night goes on and kids get older we might use the geiger counter as they approach the scene. We may or may not spray the "toxic" smoke over the path. And we may or may not answer the door in full containment suits. These things are much easier to change on the fly to suit the TOT. I agree with the other posters that it might be a hastle to run around and actually change props unless its just 1 or 2 and you really have your heart set on doing it.

the way i have seen a change in decor accomplished was that everything was set up in advance and then the really gory/scary stuff was covered in burlap or tucked behind black plastice but was otherwise ready to roll. when the changeover time came, pull back the cloth and kick on the power--bingo. From spooky/cute to give thenm nightmares in about 2 and half minutes.

im with hauntington>>> i am out in the yard all night and get a feel for who is there we use many actors / live props and if a stroller rolls through it will be a totally different experience then a couple of"this aint scary punks"or a middle age husband that thinks he is "braver than" his six yr old.. now the one thing i do is have a seperate area with a few pumkins and cartoony stuff that kids can enjot and not be in the actual haunt

I agree with Ondeko; I've done it once, with H'ween X; it worked out fine. You just cover up the gory stuff and switch them off, till it's time to get really scary. Also having an extra part where the young ones don't come works great. Ando f course switching on black lights and have scary props that react to them is nice. A lot of the prefab props have a scarier look when black light shines on it, so you can accentuate the change, with little new -more gory- props.

I've found that actors can also easily get into a darker mood when the night comes, especially when you push them a little into that direction with lighting and deco (and drinks will help XD).Displaying movie scenes is als a good one to use (I like that a lot); you just build up the theme and approved age for them. Works really well.

And make sure you don't have to remove props that you think aren't scary enough; they always leave traces and you'll get stashes of quickly removed (and perhaps broken) props. Plus it just takes extra time. So just make them overlooked with darker stuff.

Good luck!

I do a very basic set up right now. I've managed to do both with out actually changing my decorations. I basically used lighting, windows and sound.
During the day everything is bright and you can't really see in the windows. At night everything has creepy lighting including the window displays. I also held off on playing my creepy sounds/music until later in the day.
I've also heard of people not turning on props (keeping everything static) until after after dark. I don't have any real moving props yet to do this.

Daytime


Nighttime


With flash to show detail. The ghost was lit up by a blacklight strobe set on a slow pace.

My basic idea was what was mentioned here: Have the scarier/gorier props hidden or deactivated and unhide or activate them later in the night. I may consider this another few years down the line. I have my own 5 year old to consider at this time. thanks everyone for the help.

Torqumada

You could even change the tone just via the lighting. I've seen a lot of people with fluorescent/blacklight painted tombstones, props, etc. You could use the clear UV paint to brighten up things, use more blue and green lighting earlier in the night, then later in the evening turn off the blacklights and have more red lighting and dimly lit areas. A tombstone dripping neon red blood with bright blue letters is much less "creepy" than a tombstone dripping with nearly black blood dimly lit in red, maybe with a grim reaper silhouette behind it.