Thread: lighting haunted maze in garage

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I am pretty good with lighting out doors...I know my basics. BUT...

I have a haunted maze in my three car garage. the maze opens into several scenes ( monster lab, toxic waste, spider liar, forest ) and I am having a difficult time getting the lighting correct in such a small space. I find if I do ambient lighting on the ceiling you can see my unpainted garage!!!! If I brng the ambient into each scene I have a hard time locating a place that doesn't shine into the tot's eyes.

Any advice/experience will be appreciated.

This is only my second year haunting and lighting isn't yet my strong suit but I will hand out some ideas that I am either trying or would try for those kinds of scenes. I guess the main part of my suggestion would be to incorporate the mood lighting into the actual decor.

Monster Lab- The idea I am using to somewhat light my witches lair is a method of making glow in the dark water. You basically drain a highlighter under a very slow running tap and once complete the water glows under a black light. Hubby was in charge of doing the witches jars and I told him to fill some with the water so that with a blacklight placed strategically behind the jars they would light up the whole shelves. I would say in the monster lab have a bunch of jars of test tubes with the stuff in it. Here is a pic of our jars so you get the idea. They are amazingly bright. Sadly I have found only yellow seems to work well. It comes out kinda green.


For the toxic waste- I have seen a lot of posts of people doing toxic waste barrels with spray foam and lighting the insides with colored light so the foam glows. Those seem to supply some nice mood lighting. Unfortunately I do not have any pics of it but I have seen them all over this forum. I think of toxic waste glowing like radiation so in my mind the more things that are glowing the more dangerous it seems.

Spider Lair- I'm trying to figure mine out for myself. I am planning on spraying the webbing with a detergent so that they glow under blacklight but not sure how bright that will be. I would try putting a spot light behind a thick mat of webbing, far enough away to not have any heat reactions. (FIRE) This way the webbing hides the light source and should help to difuse the glare for the TOTs.

Forest- You could either try and hide the lights up in the trees or another thing I am planning with my pumpkin patch for next year is to use colored rope lights. I saw someone showing how green ropelights can make a nice glow under fog and I got an idea for my demonic pumpkin men for next year. I plan on using the ropelights like vines trailing around the pumpkin guys and running away from them on the ground as if their magically infused roots are sending seeking tendrils out.

Hope some of this helps you.

Thanks..my biggest problem is providing enough ambient light in the maze to walk through without overlighting and to provide background ( ambient ) lighting for my props.

Any ideas.

this is what i use in my garage haunt...works well for accent lighting and it works well when it is dimmed because they are used to just wash an area and they are bright even though they are small.

-Tom

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Odyssey-...31-i1550677.gc

Where do you mount them to get the best lighting. On the ceiling pointing down??? That is what I am thinking. I have some PAR cans for floodlights, I can use them but need to know the best place to mount them to get overall lighting.

What bulbs are you putting in your cans?

those particular cans have a standard bulb socket so any light that will fit in there up to 50 W i think...

Last year I bought a bunch of glow sticks at Dollar Tree to help light up the maze

Great idea. Where did you put them...on the floor or the walls

Originally Posted by Ilaina

Great idea. Where did you put them...on the floor or the walls

Some over head, some on the walls and they put out more light than you'd think . They have some big ones and they have strings on them also.
I bought some to help with this year as well.