Thread: How do YOU setup your Lightning?

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Just curious as to how people setup their Lightening for their yard haunt? Do you put the lights up in trees or other high objects and point them down or do you have the lights on the ground somehow and point them up at the sky? Im wondering what would give the better and more realistic effect? Thanks!

Depends on the effect you are going for. Lighting is generally considered creepier when sourced from below the object, as we are used to seeing light from above. (Everything is creepy when viewed in an unusual manner.) However, if you are going for a general wash light for a large area, I recommend staying with the light from above. Don't hesitate to light a prop that you worked hard on the detail.
Lighting is such an important, yet oft overlooked, aspect of decorating.

Originally Posted by piraticalstyle

Depends on the effect you are going for. Lighting is generally considered creepier when sourced from below the object, as we are used to seeing light from above. (Everything is creepy when viewed in an unusual manner.) However, if you are going for a general wash light for a large area, I recommend staying with the light from above. Don't hesitate to light a prop that you worked hard on the detail.
Lighting is such an important, yet oft overlooked, aspect of decorating.

Thanks piraticalstyle but I actually meant LIGHTENING, as in Thunder and Lightening. Thanks anyways!

We have a huge tree that covers our entire (small) front yard. My husband takes all the lights that hook up to the thunder & lightning machine and strategically places them on sturdy tree branches, pointing up. He uses some blue and some white flood lights, and switches them around until he is satisfied with the effect. Doing it this way has 3 major benefits:
1) No one is blinded by lights going off in their eyes.
2) it seems more realistic, just like lightning would really look from underneath our tree.
3) It lights up the whole tree when the lightning goes off, and since our tree is the largest one on the block, it draws TOT attention from way down the block.

My lighting is on the ground spots. I hide them in the bases of my fence columns or inside "rocks" that I made for that purpose, so they are not visible from the front. This year I will use a bunch of pin spots to add to the overall effect.

Skelly215 I have always wanted to do that to our tree in the front. It must look amazing when the lightning goes off.

Personally I would do it both ways, sort of.

I have my trees up lite, mostly because the lights I use to do it weigh 50 lbs and I'm not lugging or mounting that in the tree itself but I also love the effect of up lite trees. All of my lightening effect comes from these same lights that a programed through the computer, plus one large strobe.

For the most natural lightening effect the light should come from as high above as possible. I might actually look at moving my strobe into the tree this year, I don't need it where I used it last year.

With the lights I use for my Halloween display I like to put something in front of them to make a shadow effect.

I've had good luck lighting from the ground up onto the house. I run 4 spots (in cans) though 2 Lite f/x boxes. 2 for the left audio channel, 2 for the right channel. Works very well for me. I also like to put things in front of the spots to highten the effect. One of my favorites is a wooden cross I use in the graveyard. Always looks cool projectes up on your house as do branches of any kind.

I put 2 white flood lights in my parkway tree about 10 feet up aimed down on my display. It doesn't blind anybody because the light beam is above the heads of the people on the sidewalk. You can see it in action in the first part of this video:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJjvy02ghY4&feature=search"]YouTube- 3-axis witch animatronic built for Drury Lane Cemetery haunted yard display[/ame]