Sound in Haunted Attractions

[SCfearfarm]

Starting to work on our first haunted attraction for the 2011 season and we have 10 ft. ceilings. We are naturally building 4x8 wall panels and I am not overly concerned the walls do not go all the way to the ceiling because the ceiling will be dark and not very noticable. I was just wondering how most people seperated sounds or music from one area of the haunt to another without it overlapping. For instance if one room was your waiting room where they would watch a video about not touching actors etc. and on the other side of the wall was the "circus" how you could keep the customer from not hearing what was coming next. Also, if anyone else has high ceilings with 8 foot walls, what are some ways to block light from coming over the walls from the room over? Thanks for all suggestions I am still very much in learning mode.

[screamforadream]

There are many different ways to do this, my personal favorite is to paint all the walls in your building (not the haunt panels themselves) with a base coat of black. Then replace the current light bulbs with black lights over the entire haunt. With the exception of a few regular lights in the queue area where there are dark spots. You can attach lighting (strobe lights, par cans, whatever you want) to the wall panels pointing down into the scene. You can us the walls or the upper support braces, just make sure you follow your fire codes. As for music, I like to use computer speakers, and crappy small mp3 players that toucan find for like $3/each on eBay and have each player have it's own loop and the computer speakers are small enough to be easily disguised, and can be loud in one room without being heard in another. I think you'll realize once the walls are up, sound doesn't really travel, so even if the queue line music is loud, once people start screaming and are enveloped in their new and creepy environment, they won't notice, hear, or be alive long enough to hear the faint whisper of the queue line music.

[Gore Galore]

I tend to design using a zone audio system. Each scene "ZONE" having its own sound.
As long as the audio in each area is at approx the same volume you don't have to worry about bleed over. Now if not areas is the same then you could have a problem.

[freak 'n' stein]

Our haunt is in a "warehouse" style building but the first half of the building has drop-ceilings so the 8ft walls aren't too much of an issue with sound and light bleed-over. The way the second half of the show is, again, the light and sound aren't issues. We have different audio in each room thanks to our control booths throughout the haunt and as screamforadream said, other noises from the show cancel out sound from different rooms. You can also angle your speakers in a certain way to prevent projecting sound into other rooms.

...this year we are planning on upgrading our light & audio using Scare Products systems. Despite the equipment upgrade, we'll still be using the same "control booth" style set-up. Hope that helps!!! Best of luck with your new start up.