Creating HHN

[Imagineer83]

Does anyone have any good source material on the actual creation of HHN or haunted houses in general? I have seen Art of the Scare that was done on Islands of Fear many years back. However I am looking for more detail such as:

House Layouts / Plans
Preliminary story/script treatments
Construction photos
Ect.

I am very interested in the design process and what the industry standards are for such designs. I am in a design profession and would love to one day work for Universal but have no clue what basic standards (design language if you will) they use for creating these masterpieces.

For example, what does the original script/story of a house look like? Is it simply text describing the scenes or is it like a movie or play script with specific breakdown of certain elements?

I have taken the unmasking the horror tour which is a great inside look at the finished product. But I am curious on how they get to that finished product.

 

[Legacy]

I've seen a couple of original treatments, and they're disappointingly short. Each scene gets a brief paragraph describing the action of the scene accompanied by a couple of reference photos. From my understanding, it goes from there to concept sketching, then layout design/blueprints and elevation images being created together.

They'll develop more thorough scripts for specific scenes if they're needed, but if you think about it most houses don't.

 

[JoeCamel]

I have seen Mike A talk about the process a few times, he does not give the nitty gritty details but does walk through the process he and the others use to decide which house gets the green light and how they lay it out so the construction can begin. Just search the HHN sites and you will get most of what you want. Fun to hear him talk about how he got where he is in his career. Have seen that in person and several online talks. Really interesting to me

 

[Cole]

Hope someone posts a couple things because I'd be interested in it. I heard the same thing legacy said, WAY less tedious and overblown than the way Hollywood does it. They're also apparently not big on too much concept art witch is strange to me but hey it works!!!

 

[Mr. EPCOT]

I wish they would sell a souvenir DVD for each year with house walk-throughs and behind-the-scenes featurettes. I kind of understand why they don't, but I still feel like they could set up a system where they mail you the DVD after the event is over. Hell, they could even give you the option for a digital download nowadays.

 

[Imagineer83]

Thanks for the info so far.

Does anyone have a good list of HHN websites?

 

[Legacy]

Thanks for the info so far.

Does anyone have a good list of HHN websites?

Like, how? There's a couple of Horror Night news sites and a couple of discussion boards. But the Horror Nights fandom is such an echo chamber everything that's available eventually ends up everywhere.

If you're looking for Horror Nights history stuff the two best sites are HorrorNights.be and HHNYearbook.

 

[JoeCamel]

I was surprised at the interconnectivity of all the houses and the Jack history that Brian brought to the fore in his video. I really need to take a UTH tour I guess. Wonder how late I can book?

I must admit I am not a horror fan and have not seen the movies or shows but I love HHN even if I don't know the nuances of what is going on.

 

[Frank Drackman]

never new where to put this, not sure if it gets insensitive. Anyhow, this was from a Purge streets year and I just always dig some of the details one can find if they look around.