一本道无码

Ruth Comley designed her first haunted house early.听

鈥淚 was maybe 12 or 13 years old,鈥� she said. 鈥淢y pastor wanted to do a haunted house in the basement of the church, and he came to me and said, 鈥楬ow do we do this?鈥� I took over and figured it all out. That was my first haunt.鈥澨�

From the very start, Comley, an associate teaching professor who teaches Experience Design and other entertainment classes at 一本道无码鈥檚 Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), thought of her haunted houses as training grounds.听

Her work outside the classroom is integral to her teaching. For many students focusing on location-based entertainment, practical experience can be hard to come by because of the resources and regulations involved in putting on something on that scale. But Comley, who has designed all kinds of experiences including haunted houses, is able to help them factor in both the predictable and the unpredictable when turning their designs into reality.听

鈥淚t gives me the ability to try new things, and then to come back and bring it to the classroom, to talk to them about all the crazy things we鈥檝e had to do,鈥� Comley said.

The ins and outs of haunted houses听

After the Khymira Experiment, a haunted house project led by Comley in the early 2000s that brought together faculty and students at Pittsburgh鈥檚 Art Institute (where she then worked), Comley and her team started getting hired to design other haunts in the area. But she quickly discovered how complicated designing haunted houses could be. 鈥淚 would say 50% of the haunts I鈥檝e designed have actually run, and 50% of them have been canceled.鈥澨�

Most of the time, failure resulted from the amount of bureaucracy involved in getting a haunt up and running.听

鈥淜nowing the codes of the area you are building in, trying to build a relationship with the inspector to understand what they will approve, those things are all crucial,鈥� Comley said. 鈥淗aunted houses especially have gotten a bad rap, and it鈥檚 important to show how we鈥檙e going to protect guests and keep them safe.鈥澨�

The complexity of building codes can also pose their own unique challenge.听

鈥淗ow wide does a hallway need to be? How many lumens of light do you need to have at each point? Because almost every inspector hates total darkness,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou need to have the background on all the materials you use, every paint, every additive that you put into the paint has to be fire retardant. You have a notebook with all of the fire ratings for everything in it, and you have to have that on hand.鈥�

鈥淏ut if I can get (students) to understand those things,鈥� she said, 鈥渢hen if they go to Universal or Disney for an internship, they鈥檙e already going to sound more intelligent because they will already be thinking about egress and safety and all those other things that some art student coming out of undergrad won鈥檛 be.鈥�

And when her haunted houses worked out, the successes could be spectacular 鈥� and, like her defeats, down to the unexpected. One of these was Nightmare in North Versailles, which Comley designed in an old movie theater with raised seating. 鈥淲e got a saw and cut the wall open. When we poked our head underneath the seating, all we heard was our voices echoing,鈥� Comley said. 鈥淭here was nothing in there that was dangerous. It was just this huge, empty, extremely dark concrete floor with metal girding.鈥澨�

They made a rope maze in the space, and had a few actors standing near the girders striking them with metal hammers. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 just get the sound, you get sparks. There were no props, there were no costumes, there was nothing, but it was one of the hottest rooms. Just you, walking in the dark, and this thing in there with you,鈥� she said.

Frightening futures

Comley, who herself graduted from the ETC in 2005, no longer designs real haunted houses. Instead, she has started to think about how to create virtual ones as part of her work with Stage and Steel Productions, a theater company based in Follansbee, West Virginia, with a focus on productions of medieval and fantasy plays. But right now, they鈥檙e producing a more family-friendly Halloween experience 鈥� a festival with video games, puzzles, prize hunts and live performances. And while the timing isn鈥檛 right for ETC students to work on projects for it, Comley lets students use the festival to test drive their own work.听

鈥淎lmost every festival has some little corner with projection mapping, and that鈥檚 an easy one for me to say, 鈥楬ey, if you want the experience, come down,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淵ou have no idea what it鈥檚 going to look like, so get something up and running in a couple of hours. You can take documentation, put it in your portfolio, and that鈥檚 still real-world experience.鈥�

And it鈥檚 not a one-way street either. 鈥淚 bring what I learned there back here, but I also take what I learned here back there,鈥� she said. Inspired by her work at the ETC, Comley is currently working on developing virtual haunted houses for next year鈥檚 festival.

听鈥淚 have none of the codes to worry about. I don鈥檛 have to carry the walls, I don鈥檛 have to store the walls, I don鈥檛 have to do anything,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 can just use everything I know about haunted houses.鈥�听