Increasing Startle Effectivity (Part 1): Startle Execution

At the root of everything our industry is about, behind all the scenic dressings and theming that we haunters would like to believe are much more important, lies the startle. For all the energy we put into all the scenic garbage, we really should be paying much more attention to the scares themselves; after all, isn't that the main reason people come to haunted houses?

A year or so ago, I decided to sit down and map out exactly what was needed for a good startle, and came up with a three piece formula for startles. This is not a commonly explored subject in our industry, so as always, be sure to draw your own conclusions on startles rather than blindly following what works for me (because after all, I can only draw knowledge from my own experiences). With that said, I did put a lot of time and thought into this series, so I do think the content is really darn accurate and universally applicable to just about everybody who likes scaring people.

This will be a multi-part series, most likely coming in three sections (but it could be more if I decide to add more details in the end). So when other parts get posted, I'll try to remember to link to them at the end of this post.

As a basic introduction to the series, let me just quickly run through what these posts will be about. I think of startles as being achieved by 3 basic concepts; distraction, timing, and execution. Now you might think that I'd start this series with distractions, but you'd be wrong. I'm going to start off by talking about execution because I think it's at the root of how we approach distraction and timing, even though they happen first for the patrons.

Just to lay down a clear definition for everybody, execution is the payoff of the startle -- what happens when the monster jumps out. In other words, execution is the startle itself, whereas distraction and timing are really components of the setup. So with that in mind, my definition of a startle is “a big, fast, negative transition.” Now let me break that down.

“A big…” Obviously, the bigger the transition, the more fear is created, and the more time it takes the brain to reason its way out of being scared. As humans, we perceive “big-ness” through our five senses. Therefore, a startle that affects sight, sound, touch, and possibly even smell is much more frightening than a ghoul simply walking around a corner.

“…fast…” Like “big-ness,” speed helps to confuse the brains of those being scared, and accordingly, takes them longer to realize that the thing they fear isn't actually all that threatening.

“…negative…” Obviously, the transition that takes place must be a bad one. Bringing a cake closer to a fat kid through a big, fast transition does not create fear as it is not negative transition; rather, it creates excitement (because it is a positive transition). However, something good (such as a haunted house guide or staged group member) leaving the group is negative and because of that, does create fear.

“…transition…” In order for the bad thing we want to scare people to actually scare people, it has to grow into more of a threat than they previously perceived it as. People can get used to anything. This is why having a monster trail after a group for half of a haunt is not a good scare tactic; they get used to his presence. We can also use this logic to verify why tactics such as actor doors and drop panels work so well. Since guests do not perceive the actors presence in the scene at all, the transition is so much bigger and faster (2 key components of the startle) than the average monster that many guests will drop to the floor out of sheer terror.

These key components are at the base of every effective startle. Every one of the four components must be present, at least to some degree, or else the scare will be nonexistent. The goal, of course, is to turn up the "bigness," "fastness," and "negativity" of the transitions in our haunts. So with that in mind, here are a few suggestions for improving each of them.

Bigger Transitions:

As I mentioned above, we perceive how big anything (including startles) is through the use of our five senses. As haunt designers, we can't ever really affect taste, and while scent machines are highly effective for setting the scene, no scent can disperse fast enough to be effective for a startle (remember, startles have to be fast too). That leaves us with three senses left: sight, sound, and touch.

We can do two things with sight: move things (actors, props, walls, etc.) and change the brightness and color with which those things are lit. Obviously, movement is essential to a startling people, whether it's an actor sprinting out from around a corner or a prop lunging forward, but lighting is an easy (and often relatively inexpensive) way to rapidly change the tone of a scene during a startle. Simply shifting the color of the lights can signal a shift in mood, but for an even more intense effect strobe lighting or bright back lighting of the scare work to up the scare factor to 11.

Sound is another easy sense to prey upon during a startle. But before you even think about adding additional sound effects to a scare, focus your efforts into making your actors make a frightening sound when they pop out (because actors' voices are free, and speakers are not). An actor's ability and willingness to do this will come with experience, so don't expect that a shy new recruit will be willing to howl like a werewolf or growl like a cannibal hillbilly. So in these cases, as with animatronic props, a digital soundtrack may be necessary to prey upon the ears of your audience.

Most haunters will break out in a cold sweat with the mention of the word "touch," so let me be clear on what exactly I'm advising you to do to attack this sense. Fort most haunters, including me, the concept of actors making contact with patrons is off the table (if it is indeed on the table, the rest of this paragraph will be less applicable to you -- so my hat's off to you for pushing your haunt to the next level!). But even without actor-guest contact, there are some great opportunities to simulate contact with various objects. The biggest concern to think remember here is that anything that touches guests must be moving with a low enough momentum to not hurt them. But even with this in mind there are plenty of ways to "touch" patrons: air cannons, falling foam heads, and even water blasters to simulate patrons' favorite body fluid. The sense of touch is so powerful for haunted attractions; after all, it's the only sense that we can prey upon that hasn't been desensitized by horror movies and video games!

Faster Transitions:

In a perfect world, the goal would be to have an actor appear in a scene in no time at all. Unfortunately, until teleporters are invented, we'll have to use a little Hollywood magic to simulate that. There are lots of techniques that exist in mainstream haunting solely for this purpose, drop panels and actor doors being at the top of that list. I intend to at some point dedicate an entire post to exploring various innovative types of startles that allow monsters to rapidly appear next to guests, but for now, you should understand how you can create these types of scares on your own. Essentially, understand that the easier it is for your actor to enter the presence of your guests, the faster the transition will happen. Also, if guests fail to perceive the monster's existence at all before the startle, the resulting "big-ness" added to the speed of the monsters appearance into the scene will create an even more effective startle.

More Negative Transitions:

Again, this is an area that I intend to expand upon in the future because it's not possible to cover in short paragraph. Negativity is really all your scenic design and set dressings, the stuff you're probably already good at! How scary is that mask? How scary is that sound your actor makes? These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself when trying to make a scene more negative, and frankly, an article on scare theory isn't really the right place to discuss the artistic side of haunts.

Another Look at Fear:

For those of you who are more mathematically inclined, the following equation may help you greatly; it is based of the assumption that a startle is “a big, fast, negative transition,” but broadens the definition to apply to fear as a whole. (If the description is too dense and mathy, believe me when I say that this is merely a supplement to the rest of the article; I promise you aren't missing anything big!)

The capital letter "F" is used to represent fear in relation to a single threatening situation. The graveness of this negative situation is represented by a capital "B," essentially, the "bigness" of the scary situation. "ΔD" represents the change in distance, or the velocity, with which scary situation B is moving towards the person interpreting the fear. We understand fear in terms of the rate with which something bad approaches us, not by the graveness of our current situation - How do we know this? - because starving children in Africa often act less scared than a middle class American losing his job; the American's move towards demise is greater, even though his final position is farther from it! This velocity component proves the necessity of the "transition" in the startle definition, for without a change in the threat, there is no velocity and therefore no fear.