Thursday, October 19, 2006

Silent Hill as a Template for Halloween Decoration

The next approach was, of course, to figure out how to decorate the front of my house. I had to spend very little money, so my options were limited. My first thought was of our cars. My family has four cars, if I were to make a truly scary scene, I would have to incorporate all the cars, or move them, because I felt that making a scary house and then expecting the kids to neglect the cars that are not part of the scene would take away from the experience. Also , by incorporating the cars I could create a claustrophobic feeling while spending next to nothing (I planned on covering the cars with webbing for effect, that was about all I had to buy). My driveway has a row of bushes on either side, by putting all the cars into the driveway at once I could create a path for the kids to follow. Once the kids got into the drive way, there would be so much I could do. The cars would offer a number of hiding spaces. The kids wouldn't be all over the yard, so I could centralize most of my effort on a small area.

The only other idea I had to begin with was fog, a lot of fog. Since I was using the music from Silent Hill, I was compelled to mimic the game as much as possible. The key points in the game are thus:
The soundtrack (it's Ultra Creepy)
The sound effects (it's more common among all horror games, but still scary)
The mass amounts of fog (In the first two games you can't see more than two yards in front of your character)
The radio that goes off when monsters are near
The monsters...
The darkness (flashlights never light enough area)
Generally creepy scenes (mostly dead people you stumble upon)
(that's not all you find in the game, the story and characters make it worthwhile to stick around, but characterization has nothing to do with "trick or treating")

So I bought a fog machine (and am planning on buying a second one to blanket the whole driveway with fog).

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