Trevor Kirschenheiter

The Hilloween Haunted Schoolhouse project broke new ground, introducing me to the worlds of temporary installations and themed entertainment. This one-weekend-only event, held in the nearly abandoned Bualdean Schoolhouse located in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina, came with many hurdles along the way, from a long commute and limited manpower to black mold and being a half-hour away from the nearest restaurant.

One of the most significant aspects of this production was the pixel-controllable portals seen lining the hallway. These arches were constructed using unistrut and Pixel tape with R111 tough Rolux, transforming the unistrut into a small lightbox. It's important to note that we were not allowed to alter the school in any way; therefore, these arches were secured to the walls with tensioning screws and shims.

Control was another major consideration that consistently arose as we value-engineered which rooms truly needed to be centrally controlled versus set-and-forget or static. In the end, about half of the lights were running internal programs, while the other half were linked back to the console, allowing them to remain in static looks or cue stacks controlled throughout the haunted house using my custom serial port distribution. As shown in photos further down the page, my custom D-sub to Ethernet hub enabled us to run any of the four serial ports over an Ethernet cable to its final destination. There, it could connect to a low-profile button to run cue-lists and macros at the centrally located console. These same triggers were also sent over OSC to trigger sound cues in sync with the lighting around the haunted house.