[0:19] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the on-detraction entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you this week a little bit late, even with a new schedule, but for a very good reason. And that is, we had to see a movie in order to do this episode,

[0:42] and scheduling the movie actually turned out to be surprisingly difficult. So the result of that is we ended up seeing it later than planned so the episodes later than planned but nonetheless we get a chance to talk about the movie centers and more importantly talk about in the context of haunted attractions this was a very unique horror film which i'm looking forward to talking about that i think has some very interesting lessons for haunted attractions some interesting points to uh check out but but if you're not interested in that for some reason i don't know why, please check us out at all other places we exist we're at HauntWeekly.com HauntWeekly on Facebook YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly and wherever you happen to get your podcast from alright, as I said at the very very top we are a day late this week we're trying to publish on Wednesdays right now this will be going out on Thursday.

[1:35] We knew we wanted to talk about sinners, pretty definitively and we intended to go to the film on monday but that didn't work out due to a scheduling conflict uh so we ended up going late tuesday and like tuesday go out go late come home go straight to bed yeah and it is a long movie yeah it's a two hour 15 minute movie plus the 21 minutes of fucking bullshit they put in front of it yeah i i don't like the way the movie theaters run movies right now well and the thing is it's like movie theaters like gee golly willikers how do we convince people to come back to the movies and enjoy and not wait for things to hit streaming again here's one hint don't make people wait a full simpsons episode for the film to start yeah how's that for an idea god but anyways yeah we got home late we basically went straight to bed and didn't even really start on show notes until wednesday so yeah we're recording and uploading on thursday sorry about that but i I think this is gonna be a fun episode. So yeah, that's the housekeeping. Sorry about that. Work we did for the haunt. We have been doing a lot of work preparing the house. I picked up a lamp. Yeah. And got rid of the skull stick lights. Yeah, we've been... But we also know that we have an upcoming Home and House insurance change. Right. Which we need that to go well for the haunt.

[3:03] Um, so we are taking care of the various things that we have to do to, um, you know, have that go smoothly. It's including patching foundation, which you just did before, uh, we're coming on. Um, you also do that and some AC system maintenance. We're also washing the house, um, taking apart the outside L, a lot of very different stuff that we have to get done. And it's all kind of happening in a swirl of activity and none of it feels very hot related even though it very much is yeah and you know if nothing else like some of the general cleanup will help with the actor area things like that it doesn't feel like hot work but it is yeah and then that's kind of one of the problems we're having now is we're also at that time of year where the temperatures are going up and like um we were out and about uh last saturday.

[3:55] And even though the temp on the thermometer only read like 90 which i mean only 90 i know only 90 in the shade yeah it the temp once again as is customary for new orleans the feels like was way higher and we both felt like shit after not that long in the sun so yeah this is that rough time a year um where we're going to be looking for less than traditional things to do uh for the haunt but luckily we are in a decent position and i'm already very excited about the upcoming season so yeah it's gonna be fun.

[4:32] All right. Well, every week we do ask a question a week. Last week, we asked you, what is something you're looking forward to for the 2025 season? And you guys gave us a lot of interesting answers on this one. Yeah, Jinx Midnight said, I am working on a domineering Q-line character persona that should be loads of fun. Sounds like it. Yeah. Yeah, um, Sabra Pretty said, hopefully I'm introducing a new personality. I'm in character. Yeah, being, Chuck Morrison said being on a hunt on the terror tours in Pittsburgh. Yeah, there's actually several people who, including Ryan Greger, also mentioned terror tours. Yeah. Um, so, yeah, it seemed like a lot of people. They're going on it, and one of them's being on it, you know? Yeah. Let's see, Tim Fowler said, not Scary Farm, always got it. That is on my bucket list of haunts.

[5:28] Fair loose savage said the 20th anniversary of our haunt there with us. One of our actors. Maximum Christian Brian, Maximus Christian Brian said Maximum Christian Brian, maximum. Exactly. Maximus Christian Brian said the number of haunts I'm going to visit.

[5:45] The goal is all Ohio ones may not achieve it, but I hope to get close. Please say I misread that and that you're not going to try to go to all ohio haunts no i think you read that correctly you will die mind you awesome way to go but, and finally sean finner said we are reopening a haunt that has been closed since kobe and that sounds awesome congratulations that you know what those are the types of things all of those are the types of things i think we can safely look forward to in the 2025 season yes i think all of those are really great things that we can definitely say will be awesome in 2025.

[6:26] Alright, so, as we mentioned, we went and saw the Movie Centers over the weekend. And A, this isn't a review of the film. No. But I will say off the top that we do strongly recommend. This is a very strong recommendation. And if you get a chance to see it in theaters, it should be there probably a little bit longer. Yeah, and it is worth... It's worth going to the theaters to watch. And it's worth in theaters for two reasons. One is that it's just a beautiful film that really does do well on a large screen. The second, though, is that there is a lot of subtle stuff that without your undivided attention, you may miss. Well, and a third is that the sound system for it plays much better in the surround sound of a theater. And if you have that at home, Godspeed. But if you don't, like us, the theater adds to it. Yeah, we have, what are they called, TV speakers. Yeah. We've tried hooking up so many different things to that TV, and they just don't work. I think the honest truth is we need a new TV for going to hook up anything more complicated than stereo speakers, because that TV, though it's a decent TV, every other way is old.

[7:47] And, yeah, I think the tech here has moved forward considerably since we got it. But, you know, most of the stuff we watch doesn't really require surround sound. No. Don't really feel like I need it to watch my adult cartoons. You know, like The Simpsons and Family Guy and all that. And Batman.

[8:09] But, yeah, so we definitely recommend it. Please do go see it in the theaters if you can. But while we were watching it, as we always do, we were turning on our haunt brain and examining it from a haunted attraction perspective. And trying to pick up lessons that we think we and other haunts can learn from. And we wanted to call those particular things out. Yeah. Now, there is a caveat here.

[8:38] Uh do bear in mind that in order to have this discussion we need to talk about some spoilers some minor spoilers yeah the the main spoiler we're going to talk about is already out there in the news it was spoiled for me before i went to see it um but it may not be spoiled for you yet if you have managed to duck spoilers which a it would be fucking impressive well so until i mentioned it ellie had not heard of it at all like all over my feed it was like you gotta go see theaters yeah it was all over mine too i mean you and i had not stopped hearing about it for like the past week and a half or so and ellie's like what's this movie again yeah so yeah just in the same household different worlds sometimes so yeah but if you have not if you want to see it completely spoiler-free, stop the episode here, go see it, then come back and finish the episode.

[9:36] That's not a bad way to listen to this episode anyway, because having it fresh in your mind, as it is for us right now, probably wouldn't be a bad thing either.

[9:46] Regardless, I will give a caveat. We will be giving away a minor spoiler as we go down this list. It's not in the first one, but now is the point to stop if you hate spoilers. So no one jump up our butt for spoilers all right we clear no butt jumping.

[10:05] All right. So here are the lessons we picked up from the film centers and think we and other haunts should pick up on. And the first, and I think possibly the most important, is the power of music. Yeah, definitely. Now, this is a big theme in the movie. Yeah. Now, when we were first hearing about the movie on all the social media, we'd gotten the impression it was a horror musical. Well, Ellie read something that said it was a horror musical whenever she started researching the film. But it's not. Not really. No, it does rely heavy on music. Yes, it's a very soundtrack-forward film. Yeah. I mean, but it's like House of a Thousand Corpses is a good comparison. And that it's a very soundtrack-forward film, but it's not a musical. The music plays a very important part. It's even a key element of the themes.

[11:05] And of the story itself. Yeah. But it's not a musical. It's not like Rocky Horror where people break out in song or whatever. No. It's nothing like that. So it is a music-forward film, but not a musical. And particularly there's two genres of music in there, blues and Irish folk music.

[11:29] And that's kind of a weird thing already for a horror film. I mean, blues has made appearance in a lot of horror movies. And I guess Irish folk music has as well. But for them to be this prevalent and this forward is a little bit unusual. And they kind of play off of each other, too, in the movie. Yeah, you learn the themes are very similar. Well, yeah. The themes and the way they are enjoyed are both very similar.

[12:00] But, yeah. But here's the thing. most horror films when I think about the soundtrack I think about music that's meant to be in the background you know it's the ominous tones and songs yeah midnight syndicate type stuff that are you here you know a creepy sound coming in so you know something's about to happen it's not it's not a driving force of the movie it's a background.

[12:30] And it's meant to help, like, heighten the intensity of the film a little bit by preventing unnecessary or unwanted silences.

[12:41] Which, coincidentally, is how a lot of haunts use music. I mean, and hey, look, guilty. We are 1,000% guilty here. It's one of the reasons we've been talking about this so much. Yeah, yeah, because basically in our haunt, it's like, this fit the theme loosely. And kind of go with this room, we'll put that in there. Yeah, and the only concerns we've really had is getting enough music so that we don't drive the staff and the actors crazy. Yeah.

[13:11] And having something that fit the theme and would cover up minor sounds. Because one of the things that, if you don't have background music in a hall, or you don't have some background noise, I should say, it's amazing how much you can hear that you really shouldn't. Yeah, all of the animatronics firing off. If you've got those. Even things as subtle as people's feet shuffling on the concrete. Which, mind you, that can be its own kind of unease. Yeah. But when you're trying to have an actor hidden, it can kind of give away that there's someone nearby. Kind of spoil the scare a little bit. So, yeah, we use sound, music in particular, to sort of smooth out those things. And mind you, that's not necessarily fine. But in Sinners, the music was front and center. It was the main character of the scenes it was in. It was the focus. Yeah.

[14:12] Like we've said, it was the driving force. Yeah. And the songs that you hear in this movie, you're going to hear the full song. Yeah which is interesting for for movies yeah in general which is one of the reasons why i think some people did call it a musical yeah is because there are several songs that are played full of the way through but it's like i said not like a musical these are these are important plot points but they're also not singing their lines or right and we should have mentioned in the beginning before we jumped into the power of music yeah um section that we're not going to be going into the cultural themes because we don't feel like we're the right people to talk about it absolutely not no no god no so i'm just putting that out there yeah in case you're wondering why we're not talking the racial cultural yeah and even the some of the supernatural themes in it yeah we're not going to go into because you're 100 right we're not qualified at all to do that so we're talking in fact one of the things we're going to be doing is we're focusing a lot on the horror portion of the film, which is the later portions for the most part.

[15:20] Which, I mean, that's typical of horror movies. That's not much of a spoiler. Shit gets real in the second half. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That's a horror movie in a nutshell. Yeah, there's always some buildup. Yeah. Shit gets real later in the movie. Not much of a spoiler. But, yeah. But I did find it interesting that they used the full songs. And the main thing all the songs had in common was a strong, driving, intense beat.

[15:46] You're sitting there tapping your toe, bobbing your head, you know. And it's uncontrollable it sucks you in and it is absolutely amazing and it really in the case of like a couple of the songs in particular got me amped yeah it gets you amped and it also seeing it in the theater you can feel the vibrations of it just pushing you into your chair yeah you know and it's really nice yeah and so you know it got us thinking maybe instead of using music purely as a background element there are times and opportunities where we should be using it as a foreground element and one of the things that they did was that yes the musical parts were plot points but it was largely transitional from one part of the movie to the next yeah every time they did one of those full numbers it was a transition so during transition sequences in a haunt this would be an excellent opportunity to let music be the driving force you don't you know i'm not saying go without actors necessarily i'm not saying go without anything but make it so that the the customer walking.

[16:54] Through that haunt here's the song here's the lyrics here's the beat and feels it and gets taken up by it a little bit before moving on to the next thing yeah which is what sinners did incredibly well because you get sucked into of these songs and then like the song ends and you just drop back off and oh shit um yeah you know oopsie doopsie looking around.

[17:21] And it's like wow so yeah maybe using music more as a foreground element is easily the first lesson I gained from this and probably the most important, The second one, and this is a good one, it's how to act genuinely creepy. Now, here comes the minor spoiler. There be vampires. Yeah, basically, yes. That's the spoiler. But at one point in the movie, there's only three. Yeah. And they're trying to do what vampires do. Well, at one point, there's only one. That's true, yeah. But at this point, there's only three. Yeah. And they're trying to gain entrance into the juke joint. And they go in and they do the vampire thing. And we're going to talk about the vampire thing in a minute.

[18:09] But so they start trying to talk to the bouncer and the people and get in. And they're acting 95% normal almost. Maybe even like 99%. It's like seeing a really good picture of an AI and knowing that something's not right. But yes, some of the mannerisms are just wrong. the way they respond, the way they don't look people in the eye, the way they do these things feels wrong. And you get, you feel dirty watching them have a seemingly normal conversation. Yeah. It's the creepy crawlies. The tingler. Yeah. And there's two sequences that involve them, one at the door and one a little bit later. And in both cases, the conversation on the surface level is very normal.

[18:57] I mean, okay, it's a little weird because of the situation and some of the cultural things that we're not talking about. But from just like a human being standpoint, it's seemingly normal. But the mannerisms, the tone, the way they take extra long pauses, the way that, you know, all the things that they do, the slight, I don't want to call it a lisp because it's more serpentine than that. Yeah. But they have that, you know, sound they're making that you can't quite pinpoint it's all so close it's uncanny valley is what it is like you can't like if you went and tried to explain to the police why these people are creeping you out you would fail immediately the police would laugh at you you know oh they're just you know they're just weird a little bit weird whatever right just not right just a little bit weird whatever there's nothing wrong with that go away but man you get this feeling and I really think Q line actors especially need to study that because these conversations, to be clear, go on a while. These are lengthy conversations from a film perspective.

[20:05] It's not just hey can we come in no okay bye no it's not like that no these are long back and forth engagements like a q line actor might have right and i think that the fact that the other actors who aren't the vampires who are interacting with them um have an unsettled feeling helps the audience have an unsettled feeling exactly yeah because you know by this point you've probably figured out what's up yeah or at least figured out that something is up yeah yeah but the people in the movie do not know that yet but they can sense it and they also know that the situation itself is an unusual one for like i said cultural reasons we're not going into but even with all that they can't pinpoint what's wrong they just know something's off no and And it's like, ah, ugh, you know? And yeah, just seeing the way they behave, the tics that they have, it gets across that they're not who or what they say they are.

[21:15] But it's so subtle. And it left me with a genuine feeling of unease. And I think this is something I say. Q-line actors, in particular, who have longer time to interact with groups, can really, really get across. And as I said, a lot of Q-line actors, I think, focus... I mean, and there's nothing wrong with it. Like the Bernie character. I'm one of them, right? Mm-hmm. Where we're outrageous, we're outlandish, we're doing crazy stuff, you know? We're having fun out there. And yeah, that's great. But if you wanted to try a more subtle Q-line actor, this is the case study. Yeah, and especially if it's a more subtle and nuanced performance without a lot of makeup. Because I've seen these mannerisms, but it's always in Q-line actors who are very made up to look scary. Yeah. So you are scared of them just based on looks. Yeah, they are. Yeah. And to be clear, these vampires at this point are dressed in period clothes, period appropriate clothes. Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. They look like everyone else at that time. They don't have obvious fangs. They're not covered in blood. They're just three regular people from that time period. Yeah. Now.

[22:33] Go ahead. no because of the situation there's there there is over there's a lot of layers of why, the people are uncomfortable in the scene yeah but but i think that the that they can tell that something is extra off yeah and in fact when they turn around the vampires turn around, someone even says they give me the willies i think was the exact line or something like that Yeah, they do. That's just how you give people the willies. You act just that 1% to 5% off. It's such a master class in that. It's great. All right, next item.

[23:12] The use of effective gore. Oh, man. Yeah. Because it's not a really gory thing.

[23:21] For a especially not for a vampire and not for an r-rated horror flick no there is a um i bet they got the r rating for the the love sex scenes oh they got it for other things so they they are in other places definitely but not for gore not for pure gore no um there is a lot of blood obviously it's a vampire show but they don't show a lot of it no um as it's happening like you see the aftermath more than you see the actual um gory parts yeah and like one of the things that's really interesting is that the wounds and the endrix people do get wounded and injured i don't think that's a spoiler either no um are done or portrayed very realistically yeah when someone is shot it's not this giant explosion of blood and guts it looks like a bullet going through flesh yeah and a little trickle yeah and a little trickle of blood comes out initially to see in real life yeah it's but it makes it feel more i guess you would say tangible in a way it feels more visceral because they're not going over the top of the blood and gore and even when supernatural shit du jour is going down you're not seeing blood splatter all over the walls and the ceilings and that you're not seeing like people whipping intestines out.

[24:47] No it didn't look so there's.

[24:52] For a while there there was a lot of after effects put into to horror movies where you could tell like that blood isn't really there but it's all over your screen kind of thing yeah it's not like that either it's.

[25:07] Very subtle but like i said you do see the aftermath if somebody gets shot the bullet wound does stay it doesn't just magically go away but it's portrayed very similar to how a bullet wound would be.

[25:24] Yeah um and i found that to be way more effective than like the crazy kills you see in a lot of horror movies because i'm thinking like in the original um shit um terrifier the famous song and half scene that's an impressive amazing scene because of the gore and the violent well violence in it but it doesn't feel real it feels like a horror movie disconnected on a more real level because they toned it down and because they toned it down they used framing to put those wounds and the injuries on display and make them feel more real and more natural and i think this is something that a lot of haunts can do because it seems like a lot of haunts are in this race to just up the gore to the next level and i've always said if you need gore to be scary you're not scary yeah because that's that's been a problem with some haunts in a large part of the industry for decades that's not new this movie shows you how to be scary while keeping the gore to a relatively reasonable level and i think they do a great job of it and then keeping it realistic keeping it you know more human all right next item.

[26:48] Um the power of consistent and appropriate setting one of the things i was taken aback by and this is something that we've talked about a lot about how much we love putting all this detail into our sets the core horror part of the film takes place in a sawmill that was converted into a juke joint it's a shockingly great setup in a 24-hour period yeah in a 20 over one night specifically not even 24 hours no but it looks great to be clear i'm not saying the setting looks bad no it looks appropriate it looks absolutely 100 appropriate but i would describe it as spark yeah well it's a sawmill well it's a sawmill and sawmills are typically found outside of the central hubs of town yeah um so you've got your isolation already built in yeah.

[27:44] And you see, there is a lot of driving in this. It's not just driving and watching the car go. There's like dialogue and stuff to keep it interesting. But there are some, so you feel how long it takes to get to the sawmill as you go with the characters. Yeah, but once you're there, the sawmill itself doesn't have a lot of detail. No. It doesn't need it. It's basically an old wooden building. Yeah, they put some lights and some music, a bar. It's not very complicated. And I'm sure if this were a haunt set, some people would go, oh, this haunt set doesn't have a lot of detail to it. It's not super realistic or whatever. Right. I don't know if there was a saw in it. No, there wasn't. Yeah. No, it was just an old wooden building with rafters and hanging lights. Yeah, it was basically a giant open space. Yeah. With a couple of small rooms. And it didn't need that detail because the focus of the film entirely is on the characters and the music. Yeah. The setting is just there to be useful. Characters, music, and as we'll get into, lighting.

[29:00] But, yeah, because if you've got all of those things working for you, then people have enough to look at. Yeah.

[29:07] And detail in some haunt scenes i've been in haunts where they did some very beautiful detailed scenes and it actually worked against them yeah because i'm too focused on the scene not the actors yeah and so i think that that can work that way i think that also though people will the people who look for detail are always going to look for detail yeah the people who are scared going through a haunted house are never going to see the detail yeah but a sawmill like this was a great place in that it didn't have needed a lot of detail and it still looked very realistic yeah it looked very appropriate for what it was yeah yeah the the scene the background was purely functional and that's okay sometimes it doesn't have to be a main character in the scene it can be just there if everything else is present and strong you don't need your background competing with your actors which i think was a large part of why this was chosen um so yeah this was a very interesting case study in a beautiful beautifully shot film without a super detailed super rich background it was there it was functional it looked good it did its job and that job was getting the fuck out of the way of everything, of the characters, the action, everything else. And yeah, that's something I think some haunts can learn from.

[30:37] Sometimes the background should just be the background.

[30:41] Number five okay distinct characters besides the vampires there are roughly 10 major characters in the film uh each of them are very distinguishable from each other yeah they're very unique characters, um and you can tell even though they're okay this is a little bit it's not really spoiler but there are twins in it yeah that's not everybody knows michael b jordan plays two two character. Yeah. Yeah. And because of the dress and mannerisms and attitudes, you could tell who is who all the time, even when they're in similar dress towards the end. Yeah. I found it interesting because during the first section of the film, and this once again, it's not a spoiler, it's how horror movies, how movies in general work. They introduce you to the characters yeah and you pick them up kind of one at a time and each one of them is a very distinct character oh here's the young boy who knows how to play guitar and is going all phones into the big bad world to try and be a blues player here's the elder statesman who's been playing blues forever and and it's kind of done with life kind of done with life and has more than a wee bit of a drinking problem, you know, and so on and so on. And from their attire, even though it was all period appropriate, from their attire, their demeanor.

[32:07] Their personality, even though you never really, you know, I mean, you do get to spend time with these characters, but you kind of instantly recognize their differences the minute you hear them talk for just a few seconds, You know, you realize how they're different from the others there and it's becomes very clear. It's very easy to keep these 10 characters separate Now I'm not saying that's something That haunts need to do because once again, we've only got a few seconds with a character in a room That doesn't really play out But it does speak to how do you have a whole bunch of people in a haunt who are period slash theme appropriate but still distinct, You can look at the way they costume each other. You can look at the mannerisms. You can look at the physiques of these characters. I mean, the guy who plays Cornbread has a very different physique than the kid who's, Cornbread's the bouncer, than the protagonist of this film. Who's, like I said, the blues musician.

[33:10] Preacher man's son. Yeah, preacher's son. Preacher boy. They're very different. They have very different physiques. I mean, inappropriately so. So it shows you how to sort of lay out who these characters are through costume, through their presentation, through their demeanor, and so on. I think also looking at the twins just by themselves, you could use that to your advantage, too, because you could have very similar characters who are just off a little bit, you know, but still recognizable, even if they're not in the same scene. Yeah. And one of the ways they did that is even though they were literally played by the same person. Yeah. And literally were playing twins was they consistently wore different color suits. Different color suits. Yeah, there were other. Oh, there were other mannerisms, too. Yeah. But different, just the simple act of having them in different color suits and different style suits, slightly different styles, made them very different and made it easy to tell who was who, even though, once again, same actor playing twins, you could be forgiven for not knowing one from the other immediately. Yeah, well, and, like, you can always tell because, they were...

[34:31] So i would like to see it in a in a haunt where they have two characters one is very frenetic energy and one is very reserved yes dressed alike they look at a distance to be the same but you can tell they're they're different yeah you know yeah because i think that would be cool that would be very cool yeah and they do bring a different energy to it as well it's another excellent point But yeah, it's amazing what they were able to do with costuming. And I think this is something Haunts should be... Costuming and characters, I should say. This should be something Haunts study. Because Haunts have to throw a lot of characters at people. And it can be difficult to make them consistent. Or to make them easily recognizable, easily distinguishable. Especially while keeping a theme going. Right. Alright.

[35:23] Number six is the advantage of tropes. now this was maybe my biggest disappointment with the film in the moment and i say in the moment for very important reasons because when they're setting up the supernatural stuff you don't really know what's going on you know something's going down some fucked up's going on but you don't really know what well it kind of quickly and kind of early on in the actual action part of the film it comes clear they're vampires and me i was thinking oh a new lore is dropping i'm excited and then it was just vampires and it was like the whole vampire thing right the garlic the sunlight the wooden stakes the biting you to turn you into a vampire all that stuff it was a straight up vampire lore and but the thing was by sticking to that the explanation of hey they're vampires this is what we've got to do, was like 30 seconds. Yeah. It was over and done.

[36:25] So, yeah, I mean, we may bitch about, you know, using those kinds of tropes, but in the end of the day, it communicates a lot to the viewer or to the customer very quickly and enables them to sort of understand the story much more quickly. So, yeah, tropes can be kind of frustrating, can take you up. But here, it really saved the movie a lot of time and allowed them to go from, holy shit, what's going on, to, oh, this is the fight. Yeah. It allowed them to make that pivot very quickly and sort of deal with it super fast. And honestly, in hindsight, looking back on, other than it was like, ooh, new lore drop, I think it was a good decision. I think so, too. And they did add to the vampire lore for this film. They added the element of music, drawing things. Which is, as we noted while we were watching it, is another cultural trope from various other cultures, too. The idea of music being able to attract good and evil spirits alike type thing. This one just happened to attract the vampires. Yeah. Which, I mean, honestly, just turn your porch light off so you don't attract the vampires.

[37:43] Um oh those are termites yes sorry it's termite season here in new orleans all right but yeah so i i actually ended up coming down in favor of the trope even if in the moment it was like oh boo i wanted something new i have to agree it probably made the movie go much more smoothly and could make a haunt go much more smoothly for the same reason okay next up varied lighting um so.

[38:13] Go ahead yeah okay focusing on the actual horror parts of the film um i would say this was not a dark movie in fact for a horror film most of it was fairly bright it was and one of the things that i noticed is that when the music was really going and getting faster the lighting would also changed to match. And it was almost like, and when the vampires were on scene, and that scene you were talking about earlier, it was outside. Well, they were outside, but they always appeared to be in a darker, like more muted colors.

[38:57] Where, like I said, the inside sequences were shot brighter and more, I don't want to say vibrant. That's not quite right. Warm tones. Warm, yeah. It was warm tones versus cool tones. Outside, it was blues, and inside, it was yellows and oranges.

[39:12] Yeah, but the thing I found really interesting was the film never stayed at one light intensity very long. They would spend a lot of time inside the sawmill for most of it was relatively bright, and this makes sense. That was a dance hall they'd hung up lights everywhere and they had those edison bulbs and other lights it was very bright in there most of the time that would transition the scenes outside which were appreciably enough very dark because it was a moonlit night and then they also had scenes that were more of a medium intensity that involved campfires and camping sequences and things like that that remained somewhere in between and what they would do is make sure that there were not too many bright scenes together, too many dark scenes together, too many medium scenes together. You were constantly getting adjusted to one intensity and then changing to another and then changing again and moving between these light intensities so that you never really got used to the lighting, but it always felt natural and it kept you kind of adjusting and Yeah, and I guess what I was trying to say earlier is that it feels like the lighting intensity and the music intensity matched. Yeah.

[40:30] Which is, I don't think I've seen that done before, where it just, like all of the movement and the lights and the music just come together and it's perfect.

[40:44] Um, and that is something that I'm definitely going to be thinking about is how we make the sound and the lighting work more together and also how we keep it so that neither, you know, stays too consistent through the whole thing. And like we have a small haunt, so we can't do tons of transitions, but we might be able to have it so that the first half is relatively bright and loud and boisterous. And then it transitions to a more muted more well yeah and that's that's kind of what i'm thinking too is that it just start out looking like it's normal scenes and then go into distorted yeah but the main lesson i think for a lot of haunts is that you vary your lighting you vary your sound intensity and that way you keep it so that no one's fully adapting to any one brightness Because a lot of haunts, including some local ones, really enjoy just keeping things dark or otherwise just one lighting intensity all the way through. And A, I can't see shit.

[41:50] And B, it just, at some point you become nonplussed by the darkness. Oh, it's just more darkness. Yeah. whatever if you threw a bright sequence in there it might throw off you know your your visitor's game a little bit you know it might fuck them up a little bit so we're all about defying expectations in this industry lighting and sound are one of the ways to do that and so yeah you can really use it to to put people off their game yeah and you can use the intensity and like you said you can have scenes where the sound intensity and the lighting intensity are all the way up or you can have it where the sound intensity is low but the lighting intensity is high or vice versa but basically you can vary the intensities of these experiences and keep people guessing what's coming next.

[42:41] Because like i said if every scene is dark or every scene is quiet people are eventually just going to get immune to it mix it up just like the film did which brings us to number eight and our final point for this the film's promotion now i did research into this and i cannot find information on the film's production budget um but it definitely had one well yeah well i mean no shit right it definitely had a decent one too they had some big names in it so yeah now supposedly the film had a 90 million dollar production budget and typically the promotion budget is usually between 50 to 100 percent of that so between 45 and 90 million but i don't think that's the case here most people are reporting that the budget was probably significantly less um than the normal.

[43:39] Um, so basically, um, the promotion of this film focused very heavily on social media and word of mouth. Yeah. Cause that's where I saw it. And like Ellie consumes all of the media on TV. Granted, she doesn't watch commercials. Um, but I consume a fair amount of media too. And I didn't see any commercials for it. No, I saw. And I don't go to the theater every week. I saw some spot ads for it in my Facebook. Yeah. But most of what I saw about it came from news articles, came from friends on Facebook and other social media platforms. Yeah, mine was all social media. You've got to go see it. Yeah, and go see it in theaters. Yeah. Same thing we just said. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We're just repeating what got us to go at that point. Yeah and the truth is it did not do very well on its opening weekend it debuted to a pretty disappointing initial haul and typically speaking with a movie your opening weekend is your peak and it's just downhill from there well it did well enough that opening weekend that it got a second and a third week and those weeks were where the film came back and kicked some ass right.

[45:02] Um yeah because usually by this point because we thought we were going later in its run yeah um but there were still quite a few people in the theater with us yeah that was the busiest movie theater i've been in since covid and i and it was one of the bigger theaters yeah and there were only like you know 20 or 30 people there but usually when we go there's us us and maybe one other couple somewhere you know yeah yeah it was easily the busiest theater and and i think it was a bit more than 20 i think it was closer to 40 or 50 because it was a big theater we had we had to pick our seats carefully.

[45:42] But regardless, yeah, it's doing, and also the movie theater we go to kind of doesn't get anybody. Yeah. A lot of it is we don't go, we go to like the least popular movie theater in the New Orleans area, I think. Yeah, we want to avoid people. So that's true, too. We're kind of intentionally ducking the crowd a little bit here. But yeah, it's done incredibly well on this word-of-mouth advertising because it is doing something that's truly unique. And it's doing something that i think gets people talking like we knew we were likely going to want to talk about it before we even went in just based upon how much other people were talking about it no so yeah and then we left there and like yeah we got to talk about this and we've been doing that organically not just discussing it this time around not just thinking about in the context of points talking about the film, the meaning, the symbolism, sharing articles that do deep dives into all of the, uh, the various plot points that were dropped randomly from the film. Yeah. That might be a slight niggle I have with it. A slight frustration, um, was that some of the plot points did get kind of dropped, but you know.

[46:59] Whatever right it was still a very good film it inspired people to talk about it and to talk with others about it who were unaware of it like like we like you said when we when you brought it up to ellie yeah she had never heard of it which boggles my mind still if somebody should have heard of it it's ellie yeah ellie should have been first in line yeah she should have been last yeah she should have been saying we're going to this or i'm going to this y'all are welcome to come would have been how the conversation actually works well yeah but but yeah it's it's a lesson for haunt that you can't beat that word of mouth you know and being where your potential customers are it was very very powerful and this idea that if you do something unique enough crazy enough and good enough that people will talk about it and share it willingly and will grow over the course of a run yeah that I think is an important lesson to think about when you're setting up your promotion budget and also to not give up if you're opening weekend is rough yeah if you're providing a good enough product if you're providing a good enough experience they will find out about it and they will come that is one of the things that is definitely true and this social media focused era you know people talk more than ever people you know I I always hear, oh, people don't talk anymore.

[48:26] People don't communicate anymore like they want to. What do you think social media is?

[48:31] It's pure communication.

[48:34] It just isn't in the format that old timers are used to. And I say that as an old timer.

[48:41] That's a totally different conversation. But the point of the matter is, don't give up if you know your product is great.

[48:51] Um keep pushing forward it will eventually find its audience yep well i think that's everything and honestly it was a like i said great movie highly recommend seeing it in theaters if you can it's well worth thinking about in the context of haunted houses though because they do a lot of things differently from traditional horror movies and the things that they do differently are areas where I think haunts could also deviate from things haunts normally do. Right. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot of potential lessons here. And one of the great things is since it's out in May, there's plenty of time to integrate it into this season. Yeah. On that note, everyone, thank you very much for joining us for the past 50 minutes or so. It's been a great pleasure having you. Please check out more Haunt Weekly. We're at hauntweekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts from until next time i'm jonathan i'm crystal and we will see you all next week.