What goes on behind popular Singapore scare festival, Halloween Horror Nights
Scaring people is serious business in Singapore, with the country already seeing a host of Halloween-related events slated for the weeks leading up to 31 October. But very few people have seen the intricate preparations behind some of these scare events.
For this year’s Halloween Horror Nights 7 (HHN7), which will take place on selected nights from 29 September to 29 October at Resorts World Sentosa’s Universal Studios Singapore, preparations include trips to the United States for inspiration in terms of technology and costume designs.
Prior to this year’s HHN7, the team from RWS recruited a total of 500 scare talents, 120 special-effects makeup artists and a team of professional stunt and acrobatics experts.
In response to media queries on Wednesday (6 September), the RWS team shared with Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore some facts about what goes on behind the annual scare festival, which involves annual trips to St Louis, a city in the US state of Missouri.
“Every year, St Louis organises a Halloween fair, called TransWorld’s Halloween and Attractions Show. The team from RWS will travel there to pick up the latest innovation and technology, illusion tricks, animatronics and new applications to improve the scare factor,” said the spokesperson.
“The creative team then spends an entire year developing themes for the scare acts, including sketching characters’ looks, wardrobe design and sourcing, 3D renderings, and scare actor and stunt training.”
This year’s HHN7 features a zombie laser tag experience among its new lineup of shows, scare zones and haunted houses. It utilises brainwave technology and requires participants to wear headbands that sense “concentration levels” in order to help them unlock clues during their quest.
Organisers have also recruited 100 more scare talents from the previous year, with some from Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and the US, and almost all of whom will be required to sit through nearly two and a half hours of make-up and wardrobe before showtime. Some of them will be required to undergo stunt training.
“Some of the physical stunts include aerial suspension, suspended forward thrusts and somersaults,” said the spokesperson. “Audiences can expect death-defying stunts performed by international acts at the Laboratorium show held in Pantages Hollywood Theater.”
This year’s scare shows are entitled “Laboratorium” and “Slice of Life Tour”, respectively. The former tells the story of human experiments that have gone wrong, while the latter revolves around a K-pop concert turning into a bloody affair.
Visitors can also expect new storylines such as “Death Mall”, a story set in a fictitious haunted mall, and “Inside the Mind”, a story revolving around insight into the psyche of a force of evil.
Each night will begin at 7.30pm. Standard tickets to this year’s Halloween Horror Nights are priced from $68, while early bird tickets are priced at $55 each from now till 7 September (extended from 5 September).
Take a look behind the scenes of Halloween Horror Nights 7 in this video:
Related stories:
‘Zombie laser tag’ coming to this year’s Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Singapore
RWS puts up Halloween ‘memorials for victims of mall collapse’
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