Mike: Halloween Horror Nights.
Every year, this amazing event
terrifies thousands of guests
at Universal Studios Hollywood in California,
Universal Studios Florida in Orlando,
and other Universal theme parks around the globe.
(Screaming)
With Incredibly detailed haunted mazes and streets,
filled with horrifying characters,
the parks are transformed into living nightmares.
So lock your doors,
turn out the lights,
and get ready for a look inside
Universal's Halloween Horror Nights.
Hey everybody,
My name is Michael Aiello
and I'm the Senior Director
of Creative Development
for Universal Orlando Resort.
And I'm standing inside
one of the amazing mazes
for Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights.
We are in preparations
to bring you the best
Halloween Horror Nights event you've ever seen
for 2021.
And today we're gonna give you
a sneak peek
inside one of these haunted mazes.
Coming along with us
is a dear friend and collaborator,
award-winning Executive Producer and Director
Greg Nicotero is going to join us
as we experience
"Puppet Theatre: Captive Audience"
Mike: So Charles, we're really excited
to experience this.
Where are we?
Charles: We are in the Grandeur Theatre
in San Francisco.
Turn of the century 1900's.
This place has collapsed.
And inside
this, uh, puppet troupe,
Pasek's Puppet Troupe,
from the eastern European era
has come in to set up shop.
Right as they were exiting,
the, uh,
the Gurian Ballet
was also here.
So these two groups have been,
uh, and some patrons and stuff,
when this collapsed they're all trapped.
They all start losing their mind
and the puppet troupe begins
taking the patrons,
cutting them up,
turning them into puppets.
It's super gory in this house.
Greg: Yeahhh Charles: Yes, we all
love that.
Very, very creepy.
We have all sorts of different
kinds of puppets,
any kind of puppet
you can think of
we have here.
I mean, there is
puppet puppet, puppets!
Greg: Wow
(Scream)
Mike: What?!
Charles: Yes!
Scareactor: To be, or not to be?
(Evil laugh)
Scareactor: I'm still rehearsing!
Scareactor: You enjoy...
...the show!
Greg: I noticed the mirror motif.
Charles: Yes. Greg: And you got
the broken mirror here
and you come to this one and
of course you're expecting it to be..
broken and see a reflection.
and then.
Greg: Boom. Charles: This is something great
that the Decord team did.
Everything is matched
and mirrored on either side.
So, you see that reflection,
but the character,
as you can see right here
there's nothing and that character
just appears.
Greg: That's really clever, yeah.
Greg: I love this illusion.
Charles: This curtain is
one of our main characters.
You'll see this red curtain
throughout the maze at different levels.
So when you're in the orchestra pit
you're looking up at it,
when you pass this rehearsal backstage,
you'll see it when you're in the audience.
you'll see this curtain will
appear many different angles.
Greg: The geography of like,
"Oh, now we're backstage..
and this is happening
in front of the curtain,
so we're in a different place."
which is the reason you have to
go through the mazes...
Greg: Multiple times. Charles: Multiple times.
Greg: Because then you see
different aspects and different elements of it.
Mike: So this is another tactic
in a lot of the mazes
where, where applicable
where we build them.
where you do these claustrophobic spaces
to bring everything in,
and that's kind of your,
your "peak" in a scare sense.
But then you open these rooms up
for a moment in these mazes
that is almost a reset,
but we're still gonna get ya.
Charles: Right.
Greg: And then the foot switch
activates the audio?
Charles: Yeah. So,
it's, it's almost like a trigger
where you hit it.
Um, and then that next
line of dialogue comes out.
Mike: And also these triggers
can cue not only audio,
but lighting or a special effect,
they really give the scareactors
a really valuable tool to aid in their,
in their, their scare moment.
Charles: That is something in the last
decade where we've grown leaps and bounds
is in show control,
and being able to have
different things tied into a trigger.
Now you can time things,
you can hit a trigger multiple times
for multiple different things to happen.
Then this whole place just collapses.
So we have a bunch of
fog, pressurized fog hitting,
and that you hear the,
we have a big subwoofer and it sounds like
everything is crumbling in on you.
Mike: To give the guest a sense that they've
become in tune with everyone else here.
Charles: No one makes it out of this place.
Greg: Are we gonna make it out today?
(Mike laughing)
Charles: Well...
let's see.
Mike: So we are standing here
in the Universal Orlando Makeup Lab.
and this is where all of the characters,
all of the nightmares
are created for Halloween Horror Nights.
Charles: This is like old hat for you.
This is like home, right?
Greg: I know. I feel like my desk
should be right there.
(Charles laughing)
Mike: Today, you know, we're talking
about "Puppet Theatre: Captive Audience"
and some of these designs,
some of these masks are for that maze?
Charles: Yeah. This section right here
is just a sampling of some of them.
These different
uh, vacuform mask
worn over.
Some will be blacked out,
have little mini puppets with them
that are coming out. Some wil be carrying
severed heads.
We really dove into puppets
and especially eastern European
traditions of puppets.
There's a lot of really cool stuff out there.
A lot of that very avant-garde
types of theatrical performances.
and we kind of drew from
all these different pieces
to come up with these different looks
and painting is such a big part of mask making.
You know, how close are we going to
see these things? How far away?
Are they part of a group?
Greg: It's all about the paint treatment
cause like what you were saying is
those two are the same sculpture.
Charles: Correct.
Greg: But what's unique about
what you guys can do is
you can paint this to look one way
and this to look a completely different way.
Mike: I like this one too.
This is a kind of that take on
the emotional values of the theater.
Charles: Yeah, you got the comedy,
you got the drama and in the middle,
it's just the madness.
Greg: Comedy, drama, horror.
Mike: Yeah. Thats very cool.
Mike: The one thing about
that I've always respected
about Halloween Horror Nights
is the fact that, you know,
Universal Studios created the modern day
movie monster
and that, that lineage
and that honor that we have
to be able to create under that banner.
Greg: You know, I think the most
intriguing thing about it is
you, you feel like you want to go through
each of these houses multiple times
because there's so much to see.
Universal Studios and Halloween Horror Nights
give us this opportunity
to step into it
and to be surrounded and immersed in it.
What you guys are able to do
using not only just fantastic art direction,
but great tricks of the trade,
it really is for me, always a joy
to be able to see more and more,
you process something different every time.
So you have a different experience
every time you come through the maze.
There's just something about
things that you have seen in movies
or seen on TV shows,
And then it's right infront of you.
And you have that,
that opportunity to
experience what it's like.
And with the original mazes,
you get taken on an entirely new journey,
uh, and you don't know where you're going,
which I think makes, makes them
a little more fun in a different way because
in the other mazes that are based on IP you kinda know
"Oh yeah, I know what this is going to be. He's gonna..."
It's still cool to walk through those moments but,
with the original mazes,
people are walking in
completely unaware of what's going to happen.
Mike: We cannot wait
for all of you to experience
Halloween Horror Nights in 2021.
And you're going to see this maze,
along with all of the other mazes.
Halloween Horror Nights is forever.