Haunted House Walk: a looping walk through a house after the circus

Every look of the visualizer is a room or a moment of the same walk through the same house, seen as you walk it with a candle in your hand: The Front Door, The Long Hall, The Parlour, The Mirror, The Stairs and Curtain Call. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look; the preview, the still and every export draw the same frames.

The house is shown only as you walk through it, never from above and never as a plan or a map. The house, its rooms and its portraits are the visualizer's own.

• Open the Haunted House Walk template

It is the night after the Circus visualizer's show, told as a story. The clowns' lanterns lead you off the fairground and up the hill to the front door, along the hall, into the parlour, to the mirror and up the stairs; in the entrance hall they line up and take their bow, and on the drop the front door swings open onto the fairground's lights, the big top far down the hill, so the walk comes back round to the front door.

The clowns are the Circus visualizer's own, drawn by its own performer painter: the red nose, the rosy cheeks, the wide smile and the little hat, only now lit by candles in the dark. The open door shows the Circus visualizer's own big top.

• Open the Circus template

Each look is one room or moment of the walk:

• The Front Door: After the show the clowns' lanterns lead you up the hill to an old house: you walk the path a step a beat but the porch never seems to get closer, a curtain twitches upstairs, lightning glows far off, and on the drop the front door swings open and a clown pops up in the light.
• The Long Hall: Along the hall a step a beat by your candle: portraits whose eyes follow you, sconces guttering as the song builds, doors that slam on the downbeats, and on the drop a clown springs out of a doorway.
• The Parlour: A music box plays on the table, the clock's pendulum keeps the beat, the curtains lift in the draught and lightning glows beyond the window; a clown rises behind the dust sheets, and on the drop the jack-in-the-box springs open.
• The Mirror: A tall gilt mirror shows the room behind you and your candle; as the song builds a shadow passes in the glass, and on the drop a clown rises behind your reflection and turns to look at you.
• The Stairs: Up the stairs a step a beat, and they never end: portraits climb the wall beside you, the clowns' shadows slide along it by your candle, one peeks over the banister, and on the drop a clown slides down the banister past you.
• Curtain Call: Back in the entrance hall the clowns line up under the chandelier and bow on the downbeats, and on the drop the front door swings open onto the night and the fairground's lights far down the hill, confetti falling, and the walk begins again.

You walk a step on the beat (slower, steadier or hurried with the Walk setting), the head rising and settling with each step. The clock's pendulum swings a beat, the music box's little clown turns a turn a bar and its comb glints with the song's bands, and the chandelier's glass glints with the highs.

The scares come on the downbeats: a clown peeking out of a doorway, a door slamming, a portrait turning to look at you, a shadow crossing the far end. The big one comes on the drop: a clown springing up in front of you, the front door opening on a clown in its light, the jack-in-the-box, a clown rising behind you in the mirror, a clown sliding down the banister, the door opening onto the fairground. As the song builds the candles sink, the far sconces gutter out and something waits at the edge of the light.

Every room is built so a phrase walks a whole number of its repeats: the hall's bays, the stairs' flights, the path's flagstones. So with no song analysis every phrase is the same picture, a phrase-long clip starts and ends on the same frame and loops without a seam, and the hall goes on, the stairs never end and the porch never gets nearer, the fun-house's oldest trick.

The scares are theatrical: clowns springing up, a jack-in-the-box, portraits whose eyes follow you, doors that slam, curtains in a draught, a mirror, shadows on the wall and a music box. There is no blood, injury, weapon or violence, and nothing from a film, game, book or attraction.

A jump scare here is a movement and a shape, never a burst of light: a clown springs in on a damped spring, slowly enough that no edge crosses the frame back and forth faster than the flash rules allow, and it is lit only by the candles already in the room. The lights that could flash go through the flash limiter first, which holds flashes to fewer than three a second: the candles' gentle flicker and their sinking through the build, the lightning far off, and the light through an opened door. The wallpaper, the boards, the tiles, the siding, the balusters and the curtains' folds are repeating patterns, so each asks the site's pattern guard how much contrast it may have. The Contrast setting lowers it all further.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the settings every look has, the visualizer has its own, labelled the same in every editor, and SW Agent can set each one by its name:

• Candlelight: How bright the candles: yours, the sconces, the candelabra and the chandelier. They flicker gently and sink as the song builds, never faster than the flash rules allow. From 0 to 2.
• Gloom: How dark the house is past your candle, and how far the lights sink and the shadows creep in as the song builds. From 0 to 1.
• Dust: Dust hanging in the candlelight, cobwebs in the corners and the mist outside. From 0 to 1.
• Lightning: Lightning far off in the sky and the windows: a soft glow through the frame's flash limiter, never a strobe. From 0 to 1.
• Scares: How often and how far things spring at you: a clown peeking out on some downbeats, a door slamming, the big one on the drop. Every scare is a movement, never a flash. From 0 to 1.5.
• Clowns: How many of the circus's clowns follow you through the house, lighting the way, waiting in doorways and taking their bow. From 0 to 1.5.
• Walk: How fast you walk: a step every other beat, a step a beat or two a beat (halved in a fast song, doubled in a slow one). Every phrase walks a whole number of steps, so a phrase-long clip loops. Choose Slow, Steady or Hurried.
• Variation: Another walk through the same house: the portraits, which doors stand open and where the scares happen. The same number always gives the same walk. From 0 to 99.

Layer assets and the Layers tool offer each room's own layers (the walls, the doors, the portraits, the candles, the clowns, your candle, the dust and the dark) on their own, to add to any project. Motion graphics has every room as a design to customize; Generate visualizer can put a haunted house layer over your picture; and the Stream studio has it in its rotation.

• Browse Layer assets
• Generate a visualizer from a picture

Ask for it in your own words: "make a horror visualizer", "a haunted house video for my song", "creepy clowns" or "a jump scare on the drop", and SW Agent builds the project on it. In an open project, say "more scares", "switch to the mirror" or "turn the candles down"; each change is one step of undo in Classic and in Studio.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists the visualizer's rooms and settings, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio on any of them.