Case study · Monroe, New York
A promo for the longest walk-through haunted attraction in the world, shot entirely silent so every sound could be built afterward to sit with the music. It won a Gold Telly and two Vega Digital Awards.
Gold Telly
39th Annual Telly Awards
Gold Vega
Awarded for editing
Silver Vega
Awarded for advertising
21,000 views
On Facebook in the first five days
The client
A haunted attraction in Monroe, New York, about forty miles from New York City, holding the Guinness World Record for the longest walk-through horror attraction. It runs every autumn and has grown since, but in 2017 the walk covered six attractions under one admission.
The job was a promo that had to cover all ten and still feel like one thing.
The problem
The obvious version of this film is a montage. Cut between the scariest shot from each attraction, put a track under it, done. Every haunt in the country has that video.
The trouble with it is that six disconnected frights add up to nothing. A viewer feels the first one and then their attention flattens, because nothing is building.
So we structured it as a journey rather than a survey. The viewer is taken through, the attractions escalate, and the piece ends where a real visit ends: the chainsaw everyone meets on the way out, then the call to action.
Story Anchors
Every project starts by settling the Story Anchors. Five words that define what the piece is, which then govern every decision after them. If a shot, a sound or a cut does not serve at least three of them, it does not go in.
For Pure Terror they were:
Horror film is the one that decided everything. It is why the piece is shot and graded like a movie rather than like an ad for an attraction, and it is why nothing was recorded on set.
Structure
Five beats, decided before a camera came out. The shoot was execution and the edit was assembly, because both had already been settled on paper.
Beat
What happens
Hook
The featured monster and the main entrance. Fifteen seconds to make someone stay.
Tension
The monster knocks three times. An invitation to come in, and a claim: the longest horror attraction there is.
Struggle
Six attractions, escalating rather than listed. The walk itself.
Turn
A recap of the experience, closing back on the featured monster.
Ask
A blood splattered website address.
The film
Gold Telly Award, 39th Annual Telly Awards, Promotional Video and General Entertainment. Gold Vega Digital Award for editing. Silver Vega Digital Award for advertising. See the Telly winner listing.
What happened
The film passed 21,000 views on Facebook in its first five days and was shared 188 times. Their image-only posts averaged 31 shares.
On the strength of it, Pure Terror ended their television and radio advertising and moved to a fully digital marketing strategy.
That is a different order of result from a view count. A business does not restructure where its advertising money goes because a video performed well. It does it because the video changed what it believed was possible.
What they said
"Holy ****! That's one of the best editing and Pure Terror videos ever. I love it!"
Bob Nordquist, CEO, Pure Terror Scream Park
How it was made
01
Nothing was recorded on set. Not a scream, not a footstep, not a chainsaw. Every sound in the finished film was built afterward, which meant we were never stuck with what a location happened to sound like on the night.
02
Specific moments were planned to land at specific points. The featured monster knocks three times, which reads as an invitation to come in. That beat is written into the storyboard as the conflict, not discovered in the edit.
03
Effects were placed against the score rather than the picture. The snapping of the taser is cut in sync with the track. That is the layer the Vega editing award is for.
04
The color pass was matched to what a haunted attraction feels like rather than to what the footage looked like. It is the last thing applied and the thing that makes the other three read as one piece.
Why it matters
We are known for nonprofit work, and the framework was built for it. This was the first time we pointed it at a commercial job to see whether it held up outside the sector it came from.
It does, and the mechanics change. On a fundraising film you cannot storyboard a real person's answer, so the discipline lives in how the interview is run. On a scripted spot you can decide everything on paper, so the discipline lives before the shoot day.
Same principle either way. Settle it before the camera comes out.
A Gold Telly was a goal we assumed was somewhere in the distant future. Getting one on the first commercial project we tried this on was not the plan.
Shot once, used twice
A haunted attraction is only dressed a few weeks a year, at night, with actors in costume and every set built. Miss that window and you wait twelve months.
So across the years we worked with Pure Terror we shot a catalog of b-roll alongside the film itself, captured deliberately for pieces nobody had scoped yet. Later seasons could be cut without going back.
That is Story Stacking, and it matters most when the location cannot be revisited.
Also in Middletown
Football bowling and a rage room, twenty minutes up the road in Middletown. A second entertainment client, and a reminder that the sector is not a one-off for us.
Tell us what it has to accomplish and how long you have. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
Most of these begin as a fifteen-minute call.
Last updated September 2026 · Nimble Dragon Studios · Monticello, New York