Horrible Pain

Prompted by the latest How-to video from IndyMogul, I’ve decided to just list all the blood effects I’ve ever tried and thought of trying.

Tried:

In Jethro Atom, I sprayed blood in my face using a CO₂ tank and a keg filled with fake blood. It took three takes to get everything. In the first take, I clogged the system because my blood had undissolved sediment. In the second take, the blood sprayed the wrong direction, so I had to stick my face in the stream. So for my third take, I took the camera in for a close-up, so you could see that my hands were aiming the nozzle into my face. I used footage from the last two takes in the movie.

In Waste Not, Donut, I used a mixture of cherry Jello (for texture) and red water-paint. (To make it more opaque) I let the Jello set, and then ran it through a blender. This made for a nice thick texture that was still slippery enough to squirt. I filled a pop-bottle, drilled a hole in the lid and squirted it out of there. For audio of the stabbing, I squished handfuls of watermelon.

There’s the standard recipe of food-colouring and corn syrup, which I’ve used. Also, I’ve learned to use Kool-aid and corn syrup as something that’s less likely to stain.

Haven’t tried:

I haven’t tried the washer-glued-to-a-condom method listed above. If you’re worried about the washer being visible, maybe glue a piece of felt to it, to change the shape and colour so it looks more like a chunk of skin flying off or something.

I also haven’t tried the other Backyard FX method with the pop-bottle and tubing.

You could increase your bullet count without the set-up time if you super-impose them in post. I’ve heard of people shooting a blood-filled condom or balloon popping against a green-screen. You can use the washer trick again, or shoot it with a BB gun. (Safer when the rig isn’t attached to someone.) You could also shoot black paint against a white background or white against black, and set the colour of the spatter in post. MiniDV format has more detail in the luminosity channel than in the colour channels, so that is the benefit of doing it that way.

On the Make Your Own Damn Movie DVD, they showed an example with alka-seltzer and food colouring to make foaming spurting blood.

I’ve been reading a book by and about Ray Harryhausen. In it, he describes his experiences on his various movies, and whenever he had to create a creature through any means other than stop-motion, he doesn’t like it as much. On the aliens from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers he says:

I was never happy with these creations. They always looked phoney and stiff, like men in costumes, which is what they were.

In Mysterious Island for a battle with a giant crab, he had a giant claw and a couple of legs made.

Such live action props are always difficult to operate convincingly, although we achieved a considerable rate of success with this by keeping the shots short and cutting into the animation whenever possible.

Nowhere does he question whether stop-motion itself is convincing, even though anyone familiar with it will see it and say, “That’s stop-motion.”

However, I can’t fault him for preferring stop-motion to many other techniques.

The way I see special effects, there are three different goals to achieve.

First is to convey the action. Make sure the audience knows what the effect represents. This is an absolutely necessary goal, and should be the first one you should seek to achieve.

Second is to look cool.

Third is to look real.

Sometimes you can’t always achieve both of the last two goals, so depending on the style of your movie, you should decide which is higher priority.

Both a giant claw and a stop-motion crab will look a little fake, for different reasons. But stop-motion can look cooler than a big prop claw getting waved around, so I can see why Harryhausen might prefer it.