Blood on Black

James Erd · February 28, 2007

So I finally got the opportunity to set up a blood gag, but out actor was wearing black and the scene was lit a bit on the darkside. Also there was a lot of smoke in the scene. We tried to light the scene so the camera would pick up the shine. Still have to wait an see how that came out.

It looks like there is going to be a sequel and the bad guys tend to wear black and tend to get shot, so I'm sure to encounter the same problem in the future. If any one knows or has ideas on how to make red blood read on black fabric I'd love to hear from you.

Also we were using a blood cannon to paint the wall behind the actor. Very cool. Only we were concerned about cleanup as we needed to do leave our location in its original condition. So we covered the wall with white muslin to protect the paint from our wonderfully gory blood. The problem with muslin is once the blood hits it then its hard to clean for the next shot. In the future I was thinking of pretreating the muslin or possibly even the wall with a resist such as Scotch-guard. Has any one tried this or if you know another way... thoughts or ideas welcome.

Thanks

James Steven Beverly · February 28, 2007

I'd probably use bright red water-based paint, as you said, Scotch-guard the fabric and have a washtub of soap and water, a scrub brush, rinse water and towels with a blow-dryer standing by to immediately wash the paint out of the coat as soon as cut is called out.

David Mullen ASC · February 28, 2007

Blood is translucent and needs to be backlit or on a white surface for the color to be seen. Otherwise, your only recourse is to make a fake blood that is more opaque, closer to paint, as James suggested. Only question is how sticky & viscous you want it to be.

James Erd · February 28, 2007

Great suggestions. I thinking about using Tempera paint for opacity and non-sudsing soap or even gel for translucence and gloss. So that's all non-toxic and water based which makes every one happy. The soap should make clean up even easier. All I have to do is add water and some rags and were good to go.

I have some industrial tints which I can use to adjust the color where I want it. The tint is not quite as nontoxic as the tempera but it doesn't take very much of it to have a huge effect. Then again it is the most likely to cause a stain.

I'm hoping we can dispense with the muslin altogether as it is time consuming to put up, and one more thing to strike at 3 a.m. on the last day of shooting. I'm going to test the scotch-guard on a bare white wall and see if that is enough.

Keneu Luca · February 28, 2007

Maybe I don't fully understand the situation.

But if the character is getting shot or stabbed, in other words, it is clearly established to the audience that there is a serious wound, of course the liquid that comes out of the character is blood. Do you really need to emphasize the color? Do you really need to hit the audience over the head? Are you afraid that the audience might get confused and think that it is water coming out of the character's body?

James Erd · February 28, 2007

Well actually the character gets shot more than once. Once by small caliber from underneath the table. So there will be a sound effect, then cut a close up of the wound and the camera dollies back to reveal a weapon in the other characters hand. So it's important for the wound to read which is a problem because the character is wearing black.

Then the guy gets shot again. This time its a chest wound. The blood cannon was aimed at a window which was nicely backlight. So that worked out very well, but again we wanted to show an entrance wound. That part of the effect almost got dropped from the scene because we didn't think it would read on film, but since we already had the actor rigged.... we went for it.

Thinking about it now I would ask that the actor grab the wound so the blood could run over his fingers.... eh but we'd been shooting from a.m to a.m. :blink: :blink: :blink: