Simulating burst of blood

[loudlikelove]

Hello!

 

I am producing a short film where a character spontaneously explodes in a living room, sending his blood and organs all over the place. The director is looking for a fairly exaggerated effect where the walls and furniture are splattered with a large amount of blood, thus we need to devise a way to move a voluminous amount of liquid throughout the room in a hurry, replicating the force of an explosion in a safe manner. The film is being shot in studio, so we have some measure of control over the environment, and the action occurs offscreen, which is helpful, but we are unsure of the best method to achieve this effect. We have considered the use of industrial fans, confetti canons, and compression powered hoses thus far, however, having never produced such an effect, we need professional guidance. As this is a student flick, we are limited in the amount of testing we can do due to our budget. Any advice, tips, or pointers are most welcome. Thank you.

 

--

Cheers,

 

Joshua Benson

Producer, Loud Like Love

The London Film School

MA Filmmaking

[GridGirl]

I worked on a show where a character was shot in the head, with the stage direction "her brains splatter on the wall behind her". The eventual result was a "blood cannon" which one of the crew built for us; it was fairly simple and used compressed air. We had an air tank charged up to a relatively high PSI (it was several years ago - sorry, I can't remember the exact number) with a solenoid valve on it, connected to a long piece of steel tube just with an ordinary compressed air valve welded to it. We used damp cotton wool pushed down to the bottom of the tube then poured stage blood in on top of it; when you hit the button on the solenoid to release the air, it fired the cotton wool and blood out of the tube at a pretty good speed. It worked beautifully and the resulting splatter on the wall (apart from being a complete pain to clean up every night) looked effective.

[patrick_keys]

I worked on a show where a character was shot in the head, with the stage direction "her brains splatter on the wall behind her". The eventual result was a "blood cannon" which one of the crew built for us; it was fairly simple and used compressed air. We had an air tank charged up to a relatively high PSI (it was several years ago - sorry, I can't remember the exact number) with a solenoid valve on it, connected to a long piece of steel tube just with an ordinary compressed air valve welded to it. We used damp cotton wool pushed down to the bottom of the tube then poured stage blood in on top of it; when you hit the button on the solenoid to release the air, it fired the cotton wool and blood out of the tube at a pretty good speed. It worked beautifully and the resulting splatter on the wall (apart from being a complete pain to clean up every night) looked effective.

 

+1 to this method - I've also done something almost identical, and it works very well. We constructed a copper pipe with a u-bend, connected to an air compressor via a valve (manual in our case). The u-bend acts as a reservoir to stop the blood from leaking out - the output of our pipe was pointing slightly down, and we didn't want blood to leak out prematurely. A small piece of bread in the end of the pipe can be used to mop up any drips and dribbles.

 

You probably won't need as much as you think - also, test the blood formulation and any paint/wall coverings thoroughly - we found out after our dress rehearsal that the blood stained the white paintwork so badly that it showed through any attempts to re-paint it.

[the kid]

We did some gunshots with a big hoselock sprayer being the pressure vessel and just ran pipe out to the chest, we didnt get a MASSIVE hit from it but some reworking could ensure something bigger.

 

The original idea was a loaded pipe that didnt work TOO great IMO, we ended up taking packing pillows, gaffering those WELL leaving a window and loading with the liquid, then the loading point was the hose inlet, built pressure and we got a nice hit from that.

[Dave m]

considering the student film aspect, I'd go with the modified garden sprayer?

 

there are several Youtube videos on safe effects (and some unsafe ones)

[the kid]

It was for student stuff as well

[smyles]

Another option is to use a CO2 powered tyre inflator. (One with a release button, not a pressure release)

Connect a pipe to the output, put a plug in first (banana works well) then fill the pipe with stage blood.

You can adjust the hole at the end of the pipe to adjust how far it will spray.

When fired, the banana just disintegrates but it will protect the valve from the blood.

 

You can then mount the pipe output on someone, with the co2 in a pocket or on a belt for easy access to fire.