The Best Blood...

DarkMatter

DarkMatter

Veteran
With so many Horror shorts out there, I thought i would make a suggestion. I use and recommend Ben Nye Stage Blood. Ben Nye Stage Blood and all it's variants,... ie Thick Blood, are used on major productions due to it's realistic look and flow. It even dries like real blood.
One thing I hate about other blood products on the market is their lack of believability, when you smear them you see pink from the dye, and as you and i all know real blood is not pink when you smear it.
Just a friendly tip.:)
Good luck on your shorts.
 
As I said in my thread, I use the KRYOLAN products. Their only flaw is that if for example you pour on your white tshirt some blood and then leave it...it leaves purplish stains....which dont look so bloodlike to be honest. But that's only when you leave it to dry...otherwise it's great.
 
the problem with most homemade concoctions for blood is that they are lacking in the amount of dye (aka red food coloring) For a gallon that I made, I used 60-70% corn syrup, the rest water, and 8 bottles of red food coloring along with a teaspoon of green.

It looks black/red, sprays red and stays dark red on contact, but it never dries and is very sticky.

This ends up being about 25 dollars per gallon, but is still cheaper than buying it online.
 
Slimothy said:
Does the ben nye stage blood stain?
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I haven't had It stain anything I've used it on, A little soap and water does a great cleanup. Also, check out their Thick Blood for deep wounds it's awesome:thumbsup:
 
Has anyone dabbled with making large amounts of homemade blood. I love Ben Nye for small wounds, but I'm looking to cover my talent in the stuff and the budget is getting thin so I plan on making bucket batch of corn syrup based blood.
 
bomazing said:
Has anyone dabbled with making large amounts of homemade blood. I love Ben Nye for small wounds, but I'm looking to cover my talent in the stuff and the budget is getting thin so I plan on making bucket batch of corn syrup based blood.
Click to expand...
Last year for zombiefest, I made 6 gallons of homemade blood. We used red koolaid, corn starch, chocolate syrup, red food coloring and to darken it up we used a few drops of blue food coloring. It was dark, thick and looked great on film.
 
I have made one of the sprayers in the past. They're great for gunshots and with some tweaking, shotgun blasts.
I'm gearing up to shoot a zombie short- I wish I wasn't a year late. Maybe HorrorFest will be a good home.
 
We've used some brand called "Bottle of Blood". Works really well, it does stain a lil purplish after a while sometimes. But it goes on great and looks like the real thing.
 
Some of the commercial stuff is pretty good, but it gets pricey and is still not totally realistic. For better quality control and volume you should make your own blood.

Dick Smith (yes, the godfather of special make-up: Exorcist, Little Big Man, Amadeus, etc.) had a great formula years ago using white corn syrup, red food color, tiny amount of blue food color, and photoflo as a wetting agent (flows easier and permeates fabric better). Now it will stain due to the food color and photoflo, and it is no longer edible due to the photoflo, but it looks very good. Just watch his movies and see what I mean.

Part of the problem with most fake blood is it's too translucent and the color is way off. If you prick your finger and look at blood, it is mostly opaque, so people use a little talc, flour, or cornstarch to cloud it up a bit. Also the shade of red is different for the type of wound you are looking for. Arterial spray would be a nice bright crimson, since it has come from the lungs and is fully oxygenated.
Most blood in injuries is venous blood, which is a darker red that you can create by adding more blue to the mix.

Corn syrup-based blood can often look really fake due to the color, translucency, and the flow. You need a good balance between the thickness and the opacity so it flows well but it's not too runny.

It's morbid, but look at accident photos online. The blood there looks way different than in most movies.

Another thing to consider is the crazy color palettes people shoot these days. If you're doing a lot of post tweaking in magic bullet or something, then I guess the original color of the blood doesn't matter as much since you will be tweaking it later. Just a thought...
 
We also used Ben Nye's stage blood for our zombie short last year. We were very pleased with it (also washed out of everything just fine). We would like to try making our own though...so thanks for all the tips!
PS. the thick blood really is awesome!
 
I used some fake blood for my last short film. We used "Bottle of Blood" on the internet and thickened it up a little using flour. I also darkened it all up a little in post.
 
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