so here is the first trial of using blood squirting up from a trunk shot angle. I will take what Ive learnt from this to do another test shoot because I think you could get really cool slow motion shots and I want to trial this again and place it within a shot sequence to see how it flows.
sequence will go as follows …
INT. GARAGE – NIGHT Everyone yells as TARON saws the body in two. Blood splatters out, and Laura dry heaves in the background.
trunk shot of baron and laura, inside the lounge room looking down at the body from low angle. Taron looking calm and Laura worried. Taron bends down towards camera with saw and makes the sawing motion, blood squirts out all over Taron’s face and white shirt. Background Laura almost vomiting. * to add dramatics to the scene could make it really intense lots of stabbing first with blood going everywhere, then a hand saw then more blood, then he brings out the chain saw and goes down and then it cuts to next scene. (lots of quick shots cutting back and forth)
INT. LOUNGE ROOM – NIGHT The four teenagers sit in their bloodstained clothes, drinking tea
complete polar opposite shot long shot at eye level to characters. , I think they all sit in a circle or all in a line against the wall with blood everywhere, dead silence. One shot really drawn out and awkward, all holding a tea, one person picks up the tea and sips it then puts it down. Or all in a circle and camera pans around them focusing on each character , one not doing anything, one looks kind of sad, the other pouring tea out and finally coming to last person who sips there tea for like 6 seconds really loud and dead silent.
What I have learnt.
Firstly Michael and I used his Sony camera which is starting to be a camera I’m getting very familiar with and really enjoy using. I think the quality is really nice and its easy to colour grade with as well.
I think the trunk shot angle looks a lot better when the subject is leaning back away from the camera, ensuring that the subject has head room, without the headroom I think it lacks that perspective that makes a trunk shot super effective. I want to see how it’s look to maybe have a more dramatic angle perhaps a bit further away from the camera could help emphasise this.
I want to add in a bit more for the trunk shot starting with one or two people standing up looking over the “body” then one bends down and has a knife then cuts into it and the blood squirts out. I think this will give the shot a bit more dynamic range and will be a bit more interesting.
AS for the actual blood squirting we trialled this time with red paint in water, we then put this in a plastic bag and held it so it was almost bursting out the ends then popped it. This method I think didn’t work as well as we originally planned. We wanted two shots the first being a shot of the stabbing and the second shot being the explosion of the blood. I think it would work better with more blood to start with and a bit more dramatic, some of the shots here its hard to see the actual blood part. This is probably one of the biggest constraints is figuring out a way to make this look effective and dramatic. I will do some research of clips and such and put them here to demonstrate the aim.
A few other method we could do for the blood explosion
- use a spray bottle
- try using more liquid when popping bag
Another limitation I also didn’t anticipate during this trial is that the actor/actress has to almost be unaware of the explosion part because anticipating it becomes obvious on the characters face. Likewise trying to keep a semi attractive normal looking face during this is quite difficult as I found out. Hence why the last shot is cut a bit short (my acting reaction lets just say wasn’t up to par) So this is something we also need to consider.
here are a few behind the scenes photos to show what and how we created this test shoot.
