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Blood dripping from finger?

Stephen Pruitt

Stephen Pruitt

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Hi all. . .

I'm about to shoot our next film, "The Land," and in this film there is a sequence of a farmer's wife digging up an old rose bush. As she works with the bush, she gets stick with a thorn, pulls off her glove, and a close-up shows blood dripping from the tip of her finger.

How on earth could I make a close-up of blood dripping from a finger???

Thanks.

Stephen
 
Macro lens.

Advice, use some lights or expose for the general scene with some ND so you can shoot your ECU at a deeper stop.

If you need it dripping from a wound, that's a whole other thing.
 
I definitely do need blood dripping from the wound. Any ideas outside of actually pricking my actor's finger?
 
Silicone prosthetic finger over actress's finger, fill with some fake blood, blend with make-up, seal. Have her pinch her "finger" for it to excrete from a pinhole.
 
You can rig it within a fake wound with a small tube, or what I'd likely do is make a thin pipe out of a thin plastic bag that can b blended into the skin more. Just need an iron, mix up some fake blood, and a plastic syringe. The prosthetic could be made or bought. You want some foundation and blender to the actress's skin color. You can mix up some things sheets of latex and heat them to produce a gnarly gash if needed.
 
also make fake blood not so dense and backlight if you can
to get the red to pop.
 
This is a trivial thing to do with CGI. Hire a good VFX supervisor and they can price out what the costs would be. I bet this would be a few hundred dollars, assuming it's like a 5-second shot or something. Most of the bullet wounds in Inglorius Basterds were all CGI, despite Quentin Tarantino being a hardcore "analog" filmmaker.

I think it takes more time to do it on set with a good makeup person, but that's also doable. Heck, you could just shoot around it and then do the actual finger as an insert, shot weeks later. Just do what you can on-set, get "some" blood in the hand, and then plan on making it much more detailed in the pick-up. That way, the crew isn't standing around for 90 minutes waiting for the blood to work. Clever editing would sell the shot very well. I just did a film where a guy was tortured and had all his teeth ripped out and had a mouthful of blood, and I think they did that in 20 minutes.
 
I have definitely been wondering about CGI for that shot. Any suggestions?

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Stephen
 
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