Creating a cutting/bleeding effect

[Mike Clasby]

Now, if he’s have shot himself in the wrist you’d want to go here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/action.html

Particle Illusion has seveal bloody prests:

https://www.wondertouch.com/default.asp

And a Cow Forum here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_view_posts.cgi?forumid=23

Aharon makes text bleed here:

Horror Text on the Wall – Part 2

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/horror_text2/index.html

There’s a Part 1 also.

[Cosm44]

Thanks! I’ve seen most of those…just hard for a newbie like me to translate the effects over to footage of a person…

Any other tips/help?

[Jeremy Sexton]

You’re better off shooting it with makeup and such, it’s going to look a lot better that way. After effects is an amazing tool, but when you can achieve an effect without it, it’s almost always going to look better.

[Steve Roberts]

Yep, practical is best. There are probably some time-honoured wyas of doing this, maybe by slashing a blood pack on top of the skin or something. Don’t quote me on that — find a horror makeup forum maybe.

At any rate, if you really wanted to go CG, 3D CG would probably be better, using a 3D body part with the right contours and so on, laid over the footage. Don’t forget that if the camera and/or arm moves, you’d have to track it in 3D so the stuff doesn’t slide in the frame.

[Kevin Camp]

at this point, the easiest fix may be to shoot just blood splattering/dripping on the floor, edit that correctly and it should work well.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Steve Roberts]

Yes. You might have to sacrifice the cut-and-bleed shot. Be prepared to sacrifice something if you have limited time and budget. 🙂

[Jeremy Sexton]

Actually, I think it might work well if you show them starting to cut, then show their face grimacing or whatever, then have a shot of them continuing to cut with the makeup, etc applied as blood. It won’t give you your cut and bleed shot, but it might be as effective.

[Cosm44]

Wow! Thank you guys so much. These forums are great!

I’m so new to editing/compositing that I hadn’t even thought about just editing it down to make it look like what I wanted, without actually showing the cutting taking place. That will be much easier and probably tell the story better anyway…

Thanks again everyone!

[Frank Hardie]

If you really want the cut and bleed shot, and are willing to do it the REALLY OLD-FASHIONED way, I’d like to offer the use of my ex-wifes wrists.

[Cam Walter]

I think you should go for the actual shot of the “cut and bleed”. It sounds like that is what you would really like to have. You could possibly do it using the Liquify effect described on A Kramer’s tutorial on bleeding text that someone previously mentioned. Use that with a mask, possibly some type of blur to change the depth of field (this was also covered either by Andrew Kramer or Mr. Rabinowitz). A bad “cut and bleed” fx using actual blood packs can’t look any worse than a digital one. We’ve all seen the utterly fake looking gore fx in B horror flicks. You will probably also learn quite a bit in AE going the digital route.