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.