Gore

We required a lot of makeup and gore special effects.  Chocolate sauce, corn syrup, food coloring, peanut chunks, strings of sealing wax and other fancy stuff. And whatever else our makeup wizard Hannah could cook up. We needed cuts, bruises, abrasions, gunshot wounds, ripped flesh, fresh dripping blood and other evidence of violence and mayhem. This did not include the realities of the real blood from the occasional skinned knee and cut finger suffered by our actors.

The challenge of getting the makeup effects to hold up to the scrutiny of the super-close-ups ultimately was no challenge at all for our wizard Hannah. We have full-screen close ups of wounds that look perfect, oozing as they should. Some of the most important effects and gags needed multiple takes and thanks to Hannah, in each take the effect was as precise as the one before.

Hannah worked under the gun on gritty, multiple-effect shoots in the rain, in moldy basements, and everywhere else the director dragged her.  She stood in water. She stood in dirt. She listened to profanity. She put up with everything that I threw at her, and kept on smiling and producing blood.

When Hannah wasn’t available, our Producer Krisha has been Johnny-on-the-spot with her own makeup magic. I guess being gored out for almost every scene you’re in is excellent training in how to apply it. Now Krisha is able to do many things, if our wizard isn’t available.  

I’d also like to thank our notable local actors, who allowed us to ‘cut’ them until they had blood pouring out of their every orifice. And special thanks to makeup artist Brittany Katuin who helped early in the production, but had other obligations and couldn’t continue.

The continuity of effects can be a nightmare. We shot out of sequence, and it’s obviously important to know what cuts, bruises, etc., were on the actor coming out of the previous scene. We did our best….