Blood & Bullets for No-Budget movies

EXT. CITY-STREET - DAY. LEWIE is surrounded by armed police pointing his guns straight forward. BLAM! A shot rips through his arm, causing a fountain of blood to explode from the wound. BLAM!! Another shot rips through his chest. BLAM! BLAM! Two shots tear at his stomach. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! LEWIE's torso is riddled with bullets. Finally the shooting stops. LEWIE stands there, his breath turning to clouds of white vapour in the early morning. He takes a single laboured breath - and collapses.

Quicktime 3.0 movie - 150K

Tarantino has a lot to answer for. For that matter so does Sam Peckinpah, John Woo, James Cameron and Robery Rodriguez. These maestros of gore-laden gunplay and balletic bloodshed all owe their careers to the humble bullet hit.

Wanna know the secret to big budget effects at no-budget prices? Read on my friend.

The bullet hits in the clip above were achieved using the same method professionals use - a small explosive charge is triggered by a battery causing a blood-filled bag to burst outwards.

I had a set of very sturdy 5 x 4 inch metal plates made up (which are usually backed with foam to cushion the actor). A squib, which is a small explosive charge triggered by a 9V battery, was taped to the plate and a blood pack placed over the charge and secured in place with gaffer tape. Blood packs can be anything that can be filled and sealed, but most people use condoms ('Always practice safe effects'). Placing the blood pack over the charge reduces the flash given off by the squib detonating. The rigged plate is taped or strapped to the actor and concealed under clothing. White clothes show the effect off best and should be pre-scored with a knife to weaken the fabric. Ideally the squib should blow through the shirt and it helps here if the shirt is tucked in. Cable is run from the squib down the actor's leg to a control box or nail board. A bit of simple wiring allowed us to trigger the charges in turn by running a nail across a nail board (a piece of wood with a series of nails in a line). Before firing everyone stood well clear of the charges, the actor avoided looking down at his chest, and the camera was a safe distance away. Only at the last moment was the circuit completed and the charges made live. A simple countdown helped the actor be aware of when to expect the hit.

Take a look at the film clip again. That is the first and last time I am ever going to use an explosive charge to perform a bullet hit like that. The first bang is near the top of the actor's chest. When he grimaces and pulls his arm back its for real. A plastic shard from the top of the squib flew off and hit him painfully in the shoulder. That's real pain. And at that point in time he knows he still has another two hits to come. To his credit he carried on far beyond the call of duty.

For low-budget/no-budget films there is no reason to use anything so dangerous or expensive. Each one of those bullet hits costs about £10. Suddenly your action movie gets a lot less violent as you start cutting out bullet hits to save money. And the cost of an injured actor is unimaginable. There is a cheaper, safer and more effective method available. It is portable, easily made and uses no explosive charges! And it looks better!!

Need your next movie to start with a bang? Eejit's Guide has full instructions for compressed gas bullet hits.

How to make compressed gas bullet hits

This method uses the force of compressed air to blast fake blood from a length of tubing. Simple!

What you'll need...

• A pump-up insecticide sprayer - Its worth investing in a new one as a used sprayer might have some insecticide in and you don't want to kill yourself off before you get to shoot your movie.
• Garden Hose - You probably need about 2 metres which you might be able to chop off your normal house. Failing that getting a good length to cut up is useful as you can experiment with different lengths for different purposes.
• Fake Blood - For a whole bunch of recipes try Eejit's Guide to Blood. For the example below we used Cardiff Red.
• Gaffer Tape - You would think I have a deal with the company cos I talk about this stuff so much. It is useful though.
• Sponge - You'll need to rip it into little pieces so buy a cheap car sponge.
• Blu-tak - Y'know the putty type stuff used to stick up posters.
• Old Shirt

Step One - Cut approx. a 2 metre length from your garden hose reel. About an inch up from one end you need to make a hole big enough to put your little finger in. This is where the blood will be ejected from. We used a heated screwdriver to melt through the hose as it was pretty tough. Probably not recommended though as it gave off these awful fumes. Best to do it in a well ventilated place so you don't pass out.

Step Two - Bung up the end you have made the extra hole in using Blu-Tak. By forcing the blood to fly out of the extra hole instead of the end of the tube it sprays out rather than jets out.

Step Three - Unscrew the spray nozzle from the insecticide sprayer. Attach the unmodified end of the tube to the empty sprayer. Now to work on your biceps! Give the sprayer about 150 pumps. The first 100 or so should be easy but by the end it should start getting more difficult. All this energy is being stored as pressure and when you push the trigger all the energy will be released at once, blasting the blood out.

Step Four - Gently pour in about 20ml of your fake blood to the modified end of the hose. You may need to thin the blood mixture with water to make it less 'gloopy' (err...that sounds technical). Bung up the side hole with pieces of sponge. Ideally use red sponge as this will fly out when you trigger the sprayer looking like chunks of flesh. Mmm...nice!

Step Five - Make a hole in the back of the shirt and feed the tube over the actor's shoulder and down to the area that is going to be 'shot'. Tape the tube in place at the front with the side hole facing forwards.

MOST IMPORTANT BIT!!!

Have the actor get down on his knees and get an assistant to hold the sprayer as high as possible for 30 seconds. This allows the blood to run down and prime the tube. The blood should now all be in the last part of the tube held back by the bits of sponge.

Step Six - The shirt here has been prepared by scoring with a knife. The side hole of the hose should be lined up with the hole in the shirt. Use gaffer tape on the inside of the shirt to close the shirt up.

Step Seven - Have the assistant who will fire the trigger, out of camera shot on the ground. Here stuntman Stephen demonstrates what the setup would look like if it wasn't concealed underneath the shirt.

When positioning the camera be careful. The force was so powerful on one of the tests we ended up showering the camera operator with blood. If you are straight on get a good distance away and zoom in.

Step Eight - Push the trigger!! Ker-BLAM!! Blood flies everywhere. Gore City!

[Sick puppies can click for a close-up]

Gutshot movie - Here's the final result! Stephen, who worked so hard at designing these compressed air hits, takes a shot in the belly - OW!

Quicktime 3.0 movie - 120K

HeadHit movie - And just to prove how vicious we are here's a head hit using the same method. The delivery tube had to be much shorter as the compressed air had to fire up and out, - working against gravity. If you listen carefully you can also hear the compressed air hissing.

Quicktime 3.0 movie - 80K 

OK, that's probably enough to get this page an 18 certificate! But funnily enough its not what  you see that makes the effect so gory. In truth there is probably only one or two frames where you can see a flash of red spray. If you pay attention whilst watching some action movies you'll notice the same thing. Most bullet hits are one frame wonders, barely enough for the eye to register.

So what makes these effects so shocking? Turn the volume down and watch the clips again - not so effective huh? There's two reasons for this :

1) Sound is 80% of the effect - It's the bang, crunch and splat that make the effect work. Most of the clips above had had their sound tweaked (using Adobe Premiere). The original sound for the squib movie has explosions that sound like 'pops', they were lowered as the clip was slowed down and become more effective. The compressed air hit had an extra sound of a slowed down and distorted hand clap added to it to beef up the hit. Finally the compressed air head hit had a gun shot and splat added from a copyright-free sound effects CD (the bizarre 'Totally Gross Sound F/X from Hell'). All of the above methods work to increase the shock value.

2) They need to be in a dramatic context - OK, so we've been talking about how to achieve the effect, but this is wasted if they are overused in a film. Repeat the same images again and again and they lose their potency. By watching these clips to see how they are achieved you probably no longer find them so shocking - you've become desensitized to them. To be effective in a film they have work dramatically - we have to care about the character who gets shot, there needs to be a tension in the air before the gun goes off, or it needs to suprise us by happening when we least expect it. We don't always need to see the hit itself, sometime only the effects of the hit (the spray of blood on the car windshield) or the sound of the gun (whilst cutting to a wideshot of a building) can be just as disturbing. Don't believe me? Seen a Tarantino movie lately?

Finally a word of warning - whatever you are using to make your effects be careful. Your cast and crew's safety is vital. Not only that make sure that everyone around you knows what you are doing. We were shooting a bank siege. There were a couple of police cars and van, extras as an armed response team and our lead actor in the middle of all this toting a pair of handguns. A couple of squibs later and he was lying on the floor in a pool of fake blood. Unfortunately this was so realistic that we later discovered that a member of the public had made a complaint when they discovered it was a film we were shooting. They hadn't entered the building as they believed it was for real!

Big-budget effects at low-budget prices! Now you know how its done. So next time you shoot your video, shoot your actors as well. So to speak.