Makeup
Because our horror is more psychological than slasher, we have decided to use a limited amount of makeup and fake blood in our trailer. Unlike a horror movie that is classed as a monster sub-genre in horror, our killer is quite realistically a typical teenage boy and so we will not have to make changes to our characters. The girls will all wear casual every day makeup, apart from Sadie who (like a child) wears none. We have however considered that we may need to make our characters appear pale for the scenes when they are found dead by Sadie. To do this....
As well as makeup to enhance paleness, we will also have to use fake blood throughout. We will use fake blood more so on the furniture and props than the characters, but must ensure that these surfaces can be cleaned so that we do not stain or damage anything on set.
Fake blood
The ingredients I've chosen to use to make the blood are (quite obviously) red food colouring, treacle, syrup and cornflower. I chose cornflower because it is capable of being both liquid and solid, once dissolved or mixed with something else it thickens in a way that is much like blood. To avoid making something that is too runny, I have bought treacle and syrup. Both are sticky and thick substances however we thought that treacle may make the blood too dark and syrup may be too messy - we do have to clean up afterwards.
In this first attempt, I chose to see what it would be like to use only cornflower with the colouring.
I put 5 heaped spoons of cornflower into a bowl and added water. This created a runny white liquid. I then added some food colouring to it, but it went too red and this light colour did not look like blood.
I put 5 heaped spoons of cornflower into a bowl and added water. This created a runny white liquid. I then added some food colouring to it, but it went too red and this light colour did not look like blood.
Without discarding this liquid, I decided that a way to make it both darker and thicker would be to add treacle to it. Doing so, we got the desired thickness however the solution was a bit too dark and still wasn't right for the project.
Putting this solution to one side, I decided to use a white bowl for my second solution as we could see the colour better. To start this attempt off, I decided to use syrup as it is basically a lighter and stickier version of treacle. I added water and cornflower to the syrup, but again the result was still a few shades too light.
With one solution far too dark and another way too light, we decided that rather than trying again, we could see what it would be like to mix the two together. Sure enough, the mix of the two turned the solution into a desirable bloody red. We discovered that after adding more cornflower and more red food colouring, the solution resembled blood and even dried realistically as blood would on our skin and also on our kitchen appliances (which is important as the scene with the blood in it occurs in the staff room kitchen). Although it appears to be runny and you would think that it would flow, it keeps contained and does not drip - this means we will be able to control the solution so that we won't have too much trouble cleaning up the set after our trailer is shot.