Blood

Fake blood is something that any good film maker should be getting through a lot of and while the proper theatrical stuff is pretty expensive it is fairly easy to make it yourself.

You can find loads of recipes online and we have tried most of them with varying degrees of success. The key is definitely experimentation.

You will find lots of people giving very exact measurement of ingredients but the final product will depend on temperature, what you want to do with it and where you are filming. Our advice is to make up your blood ahead of time and really play about with it till you have a mixture that is right for you.

That said here are the basics that you can build on.

You need a base to give your blood the right thickness and consistency. The main three we have used are corn flour, arrowroot and treacle or golden syrup. Whichever you choose it should be added to water and slowly heated.

Corn flour and arrowroot need to be stirred constantly and will suddenly go off. How thick it becomes depends on how much you add. Generally, just go crazy. Both these ingredients are cheap as chips from any supermarket and you can always water it down if it gets too thick.

Cornflour will make a white solution and arrowroot a clear one. Both are pretty good uncoloured if you need any kind of mucus, snot, slime etc.

If you use syrup or treacly just add it to the water and bring the heat up till the two mix.

For colour simply add food colouring. You will need a whole lot of red but also smaller amounts of green and sometimes blue or black. Blood is a lot darker than you think and sometimes appears almost black. Once again, don't hold back on the color as it is cheap and easy to get more if you need to.

Lastly you ned to add some texture as these mixtures come out a bit shiny and transparent. Mix some instant coffee with enough water to form a paste and add this to your blood and that should do the trick.

Once you are happy with it in the pan get some out and slop it about. Make sure it looks good dripping, spread thin or in puddles, whatever you need it to do on camera and just keep tweaking if its not right.

If you get the chance experiment with all kinds of stuff. If the blood has to go in people mouths then use chocolate powder instead of coffee and avoid the corn flour and arrowroot because they taste really rank. I read somewhere that Sam Raimi used the syrup recipe for Evil Dead but that he added milk to it so have fun and if you make any breakthroughs then please post here and share the joy.