This is the opening scene from Scream.
And this is the opening for Scream 2.
They’re supposed to look almost identical.
They’re both showing the murder of the same character.
But when you put them next to each other, the original stab looks way more realistic...
because of the way they use this.
Horror movie props are carefully designed to make you think they’re real
thanks to a little movie magic.
This is Nate Ragon, a Scream aficionado, who worked on Scream 4 and 5, and
who has a bunch of props from the movies.
RAGON: This is a hero knife from Scream 2.
Ghost Face costume from Scream 3.
Hero knives for Scream 3.
This is an actual buck knife.
For the original Scream, they literally just took an actual buck knife
and they dulled it down.
Like they rounded off the tip and they dulled it.
Centuries ago, dulled knives and swords and daggers were used in stage duels.
And that translated pretty seamlessly to early adventure films.
And later to films with violent killers.
Dulled knives work really well onscreen for “hero shots,”
or close ups, that sell that the knife is real.
But a dulled knife is still incredibly dangerous, and safety is paramount on film sets.
There are tons of rules for using items as innocuous as fog machines or make up
all the way to the most dangerous pyrotechnics.
To avoid accidents, filmmakers often use a variety of prop knives for different shots
then stitch them together into one scene.
RAGON: The plastic ones were what they would use
if it was ever like pointed at someone's face.
Anywhere near an actor's face, it would either be rubber or plastic.
RAGON: When the killers like running, he's probably holding one of the rubber knives
just in case you know he falls on it.
And then, of course, you would have like the retractable hitting the person.
RAGON: And then when they pull the retractable out, that's another shot.
And then it would go back to the real knife in the hand with blood on it.
In a video about the Making Of Screams 1 through 3
the founder of KNB EFX group, a special effects company
had this to say about his work
"This wasn’t a monster movie, it didn’t have a ton of effects in it."
"We had a few old-fashioned gore gags, with the collapsable knives.”
With practical effects, less is sometimes more.
The reason this shot in Scream 2 looks fake is because they showcased the wobble
of an imperfect retractable stab.
Whereas in the original.
RAGON: You can tell the glove is completely hiding that awkward
kind of wonky looking handle.
HART: The thing about the retractable knife is that it's easy for the blade to bind up.
And if the blade binds up then all of a sudden you're stabbing them for real.
There's horror stories of some.
There was a theater and then they had retractable knives and he got hit just below the pads,
so that actually punctured his lung while he was out on stage.
Eric Hart is a prop maker and stage props professor at North Carolina university.
HART: There's a lot of things we do, we can do pyrotechnics, we could hang actors.
We could do all sorts of stuff and we can make it safe.
But you can't make a retractable knife safe.
To avoid these risks, filmmakers might use digital replacements.
In this VFX breakdown from Zombieland 2, Emma Stone is holding just the hilt of a knife.
The blade and the blood were both added in post.
But CG blood isn't always going to serve the purpose.
Sometimes you need the real, fake thing.
HART: With a blood knife, you usually have a little container of blood.
If you can, you can hide it inside the handle.
And then you just have some kind of tube running down the blade and you put that on the side
that the audience doesn't see and tape it in place.
HART: And then as you drag the knife across whatever you're cutting, you kinda squeeze
the tube and you time it so that the blood starts coming out, and then it looks like
the knife is actually cutting into the skin.
It's simple solution, but in order for it to look real, it all depends on the blood.
In the black and white era of Hollywood, Hershey’s chocolate syrup was a frequent blood stand in
most famously used in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
The effect is convincing, but color film needed better fake blood.
In early films, blood often looked too thin and too bright
like this scene from the 1958 version of Dracula.
HART: You know, when you look at blood, it's not pure red.
You need a little bit of something else in it.
By the 70s, films like Evil Dead and Carrie were using a type of blood
called Kensington gore.
It was made by a British pharmacist, and named after a street of the same name in London.
The recipe included water, food coloring, and the game changing factor - corn syrup
- which added thickness.
When it's dripping off of you, when it's flowing, it's flowing the way blood does.
HART: It's not dripping like red water.
Dick Smith, one of the godfathers of film makeup took this recipe one step further.
He added Kodak Photo-Flo, a poisonous wetting agent commonly used
when developing photo negatives.
This allowed the blood to believably soak into clothing, while retaining that thickness.
For this scene in Scream, you can see the special effects team coating Drew Barrymore’s
neck and clothes with fake blood, out of a ketchup squeeze bottle.
“Oh, did you just get that in my hair?”
Movies today use variations on all these recipes, depending on what the scene calls for.
If it's coming out of a blood knife, it's got to flow.
You can't have, like, really chunky stuff.
HART: And if they're actually swallowing it, you want it to be food safe.
If it's like splattering on carpets, you want to be able to wash it out.
The next time you're watching like a low-budget horror, check how many times they have
a really bloody scene in the bathroom, like in the shower.
Because that's really easy for them to clean after they're done filming.
But in situations where the blood has to be more explosive
filmmakers turn to another prop.
Squibs are tiny explosives often used for gunshot scenes.
Before squibs, filmmakers relied on acting to sell a bullet hits.
This climactic death from the film High Noon, is a good example of how that...
doesn’t always look right.
Here, Roger George Special Effects is demonstrating how their Hit Kit squibs work.
Propmasters attach a small explosive to a container filled with fake blood
then attach it to the actor, usually with something protective underneath.
A licensed pyrotechnician will detonate it at the right time, and the blood will seem
to explode out of you.
For larger blood spurts, like these ridiculous explosions
at the end of the campy movie Ready or Not
filmmakers turn to something else.
And that, I do have it. I got one of the blood cannons I built.
It's the same as a confetti cannon, but with blood.
For the bigger squirts, like this one in the Babysitter, films will often use air pressure
to spray blood continuously.
If it's hitting an artery, then it would be like pulsating out.
So you have somebody like just off camera who's able to sort of
work the pump and the pressure.
HART: With air, if you just need a slowly appearing pool of blood underneath the body,
you could just have like, one PSI of pressure just slowly pushing that blood out.
Prop knives and blood are only one part of making movies look real.
The rest of the work is often hidden.
After all, it’s what you don’t see that makes the difference.
Ghostface’s most brutal attacks are often slightly behind objects, covered by hands,
or just out of frame.
The killer in Psycho almost never touches Marion Cranes actual body.
And Michael Meyers kills people offscreen.
But the blood, guts, and sound effects pull the trick on us
making us feel like we’ve seen it.
Thanks so much for watching!
We set out a few weeks ago to make a video about how horror movies
make fake violence look real.
And while I was editing this piece, the importance of prop safety was highlighted by some really
devastating news.
The tragic death of DP Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film Rust.
When watching movies, it can be really easy to forget how high the stakes are for the
people involved.
While prop accidents are uncommon, they do happen.
A similar incident occurred in 1993 on the set of The Crow.
We don’t talk about firearm props in the piece, but the LA Times has a thorough explainer
on how prop guns work — which provides some clarity about “how a blank cartridge might
have ended up propelling projectiles” on the set of The Crow.
The topic can get really deep, so If you’re interested in reading more
we’ll leave some links in the description below.