Kim Lennox

Melita: And how would you do something, like, say, a gunshot?

Kim: I’d say when I first started, we did a lot of stuff with squibbing. Special effects would put, like, a mechanism underneath their clothing, so during the shootout... boom, boom, boom... their clothes would actually explode, and blood comes out of them. But if you watch that, if you see the aftermath of that, it explodes outward and is really big usually, so it doesn’t mimic what a real gunshot would look like. So, after the big shootout scene, we would get the clothes back, see where they’ve placed all these things. Sometimes I’d be on set for all this as well if it goes really quickly. You see where all that placement is, and then you kind of mimic, like, “OK, what kind of gun was it?” Whatever. A lot of the inside wounds are pretty small; they’re kind of a tiny little hole. The outside, exit wounds might be bigger if the bullet does come out again. That’s a question you have to... you’ve gotta read it in the script. Because if you have an exit wound and then in the next scene, they’re in the hospital getting the bullet removed, well, it makes no sense. So, you have to be on top of things, too. I talk a lot with the designer, director, that sort of thing about that. For little bullet wounds, I would just cut a tiny little hole, maybe a little bit of black around it. You don’t want too much gunpowder on it, depending on how far away they’re shooting the gun, too. If it’s close up, yes, but if it’s far away, you wouldn’t really see gunpowder, but you kind of would do that just to trick the audience’s eye. And then after that, it’s blood work. So, the blood, where were they shot, are they standing, are they lying down, how long ago was he shot, the colour of the blood, all those kinds of things. Sometimes you’ll start with one shirt and then later on in the day, if he’s wearing the same shirt for the entire movie, you’d have a double that has dried blood on it, so it would be, like, a darker orange blood.

Melita: And do you use, like, fake blood, or is it red paint, or…?

Kim: A lot of times, yeah, so on set fake blood, for sure, because fake blood stays shiny and wet-looking. So, if you’re shooting a scene all day long and you need that to keep just looking fresh, that’s the kind of blood you would use... shiny, fresh. But then afterward it’s still, like, sticky forever, so it’s not ideal if he’s later on in the movie wearing a sticky, kind of syrupy shirt. So, I would take that again and mimic it with paint.

Melita: OK, OK, got you.

Kim: And then make it more permanent, so you can just put it on and off. You can hang it into a wardrobe without it getting everywhere.