Blood Ramp/Blood Bags Special Effects Help

[CatieO]

Hey everyone!
So we are doing Titus Andronicus (eesh) and I'm stuck on one particular effect, so I thought I would throw it out to the masses and see what brilliance you guys come up with.

Here's the deal:

During the scene where Titus executes the two evil sons, our director has envisioned the following: The boys are sitting, tied to chairs. A board is brought out and leaned against their chests so it forms a ramp to the ground. A "collection box" is put at the base of the ramp.

Titus slits their throats, blood pours down the ramp, into the box and the scene moves on.

The ramp is the easy part, we already have that made. The tricky part is where and how the blood bags are going to be set. My initial idea was to place them at the top and have them obscured by the actors, but the scene was re-blocked to show the board being brought on stage, so they would be visible. Option 2 is to create some sort of fabric "gag" that hangs down below their necks so blood bags can be obscured, but how to get them on stage/in the right spot?

Any thoughts or ideas would be fantastically appreciated.

 

[shiben]

Just throw a full bag over their heads, have the executioner bunch up the bag, and as he obscures the slash, pop a nice large blood bag, letting the whole thing drop onto the ramp. Not sure what the point of the box or ramp is, i feel it might look better to have their chests covered with blood...

 

[CatieO]

Just throw a full bag over their heads, have the executioner bunch up the bag, and as he obscures the slash, pop a nice large blood bag, letting the whole thing drop onto the ramp. Not sure what the point of the box or ramp is, i feel it might look better to have their chests covered with blood...

Thanks for the idea. The basin is textually based, as he instructs his daughter to bring a basin to collect their blood. The board is just to make the collecting bit easier.

 

[shiben]

Ah. I would just worry that the board will be a bit absorbent... The extent of my knowledge on how to collect blood is based on slaughtering animals, and you tend to see them slit the throat and hold their neck over a basin, rather than trying to direct the blood down some sort of ramp, but I suppose it might work out. As for the hood, it will allow you to put as much blood as you want in there, I would guess a liter or two would be plenty, and to fairly precisely control where it went. The only problem is, unless it is going to look like a ritualized killing (in which case, think more animal sacrifice rather than execution style) the careless dumping of the hood which will sell the action might spray blood everywhere... Something to run with tho.

 

[MPowers]

Just a thought. Make the "box" the blood source, and attach a small AA battery powered pump to the back of the board. make the board "warped" a bit (cupped) to form a slight trough.The box would be about half full of blood, bring it out and stick the board with the pump in and hit the switch when you "Slit " the throat. The intake for the pump is at the bottom, the output isat the top, through a hole that is right at the top where it touches the neck. AB blood on the knife would be a big sell on the gag. Blood starts flowing right at the tip of the board jammed against the bloody neck

Amazon.com: battery powered water pump