CG blood

Zatoichi (2003)
Apologies for this clip being in German, but it's the best one to show of some of the effects scenes with blood... Those start ~3:10.



Zatoichi is a recent revival of a long-running series of Japanese films about a blind masseur/swordsman. While Zatoichi's duty is grim -- to protect village people from the Yakuza -- the film has quite a bit of levity in the form of a dance number. In addition, the violence is considerably less gory than one might expect. The gracefulness of the blind swordsman is highlighted by the very stylized use of the CG blood. Here, the red blood is set off by purposefully monochromatic scenes.


300 (2007)


Now, 300, as a mostly digital production, makes sense to use digital blood (rather than practical, shooting it against the green screen) for the same reason as Zatoichi -- it's more a stylistic choice than anything else. Here, the surreal amount of violence is turned into something like a dance by being slowed down with the blood spurting out gracefully. I'm not a professional on murderous rampages, so I can't know for sure that it's unrealistic -- but it's certainly not believably disgusting as you might expect from a "war film."



har har... Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)


Obviously this clip doesn't use digital effects, but I'd like to show it in comparison with the blood seen in the previous images. Here, the ridiculousness of the blood is for obvious comedic effect. In looking for tutorials on CG blood, one finds a lot of filmmakers forums with complaints that there is no way to make digital blood look real -- and perhaps at this point, that's true. But, indeed, stage blood seems difficult to wrangle with as well to make seem realistic. The stylistic and narrative intent clearly has a lot to do with the outcome of any blood effect.