How to Make Fake Wounds – Episode One : Fake Cuts

Hello everyday,

I made an instructional video on how to make fake wounds.

Let me take you through my process. The first thing I did was to get a stage wound makeup kit from amazon. This is the one I decided on after a lot of looking around. I also got this one because I wanted to learn how to make wounds with household supplies. To narrow it down to these two was a lot of work. There are a lot of stage makeup kits out there and they can get really expensive. Although I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, the most trusted stage makeup brand is Ben Nye. From experience, and looking at the reviews on amazon, I knew I wanted a kit with modeling wax – a sticky gooey substance used to replicate skin, a full bruise wheel – a makeup wheel with all the colors needed (skin tone, red, blue, purpleish-black, green, and yellow), powder, and fake blood – some day I’ll learn to make my own.  The Graftobian kit met all of theses criteria at the right price, so that’s the one I got.

After my kits arrived I read both instruction booklets and got a gist of what I need to do. I’m a strong believer of learning by doing. One can’t fully understand how to do something without doing it or experience it themselves. With that in mind I started to experimenting with the different supplies. Through a lot of trial and error. I mean a lot of trial and error. The first was Elmer’s glue, and I really failed that it didn’t get to a stage where I photographed the result

Petroleum Jelly

The next thing I tired was petroleum jelly. I was able to make it look somewhat realistic, but not really what we are looking for. It was too puss-y. It wasn’t the clean looking cut I was looking for. So, I tried to mix the glue and petroleum jelly.

Petroleum Jelly & Glue

That really didn’t change the look. After that I decided to look at real cuts on the internet. I figured out that real cuts didn’t really have bruising around it. I finally gave up my attempt to use household supplies.

I switched to the modeling wax from the makeup kit. After doing that I was able to get the desired affect that I was looking for.

Modeling Wax

With a couple more times with the modeling wax and now I felt comfortable with the technique.

 

 

The next step was to film myself making a wound. So, I called upon my friend Lee to help me. He filmed me as I made a wound. To thank him I made a cut on his arm for fun. The editing process was long and tedious. But, I learned a lot.

This whole project has been very educating. I really enjoyed learning how to do something I didn’t know before. I believe that, especially with a subject such as theatre, it is better to visualize the material. Just reading step by step how tos are sometimes hard to follow and unclear. But having action/pictures along with text.words can do wonders to help learn the material. I learned that it definitely makes the material more fun and easily accessiable to students. I hope that this would be a way to help me instruct students in the future, especially if  one is absent and misses a class. I look forward to doing more like this in the future.

Until next time,

Theatrically Becca