"The Patriot"
 

I caught part of the Mel Gibson movie, "The Patriot", last weekend on WTBS...and noticed that is several violent scenes, the blood on mel gibson's shirt was lacking chroma. It looked more black than red. I'm wondering, are they doing some kind of color replacement to tone down the "violence" when airing movies on TV ?

Anybody know anything about it?

Trust me, real blood looks more black than red esp. when on clothing. Of course that will also depend on the type of weapon use to cause the blood loss, knife or gun, and where on the body the wound is. There are lots of things we could talk about here but we'll leave it alone. Believe me 99% of people out there won't notice if the 'chroma' is off a little on the blood in a movie.

Blood gets darker as it oxidizes outside the body. A black-like color would be more correct than not.

One of the things I did in a past life, was produce "action theatre". We used a lot of fake blood, and occasionally spilled the real stuff.

Often times, people thought the fake stuff was real.

People ALWAYS thought the real stuff was fake.

Go figure.

-Bill

"The Patriot" had used an altered color palette for many of its war sequences to contrast with the idyllic peacetime sections of the film. Presumably this was a result of the desaturation and other processes used.

By the way, one of the single worst examples of "blood" I've ever seen onscreen was the 1976 World War Two epic, "Midway." There's a couple of scenes of Dauntless gunners slumped over in their seats, fake blood spilling down the side of the airplane, in orange... I kid you not... orange fake blood. I didn't know whether to laugh or choke.

Worst bad fake blood I can think of is in the Japanese movie Shogun Assassin (Lone Wolf and Cub). Gallons of orangy-red water shooting out of people like it came from a Super-Soaker 5000.

I think the worst I've ever seen (fake that is) is just about any TV show or movie that shows someone being shot and there is no blood showing! Wait a minute. I know for a fact that when you get shot there is blood. Come on guys, if you're going to play up violence on the screen (I have nothing against a well done shoot out scene) then at least depict it properly. Have you ever seen a fight scene where someone is getting walloped, beaten severly upon the face and not only does that person never fall down and cry for MAMA...BUT there is no blood on his face OR on the other guys knuckles. Come on, it hurts like **LL to get hit in the face and you do bleed, and so does the person who hit you (their knuckles anyway) if you're going to do it do it right!
OK, I feel better now...back to the regular programming!
Don