Savor Classics: Food in SFX

On film, many foods are made of non-food items and many non-food items are made of food. Movie magic! In this classic episode, we speak with special effects artist Vii Kelly about inexpensive edible gore, plus go into the history of food effects in movies and television.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren vocal Baum, and today
we have a classic episode for you about food in
special effects in film and television. Yes, and this was
such a fun one, and we had a guest, a
very special guest. And as we said, you know, Lauren

(00:30):
and I will watch horror movies at any time. Oh yeah,
and you know, we don't specifically focus on horror movies
in this but but yeah, yeah, because a lot of
the really a lot of the really sticky effects do happen, yeah,
in horror. Um. So, our guest on here is v Kelly.

(00:50):
She's a professional in the industry. And the episode was
originally published March eight and since then, Um, there has
been quite a lot of development in the local Atlanta
film scene. Um, it was already a burgeoning industry. But um,
but it is very big now. Um. And yeah, I

(01:13):
I never we we we never gave y'allum her her
her credentials, so so to speak. We talked through a
few things during our conversation, but um, but yeah, she's
done special makeup effects on things like your pretty face
is going to Hell. Um, she's done props on shows
like Doom Patrol and the film Frankenstein Created Bikers. She
did set dressing on the stuff you should know TV

(01:37):
series are very own Josh and Chucks, very short lived
but lovely TV series UM and V has recently been
working as the special effects foreman on Stranger Things. So cool.
I know, every time I see her, I'm like, tell
me what weird stuff you're covering people in today? Yes? Yes,

(02:01):
so what a yeah, fun question, like a legitimate work
question to get somebody. Yeah, it's it's it's really it's
always really entertaining because because she's actually a huge podcast
listener and I'm a huge like horror media consumer and
so right, so with our powers combined, we just like

(02:23):
get into a room and nerd out with each other
all day. Also, congratulations to V. She just she she
just got hitched. U. Yeah. It was a lovely hand fasting.
And um, so many, so many congratulations all all around
on all of this success and and love and all
of that. Yes, so beautiful, even though so much of

(02:48):
what we discussed is so gross. It's real gross. Oh
hack it gets I had forgotten. I was like, oh wow, yeah,
I know, we went there cool. Sure did, We sure did,
and we were disgusting, Like I don't know if we
ever a saver like special effects thing we could do.
And I still haven't given up hope on this. I

(03:09):
think it could happen. I think, uh, I think COVID
protocols are probably gonna be putting a wrench in it
for for a little while longer. But I never never
lose hope. Um oh goodness. I also yeah, um. Listening back,
I was like, wow, like this, this was so early

(03:30):
in um our kind of like like food Stuff Saver careers,
um and uh. And I was just so delighted by
the conversation. This is one of the ones where I
laugh a lot, like I feel like the I feel
like the interview just dissolves into V saying stuff and
me laughing and you probably silently laughing in the background. Yes,

(03:59):
it was. It was so fun and that means back
in our studio days. Yeah, it's just a delight really,
it really was. Um And So, without further ado, we
are going to get into this classic episode. Hello and

(04:26):
welcome to food Stuff. I'm Any and I'm Lauren vocal Bomb.
And this it's kind of a strange one. It is okay,
let me okay, get my voice ready here. Welcome to
food Stuff super food stuffed action packed special forks episode

(04:47):
starring food. There will be blood, guts, vomits, everything you
can imagine, almost because a lot of foods are a
lot of effects that are produced in the film and
theater industry are made of food. Yeah, and uh, we
got to think about this. We were going to try
to make it for the Oscars, but that's happened. Miss that,

(05:10):
But it's still on our brain. And we have our
first non house stuff works in house guests. Yes, we
got to sit down with v Kelly um who is
a special effects human in the industry. Um, and and
learn a couple of her a couple of her secrets.
Yeah yeah, but first, but first, what are we talking about?

(05:32):
Really well, food has long been used in movies for
practical special effects, particularly in horror movies, which Annie and
I are both big fans of, so we are. I
may have stayed up way too late watching some last night.
Um like think the piece soup from the Extra Sysse
as a classic example. Food really brings it when it
comes to looking gross. Um, and sometimes food is a

(05:55):
stand in for non food things. And sometimes it's used
to create sound effects too, So it's got a lot
out of uses. Yeah, and we're gonna have to do
it entirely. Separate episode on food styling. That is the
whole thing. Real food presents all kinds of problems on
any set due to time and conditions. Um, you know,
heat from the lights or or heat from the performers

(06:15):
are just the ambient temperature, dust in the air, all
sorts of things, you know, chocolate, melts, cheese, sweats, salad, wilts,
cut fruit, brown's, whole fruit, bruises, eggs, break performers have allergies. Uh,
anything and everything silly that you've ever had happened in
your kitchen. Multiplied by x number of people's time and
money multiplied by x number of takes that you have
to do, it is some serious opportunity for Murphy's Law

(06:39):
to kick in. So therefore, food styling is a very
particular art. It is, yes, and and a lot of
the time the food that you see on camera is
not food. Right. For example, in the first Harry Potter movie,
the food in the Great Hall was real. Um, at first,
it costs some problem and a lot of waste. So

(07:02):
starting with the second film, they're like, nah, we're not
gonna do this anymore, and they cast the food and resin. Yeah.
One time that real food was used was in Star
Wars The Force Awakens, when in the beginning of the
film when Ray kind of scarfs that quarter portion of
bready food. Yeah. Yeah, um, that instantly rising bread was
a practical effect that took about three months to perfect. Um,

(07:27):
and it was definitely edible, though perhaps not particularly nutritional
or tasty. I find that's generally the case. Yeah, oh yeah,
that's right, because you have some experience with the sort
of thing. That's all right. I've done some acting myself.
And on the question of our actors really drinking that beer, no,
probably not. Um, it's most of the time you're not.

(07:50):
It's probably near beer, near beer, near beer which is
very bland carbonated, meant to look like beer. Drink you
can get like recently I did as you where we
were drinking cores light near beer, so it's just corse
late but not with no alcohol. So yeah. Um. And

(08:11):
eating and drinking presents an interesting challenge for film editors.
If the amount of your wine glass keeps changing or whatever,
and it as an actor, you might be excited about
eating that slice of fi. I have an upcoming shot
where I could eat a slice of cake, but twenty
two tiggs later, you feel like you're gonna puke, and
a closer tight you feel gross. You can barely get

(08:31):
out your lines, which is why actors usually use spit
buckets puking. We'll get into more of that later, but
I think the time I had to put puke in
a movie, it was some type of soup and corn
start got out crusty. M That was gross, but I
didn't have to fake the nausea too much. Convenient it is.

(08:56):
There are some plus sides. Um. Yeah. Going back to alcohol,
I guess beer is usually subbed out for near beer
are carbonated tea, dark liquors subbed out for a week tea. Um,
that's what was in the bottle of whiskey Jim Belushi
downed an animal house, and clear liquors just water water
probably um. Guinness is notoriously hard to replicate, and I
read somewhere I can't remember the actor, but he specifically

(09:18):
made it a character choice that his character only drink guinness,
so he could just drink st Yeah. Pretty much for
things like weed, and cocaine. I've always wondered about this.
There are whole shops that specialize in legal weed. Um, well,
now that's kind of a weird sentence, like legal film weed. Yeah,

(09:38):
that won't get you high, We'll get you very high. Yeah,
I did read that. Um. The actors who worked on
weeds said that it did get them high, more high
than regular weed. Um. I don't know. It's an herble
tobacco that allegedly does get you a little bit high.
One of the brands is called wizard weed. I just
want to throw that in there. Um for cocaine, it's
probably something you'd use in baking. The powder powdered sugar

(10:01):
or crushed up vitamin B, which, according to t V Kelly,
will sting the crap out of your nose. But you know, yeah,
I feel like it's Nicolas Cage. There's like a rumor
that one actor really did cocaine. I'm sorry if it's
not a close Cage. I do not mean to disparage
you that if you happen to be Cage. I just

(10:23):
it's some actor. There's a rumor he really might have
might have hit it. Yeah, But pivoting away from cocaine
is probably wise for us to do. Let's talk about
some historical uses of food in film, but first a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.

(10:51):
Thank you sponsor, Yeah, thank you. Okay. So on film,
back in the black and white days, blood started out
as mostly chocolate syrup, which could be a thin or
thickened with just simple water or corn starch or corn
syrup or flour um. And it was used because it
had better contrast than actual blood colored products on the

(11:13):
black and white. The reds will show up sort of
gray black on black and white film, but browns are
a little bit darker. So it provided that nice pop
that you you really want in there. And even that's
a huge, huge improvement, I suppose from the old stage
trick of just using red handkerchiefs that you oh yeah
to indicate that you're bleeding yeah. Um. When Hitchcock's Psycho

(11:33):
came out in nineteen sixty, chocolate syrup is what they
used in the infamous shower sequence, although they did have
a newfangled contraption for dispensing it, plastic squeeze bottles they
had just come out for chocolate syrup. Plastics make it possible.
Though color film had been around four decades, it wasn't
really affordable until around the nineteen fifties, and even then

(11:56):
filmmakers were still kind of getting used to it. So
if you go back and watch the first um color
Hammer films, there were some of the first and kind
of the most famous or infamous schlock films. Um, the
blood looks almost neon. It's this like laughably bright purplish
red fuschia color, like a like a late eighties prom dress. Yeah,
But to support Hammer Films and other British productions, which

(12:19):
were producing more horror at the time than American companies
were because there were fewer restrictions about what could be
shown on film in Britain than here in America. Um.
This retired pharmacist started up a brand of fake blood
products in the sixties in Britain called Kensington Gore, which
is a pun on on a street named Kensington Gore

(12:39):
in London. It's kind of cute, um, and this is
also what they used for the elevator scene in The
Shining Oh Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. That that brand, Um,
it's it's now. Kensington Gore is sometimes used as a
generic term sort of like Kleenex for any kind of
fake blood product. UM. And that might have been where
the modern sugar syrup and food coloring formula of fake

(13:03):
blood came into play first. UM, and I say sugar syrup,
not corn syrup. Here in the US it would usually
be corn syrup. Corn syrup it's very cheap, but in
the UK, invert beat or cane sugar would generally be cheaper. UM.
Invert is just a fancy way of saying like liquid
at room temperature when you're referring to sugar products. Yeah. Um.

(13:24):
Over Here in the United States, legendary Hollywood makeup artist
Dick Smith used corn syrup, and his most classic recipe
seen in films such as The Godfather and Taxi Driver
and The Exorcist. Um is poisonous. Oh no, yeah, don't
don't eat that one. Uh. It gets this kind of
like splash and soak property of it UM from the

(13:46):
addition of Kodak photoflow, which is a chemical used to
decrease the surface tension of water when you're doing the
final wash of of of developing film. UM and, as
you know, decrease the potential for for streaks to show
up on the finished, which you know it is good.
You wouldn't want streaks on there, but you also don't
want to eat it. Yeah, you don't want to be
poisoned either. No, the infamous scene from Carrie when she

(14:11):
gets blood dumped on her head was corn syrup and
food coloring. The original knot the remake. They used some
c G. I yes, okay, so some CG was used
for blood in the Carrie remake. But the infamous drop
scene was practical. Um, they did dozens of takes. They
used like three hundred to four hundred gallons of fake
blood in total. Um, like different buckets, sizes, different height drops, uh,

(14:35):
to get just the perfect effect. And apparently when director
Kimberly Pierce asked, um, the the original director Brian de Palma,
how many takes you know he had done to get
it right? He was like, what do you mean? We
just did one? Um want? I think memory serves Laura.

(15:00):
And there's a video of you somewhere, uh in a
in a prom dress of the eighties ish version of
getting blood dumped on your read. Uh. Yeah, we decided
to do for brain stuff a video about about why
blood is red as opposed to other colors. And we
decided that the best way to do that was to

(15:21):
drop blood on me Carrie style. So where did they're
all going to laugh at you? Lauren? It was a
very exciting day around the office. There's a lot of
interesting logistical questions. Oh yeah, you can find that video
on the internet. I'm my acting was not really it's anyway, Um,

(15:44):
I haven't. I had a lot of room for improvement,
and I feel and I feel much more accomplished these days. Excellent.
If you dropped a bucket of blood on my head now,
it would it would be it's so little lot better
oscar Worthy. Okay, well we can arrange for that, Lauren. Yes,
other than being a little bit cold, eventually, it was
a lot of fun. Yeah, so so so. Corn corn

(16:05):
serpent food coloring is is the basis for all of
these because it's cheap and it looks enough like blood
that it looks like blood. But there are just endless
permutations of fake blood recipes with varying degrees of edibility
and or palatability. I suppose um non dairy creamer can
provide some good opacity. Um corn starch is excellent for

(16:28):
thickening and also for opacity peanut butter, chocolate syrup or
gelatin can create a texture viscosity. UM cocoa or instant
coffee crystals can help with tinting, especially for blood stains.
UM and a few drops of mint extract is a
really popular way to make recipes less likely to upset
your actors. Right, speaking of I've got a got a

(16:50):
fun story here. Yeah, I was in a horror movie.
I've been in a few, but there was one where
I had I'd call it chocolate goup like ghosts. It
was supposed to be kind of similar to the conjuring
I've ever seen that, but there's like that black slime
that represented the like possession of the ghost. Um and

(17:13):
I had a very similar thing. It was made of chocolate,
Hershey's chocolate syrup and corn starch, I think. And it
happens very early in the movie. And we happened to
film it right like at the beginning of a twelve
hour day, and I had the director just did the
whole batch, you know, you know, let me make sure
I get the take. So all of this chocolate syrups

(17:36):
bowing in my mouth and it gets everywhere, and then
for twelve hours, I'm just sitting in chocolate syrup and
it gets super hard, you know, So when I get up,
I'm having to walk back the marshmallow Man stave of
marshmallow Man. And at the time, I was still I
was working at How Stuff Works, but I had work nights,
and so I showed up at the office covered in

(17:57):
chocolate goop. And they were still two editors in the
office and I won't name who they were, but they
were enjoying a moonshine sent in from a listener. And
they did not say a single thing about the fact
that I was covered and some kind of mysterious GOOPI substance,
and they just offered me some moonshine. Um upstanding, upstanding citizens.

(18:22):
Both they were yeah. And then later at the end
of the movie spoiler alert, I have to expel the
That's how I get rid of the ghost. And I
just remember everybody in the room. It was a small room,
had to we set up plastic covering everywhere so it
wouldn't get over the camera, like the camera this really
funny shield all around it, and I had the black

(18:43):
groop of my mouth and they were like, can you
do this in one take? Just get it as far
everywhere as she can, and I just remember being like
psyching myself up here. We get here, we go and
it went everywhere. Good job, Yeah, thank you. We still
have a couple a couple of drops of blood stain
on our green screen here at the office from that

(19:07):
blood drop that we did at one time. It shall
be there always in as a reminder apart from blood.
Maybe you're looking to create scabs or scrapes or burns.
Um gelatine is really good for that. It's got a
shin nous, making it great for a burn or a scab,

(19:27):
for scrapes, corn flakes a great I knew Tony the
tiger was onto something. Um. If you want to imitate
the look of a cut that's in the process of healing,
you could use barbecue chicken. Yeah. Um. A dab of
of corn syrups because it's sticky can help fix things
to skin if you don't have any spirit gum or
another adhesive that is meant specifically to go on human skin. Yes,

(19:49):
do not glue things to your skin stuff that is
not meant to glue stuff to human skin with right
aside from like corn syrup because it's food and it's
not gonna hurt you right, listen to the episode. Also,
while they not strictly food, a paper towels um, and
a plastic wrap can be of great use for for
weird skin effects. Um. Also, you can kind of stain
paper towels with coffee or tea or food coloring or um.

(20:12):
Get some layers of plastic wrap going with maybe other
items like spaghetti or something in between them too to Yeah,
I get some really gross looking stuff, man, Laura and
I are loving this. Um. Oh. And speaking of corn flakes,
older movies used corn flakes that were painted white for snowflakes. Yeah,
which makes sense. Um, they both have flake in the name.

(20:34):
That's all you need. It caused a bit of an
audio problem though, Um. The crunching of the corn flakes
interfered with the dialects, so they'd have to record the
audio after filming a scene with snow and then dub
it in over the film. For It's a Wonderful Life,
that stuff that goes and fire extinguishers foam might was
mixed with six thousand gallons of sugar water and soap

(20:56):
flakes to get all of that snow. Yeah. In the
nineteen seventy eight Superman movie, salt was used for snow,
and there is the I guess you can't really eat
dry ice, but you know, dry ice is used for
creating like fog atmospheric effects. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and you
can also put it in a drink as long as
you're careful to swallow it. Yeah, we need to do
an episode on that. You can use it to make

(21:18):
ice cream. I've done that before in a stand mixer. Yeah.
I used it for the volcano cake. Yeah, for the eruption.
But let's talk innerds. Yeah. Lots of organs are produced
in workshops from plastics, or from molded gelatine, or from
shaped bits of raw dough. Um. That heart that Denaries

(21:39):
eats in Game of Thrones the first season was made
of gelatine and apparently tasted so chemical that she really
wasn't faking being super nauseated by it because she ate
like basically the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Gelatine in general
is just a huge bone for the SFX industry. You know.
It's it's it's less expensive and less time can assuming

(22:00):
and less likely to cause an allergy than latex or silicone. Um.
It's more detailed and has better staying power through long
shoots than other edible products with like flour, sugar or
something like that. It does take time and effort to
work with, but for like beyond the basics sort of effects,
UM are our expert V recommends it very highly. But

(22:21):
occasionally real meat has been used, yes for organs on
on set. UM. Apparently the effects team for George Romero's
classic Day of the Dead bought up forty four pounds
of pigin trails from a local meat processor. They did
also use plastic ones, but for this one iconic scene
it was real entrails. In the scene, UM, one of

(22:45):
the characters is kind of torn in half at the
mid section and UM the effect was produced by having
the actors real torso and lower body hidden beneath this
false floor and then attached to his you know, actual
human head and shoulders and arms. Um was this fake
body that could be ripped apart um and it was

(23:05):
stuffed with like a partial fake skeleton and real raw
pig intestines and liver and sausages. And it was not
a good time. It went rancid while they were filming.
It was like a long filming process, and he was
stuck in this rig for hours, and they brought him
a ventilator so that he could breathe without like being ill. Yeah. Um,

(23:28):
I it's not recommended, no, but what is recommended is
if you have any interest in horror movies or this
at all. The there's some pretty I won't six ensive,
but there's a there's several photographs of how they did it.
Oh yeah, and it's fascinating looking and terrifying, like when
you the actor has that ventilator exactly and it's like, oh,

(23:49):
poor dude, Oh poor dude. They basically told him like like,
by the way, don't eat or drink anything before you
come to set tomorrow because you're going to be stuck
in a pit for like at least four hours. And
he's like, okay, alright cool. Later that day's like did
I do this? There's a whole book, um called I Think,

(24:10):
I Think the Making of Day of the Dead in
which one of the one of the crew members just
really details a lot of that stuff. So if that's
a marrow is a is a point of interest for you,
as it is for many horror fans, then then go
check that one out. Absolutely on a less um in
nerds side note, um to die the horses purple. In

(24:32):
The Wizard of Oz, purple jello was used. Cool. Yeah, yeah,
I think I think the horses kept licking each other,
though I seem to recall reading that one problem they created.
But going back to inners, what about robot innerts? What
about them? Yeah? Alien used water that was dyed white.

(24:55):
They didn't want to use milk because it would spoil.
So water that was dyed white. That pasta glass. Marbles
and cheap black caviare for the innerds of the Android
ash for something that um definitely was not blood. It
was and did android stuff. It was pretty effective, it was. Yeah,

(25:16):
I still remember being affected by it. Yes, indeed, Um,
I'm sure you've seen a movie or TV show where
a baby is born and it's all goopy and shiny.
If you thought to yourself, now, I know they didn't
just find a new they born baby in that hospital.
Well hypothetically, if you half thought this, you were correct.
That goopy stuff is probably a mixture of grape jelly

(25:37):
and cream cheese. UM sag. The Union Screen Actors Guild
UM has rules about what kinds of jelly you can
use on baby actors. Grape cherry and red current are acceptable,
but strawberry and raspberry aren't in case the baby as allergies.
Good looking at sack. Yeah, and somehow I missed this scene,

(25:57):
but this came up a lot. We're researching quite a scene. Well, um,
from Game of Throne season seven, there's a scene where
um Sam, well, yeah, he has to clean up a
bunch of poop from toilets. Yeah yeah, yeah, bad pants,
um fruitcakes dumped in water, shaped and aged. That's what

(26:21):
was the poop aged? I know, right, I can't remember
how long they said that scene. It's a very short scene,
but to do that it took days or something. It's
a whole like almost like Aronofski asks sequence of yeah.
So yeah. Related the river of poop in the Shawshank
Redemption that Tim Robbin's character crawls out of the freedom

(26:44):
was not in fact poop, but a mixture of chocolate
syrup and sawdust. Yeah. Apparently that the real pipe was
super toxic. And they're like, oh, we shouldn't have Tim
Robbins do that. Yeah, but visual if because I'm the
only thing food is good for in terms of entertainment.

(27:04):
We'll get into some of that after a quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsor. Let's talk about audio. We are an audio
podcast after all. I said, Oh, heck, is that what

(27:27):
we're doing. Did you think we were just having a
regular old conversation with microphones in front of us? Could
be this is how we talked to all my friends.
Carry on a microphone everywhere just in case, do you
say something golden pair of headphones. Yeah. Um. We are
planning on returning to this in more detail, hopefully soon
in the future. Yeah, because we really want to try

(27:49):
to hook up with a foley artist who can kind
of show us how everything works. Yeah, and get to
maybe experiment. Yeah, but for now, here are some examples.
So going back to psych Oh, for the famous shower
scene the sounds of stabbing, several different melons were compared,

(28:11):
and the casaba melon was judged to be the most realistic.
Hitchcock himself picked that one. He was like, that's the
head sound right there. So what you're listening to you
When Giant Lee is stabbed in the showers, the sound
of a knife going into a cassaba melon. Um. Watermelon
is more frequently used for the sound of a skull
busting open. I've also heard of us smushing ahead of

(28:34):
like lettuce or cabbage, just like putting your full weight
on it and letting it. Kind of we should do
sound effect Lauren were so good um for ripping someone's
heart out. The pumpkin is the food of choice. Sound
artists record themselves opening up a pumpkin and then gutting
the innerns with their hands. Think about that next time
carving a pumpkin. Cool Um dried pasta is used for

(28:57):
bone breaking. You can crunch up all kinds of stuff
for that crunch. For impact sounds involving muscle, sound artists
might tear to snap or slice some lettuce, bock choy,
or celery, things like that. Yeah, even something just as
innocent as as the sound of cracking knuckles or like
adjusting your neck can can involve that kind of that
kind of a yes, good good fibrous vegetable sound. Um

(29:22):
V also mentioned that shredding cabbage um with a saw
sounds exactly like a neck being sawn through. I did
not question how she knews that. Um. Some folly artists
also add extra layers of sound, like um uh celery
wrapped in damp cloth for for breaking bones with kind
of like a spray of blood involved um or or

(29:44):
smushing pieces of apple with a shammy cloth was what
was used when Hannibal lecter ate a guard's face. That's
so interesting, like how did how do you come up that?
I don't know? X would. Yeah, if you're looking to
recreate the sound of something creeping through the woods, look

(30:05):
no further than a bag of potato chips. The crunching
of a chip sounds like footfalls on gried dead leaves
or even dense underbrush. I believe I read Platoon used
that sound effect. And you can sprinkle shredded coconut over
lettuce leaves if you want to make a like snow
or ash fall. Yeah. Half coconuts that are filled with

(30:26):
a padding of some type. Actually you're used for horse hoofs,
as demonstrated in Monty Python I'm a Holy Girl. Yeah,
you can also use half coconuts for impacts to a skull,
hey may babe, along with some lettuce for that for
that fun crunch. Yeah. Yeah, that's our brief sound sound section.

(30:46):
And this brings us to our interview portion. Yeah, we
had V in the studio with us yesterday, So um,
so let's hear part of that conversation. We are joined
today by our film industry friend V Kelly. Hello, Hi,
thank you so much for being here. Uh so so so,
v Um, could you tell us a little bit about

(31:08):
your job? What do you do? Why are you here? Um?
My usual answer to that question is I kill people
for a living. Oh my gosh, we've got to get
out of here now, luring right now. We are in
a sound dampened room. Oh my goodness. It's the perfect job.
So I work with. UM. I fake kill people. Okay,

(31:31):
that's that's better. So blood effects. I make fake weapons
and kill you with those, and then design how all
those things happen, whether it be theater or film. Um,
and build the organs that get ripped out of your chest.
And if we want that heart still thumping, I do that.
Oh man, Yeah, that's great. That's the best job ever,

(31:53):
crazy dream job for sure. Uh So. UM, you're you're
tasked with creating all kinds of different effects. How often
does food get used in that? Oh? More than more,
more often than not. UM. I think because I do
a lot of work that is low budget, food ends

(32:13):
up being what we use. It's disposable it's safer for people.
We're talking about just allergies to a food as opposed
to an allergic reaction to silicone or latex or something
like that. So food is just it's just safer, it's cheaper,
easier to clean. Is there a lot of experimenting food
and stuff? Yeah, you never. You never use the same
thing twice. You're never doing the same gag twice. And

(32:35):
the things that these writers and these directors and that
they want, and then having to deal with the camera
people and the costume people. I want to ruin their
clothes Propsy, but everybody is so worried about their own stuff.
I'm like, why can't I just cover that all in
blood on I just bring up a bunch of bags

(32:56):
and drops, and you know, they end up looking like
Lady Gaga covered in plastic bags so they don't get sprayed.
One of the last things I did up in North Georgia,
I had the bag, the cameras and all the walls
so we didn't get any and they were like, where
is the blood going to go? And I was like,
I don't know, Actually, I really don't know where this
blood is gonna go. It's gonna go everywhere. Let's just

(33:18):
bag everything. So we do that, and there's some people
off camera, like around the corner of a wall, and
I do my effect and it's a CEO two rig.
It sprays all over the place. People that weren't even
in the room got covered in blood. What that's fantastic. Yeah,
that's says you sound like a blood wizard. Like the
sound that sounds physically impossible, but in a really fun way.

(33:38):
I hope blood wizard is on your resume. Yeah, it's
my D and D character excellent. Speaking of blood, blood
is kind of like the classic effect. It's I mean
because it can go into any kind of movie, like
a rom com can have a blood effect in it. Um.
What uh? And I think that the classic recipe is
just corn syrup and food coloring, right, yeah, corn styrup,

(33:59):
food coloring. Um. I always we just got the food
coloring at the store, at the grocery store. But I
always recommend checking the boxes because around Halloween, people will
take all the red out of the little box and
then you'll just come home and all you'll have is green.
And you're like, I'm not making alien blood today, need
old blood. But you know you do wine. You do

(34:19):
want reds and blues and yellows in with your red um,
I like to use this color called caramel. Also it's
a little thicker of a food die. But you have
all these colors at your disposal. Um. I also pick
up jello boxes, like like a black cherry jello. You
can grab all those little packets and um and that's great,

(34:40):
But you got to think about how old is this blood?
Has it been rotting and drying on this person? Because
zombie blood is going to be darker and blacker is
this fresh blood is going to be a lot more
orange because me pumping out of you. Um. So you
basically just have to diet for for the occasion, the
blood occasion. So many blood occasions in different thicknesses and

(35:01):
uh and and purposes for yeah again, like like whether
it's gonna be staining a clothing or if it's just
getting thrown around in buckets or exactly. Uh. I know
that soap is not a food item, but uh, I
mean that's a really good base for blood if you're
needing to get it off of clothes, like starting with
a laundry detergent. Also, it'll prevent the blood from beating

(35:25):
up because it's a surficant. I think I'm saying that
word wrong, but yeah, it helps, uh prevents beating. Yes,
well yeah, it changes the surface tension. Yeah, you obviously
don't want to use soap for your mouth blood or
anything like that. You can use some like, uh, mouth
wash would be a good base for that. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
one set that I was with with you on um

(35:46):
you gave the actors a tooth wash um to to
stain their teeth to make them kind of look like
gross and yellow and yeah and that was tea tree oil, right, Yeah,
prevents gingerish. Good, So it's it's kind of dual purpose. Yeah, exactly, excellent. Well,
like you know, the mouth wash tends to be like
if you're having to pop that blood in your mouth,

(36:08):
say it's a theater thing, you know, a couple of
times during the whole run a day or a night,
and it can get it can burn your mouth a
little bit. So teach reola was a little less invasive
for you, and you know, just put it in a
little sandwich bag or something tied quick not and they
can keep the little pouch of their mouth and then
when they're ready to spit that blood they can bite

(36:30):
down into it and squirt that out, or they can
swish with it to get a nice tooth wash of blood. Lovely.
Who wants a zombie or a vampire with pristine teeth?
You need blood and flesh bits on there, Yeah, flesh bits.
Speaking of some of that chunkier stuff. How how do

(36:52):
you how do the larger kind of kind of more
viscous elements work? Like if you're if you're making an organ,
an organ, are you just gonna go like buy a
pig organ? Well you can. Um, I've used to pig
heart before. Um, they've come in freeze. They're huge, They're enormous,

(37:12):
So you have to literally sow these hearts back together
with leather tools. Oh wow, I mean. And then in
the hot, hot heat of Georgia, it's real fun to
work with a bloody pig heart and its migraceous carol
syrup blood and you just turn that human into like
a fruit roll up and then they're holding a real
pig heart and that flies all over the place. It's

(37:33):
it's really glamorous. We use a lot of like flour
and water, a lot of dough stuff like biscuit dough.
You can get the get little cans that freak you
out when you try to pop them. Feel like I
can't put this spoon and then it pops and everything's okay.
And take that ball it up into shapes, dip that
into some blood with different dyes. Vanilla pudding is really

(37:54):
good just getting like a butter scotch tapioca. Just globbing
that into stuff. You're gonna get pussy, stuff that will
get nice and good with possum blood on your organs. Uh.
I don't recommend using real animal organs and cuts of meat.
We've shoved like a pork tender loin into a leg
that we saw it open one time and kind of

(38:16):
left that in there for a little too long at
one and the smell of just brancid it is just awful. Yeah,
I imagine it's a lot nicer like if like if
vanilla pudding starts to get like just a little bit funky.
I mean that stuff is made of science and magic
and like it's not so it's not gonna it's not
really going to go off the way that for sure

(38:36):
a tender loin would I say I would go with
vegetables more because you're gonna get that nice snap for
the bone if you're getting through there. But flashy stuff
like using some melons. Melon is great, just carving cutting
a melon and carving it into the shape of whatever
your need. Treat it so it looks like a body
part or an organ. But fruit and vegetables soak up

(38:58):
dies and stuff too, so you can shape that stuff
and carve it. There was another one I used. Um
the directors wanted. This was another film in North Georgia.
They wanted a pighead, and then they wanted in several
different forms. They wanted it look like to look like
I was cooked. Then we also had to cut the pighead,
and then we had a dream sequence where it was
used as a mask. So I had to make a

(39:19):
mold and I didn't have time to sculpt. Like I'm
I was building the stuff out of the back of
my truck in a car port in the mountains of
North Georgia, and I'm like wearing a Jeffrey Dahmer apron
and just you know, if it starts raining, I just
throw its harp and I just crawl in there and
I used my little mobile effects lob in there. But
I didn't have time to sculpt it. And make a mold.
So the prop's girl went to a farmer's market here

(39:42):
in Atlanta and drove it all the way up to
Iowa See, and I made a mold of this frozen
pighead and it, you know, he was, Oh my goodness.
I used actual mold making supplies like that you used
for body casting. Super expensive stuff, but normally takes about
maybe twenty minutes to care. This took seven hours to cure.

(40:02):
It turned out great, and I was able to make
them pig head mold and and it was fantastic. But
there was blood all inside of the mold and cleaning
that out, and that's so cool. I don't recommend do anything.
What what about what about some of those other fun

(40:23):
bodily fluids, like I mean like like clearly or I
mean for for most directors anyway, you probably don't want
anything on set that's going to actually make people vomit.
So what depends on how much realism you're going for.
I suppose there's a lot of things that you can't
show on television. I never know what it is. There's
a lot of things you can't say, and um, I

(40:45):
don't think you can show feces. But we have on
your pretty bays. Um. I think it was season one.
Um My buddy Shade went to the crafty table and
crafty tables where you get all your snacks and stuff
on sets, and and it's like opening them a fridge,
just open the edge and you stare at it for
a minute and you walk away with crafty tables like that.
So he went over there and he found some crafty
brownies and he got a little sandwich bag and he

(41:07):
cut a hole in the sandwich bag and he shoved
them around. He's in there and just squeezed in out
like it was icing. But because it was thick like
a brownie, it came out on little turns like landed
on our actor Henry Zabowski's face, just landed just beautifully
like across his face, and he was he was actually
hanging upside down at the moment, and it submerged in

(41:27):
a tub of water. I think he was having flashbacks
in there or something. But we've done that. So brownie
is great for feces. Um. I think we we've used
like little kale sprigs and stuff to shove in them,
just to give it a little bit of a fiber. Yeah,
I mean I mean that's what we've used before. Uh

(41:49):
Like everything that you can find on the crafty table
is something that you can use for vomit. It just
gets yourself a nice space, Like mushroom soup is fantastic. Yeah,
adding something that gives a little bit of color, some
fruity pebbles or something. Just imagine, just really think about
what that person has eaten that day and just you
know character specific like oatmeal is great and that'll like

(42:16):
that'll swell and be dried or whatever you want, depending
And it's uh one that my buddy, uh I think
it was my buddy Marcus, Marcus Cotch. He works out
of l A. He his favorite thing to do is
uses corn, beef, hash and milk. Oh my goodness, and
it's disgusting. Yeah, that sounds real gross. That sounds like
I would gag a little bit for real on that. Yeah.

(42:39):
I mean, well, I don't recommend using real milk, use
almond milk because those lights can make things not rely
Like you know those pictures when you're a kid of
the cereal boxes and there's milk dripping on the spoon.
That's Elmer's glue. Oh is it really? They can't do that.
Now you have to use real food stuffs for that.
But but yeah, don't use real milk. Oh and don't

(42:59):
use honey. Use maple syrup. If you got a coat,
a human body and honey, you know, maple syrup works
just fine. It's cheaper, it doesn't solidify as quickly, and
so you can wash that off a lot easier. Having
the conversations with costume to be like, okay, well do
you have a double of this because I have actual
food die in this blood or in this this liver, yeah,

(43:22):
or this pig heart um, and and then you know,
and then we have to reset, reset again. So you
want to do things in like a very try to
do things as quick as possible, So using things that
are dies is really helpful. But you know, the conversations
that I have with these directors too, it's just it's like, well,
do you mean how much after birth do you want?

(43:44):
I mean, how long has this this this fish baby
been on this woman's chest exactly. We have an episode
with with bobcat Goldthwaite Smiths Bits and Monsters that I
cannot share, but we did use bananas as after earth
in a in a pinch from from a crafty craft table.
Oh yeah, it was great, just dripping all over the

(44:06):
actress that was dripping off the baby, and it's just
you're like, what is that? What the hell is that?
And it's just bananas smashed up. That's so it's an
actual common occurrence where like I mean, like I I
assume that you have some kind of like plan going in,
but but then on set something changes, or they ask
for something slightly different, or you realize it's someone that

(44:26):
one of the actors has a coco allergy or something
like that, and all of a sudden, you're just like, okay,
what stuff. You know, there's some Cheetos perfect. Oh yeah,
I mean you have to pack for war, like have
a really nice kit, but that crafty table is your
best friend. Cheeto is great for brain stuff. So I'll
tell more about that later. But but you know, you
do have to you have to be you kind of

(44:49):
have to maguiver. You have to be the daughter at
me my lady, the daughter of Martha Stewart and mcgivers.
So you have to be able to problem solve really
quickly and and and you get that by experience or
just just thrifty this. You know, you're just like, oh man,
this would be so cool. Let's try that because I know,

(45:09):
like I said, I never do the same gag twice.
That's a secret. I'll share. Diet soda I mixed with
my blood a lot if I'm gonna be doing a
spray rig because it's already carbonated so it has it
gives it a little extra yeah and it and it
just gives it. It sprays out a lot better. You
get a little bit more of a dusting of the
of the blood and stuff. So diet cokes, I not

(45:33):
diet soda. Sure it's wearing it right. Also does our
coke here? That's the proper name for them. True, very true.
But I mean like I can use silicone for prosthetics
and things like that. But but that that's such a
that's that stuff so expensive. There's one store in my
area here in Atlanta, engineer guy. They're fantastic, but there's

(45:56):
one store within like a five mile radius basically sells
all these special effects supplies. So people in in more
rural areas. Um, there's this woman. I think it's like
Tiffany Bay's Special Effects or s effex on. She's like seventeen.
She's on Instagram founder On there, um she makes uh

(46:18):
mortician's wax, which is some of the oldest stuff that
you can use. It's just paste wackfin yeah, basically, and
it's a flesh tone. Um, and you can make crazy
wounds with a dress with blood cover up. Seems with
that it's fantastic stuff. But she she posted that she
uses flower and vasiline and they're just a little coloring.

(46:40):
I'm like, that's brilliant. I mean for like for like
scabs and scars and stuff like, yeah, I like to
build a profility to have a gunshot and have it
like gaping open with little skin flapping like that's what
she she used. And it looks like the real stuff
that we buy in the store in the special effects shop.
That that stuff is great. I mean scab stuff you're
talking about that's just jelly and nutritional yeast. You know,

(47:03):
you can get some weird stuff out of your fridge
for scabs, well, even not gory stuff. Prosthetic wise. You
can go through your your spice cabinet or your mom's
spice cabinet. You know those little unist stars, they're they're beautiful. Um,
the I mean, I guess you can't really. I mean
they're edible, I suppose, just probably horrible in one big bite. Yeah,

(47:25):
you probably want to eat a whole one, but you could. Yeah,
you can use that stuff for like Mermaid makeup. Glue
it to their head. It's really pretty. Maybe use some
cake decorating supplies, a little little pearl balls and stuff
like that. You can get pretty crazy with because special effects.
I also do special effects makeup or um special makeup

(47:45):
effects or whatever you want to call it. It's turning
people into monsters or pretty people into monsters, or monsters
into pretty people. But I mean you can get decorative.
It doesn't always have to be gory. I mean, if
you wanted and making them dirty to um dirting up
their skin and or instead of using actual makeup, you
can use cocoa powders, you know, various levels of that.

(48:08):
So you've got your extra dark, your special Dirk. Then
you've got you know, your milk, chocolate powders, um any
of that, any any of that stuff flour Obviously, you
can whiten up people with that brush that on their skin.
It's also good for adjusting costumes too, if they've been
crawling to the dirt. Just put some cocoa powder on them.
They smell great, much cheaper, too much cheaper than special effects.

(48:33):
That's like bright yellow. You can come up with something
to use that for coffee grinds, all that stuff. Like,
it's all You can stay in a human easily with
that stuff. And I've I've definitely done the silly thing
where I've um dirt stained addressed by rubbing it in
the dirt. But that's but that's not advisable. You don't
want to do that because there's parasites and dirt, there's bugs,

(48:55):
there's allergens in there that you may not be aware
that you're allergic to or or certainly hopefully not your talent.
You know, you don't want to stick something on your
talent and all of a sudden they have this massive
boily rash that you didn't make out of food and
they acquired themselves. You don't, all of a sudden they

(49:15):
have ring worm. Yeah, that's not. Yeah, you don't want
to be rubbing stuff in the dirt. No that No,
can we do a little like improv experiment with you,
Like let's say that we were filming a food stuff
horror movie. Yeah, and um, and Annie wanted to. It's
like it's sort of like Highlander like, like Annie wanted

(49:37):
to gain my power by eating my brain. Why am
I the villain here? I want to gain Annie's power
by eating her brain. Wait a minute, I don't want
to be that person either. Alright, go ahead, Okay, we're
both eating Dylan's brain. Don't have a microphone, so he
can't complain. Um, but you can't leave the building. Okay,

(49:59):
so we I will say that because we have covered
me in blood here and how stuff works before, Like
there is probably some Carol syrup and like a like
a like a tub of ben Nigh blood powder. Okay,
perfect on premises. But other than that, Um, there's like
some restaurants downstairs, like a pizza place, a burger joint,
raman place, uh, pretty much any kind of food you

(50:21):
can imagine Indian. Yeah, okay, I mean you got everything
you need in this building. Okay, you eat some brains.
What would he do? Well? First step is to make
sure that everything is clean and sterile. If you're going
to be shoving your mouth out to her open skull,
anything that gets put on her head. I mean, I've
got gloves. The containers are going to be sterile, and

(50:42):
because I don't nothing, I don't want anybody else's mouth
to beyond that. Sure, it's it's like it's like a kitchen.
It's like a professional kitchen exactly. Yeah. So I mean
I would, uh probably I can't shave your head. I
would probably get something dough eat it to it to
start with, to stick everything onto your head. So let's

(51:02):
go to the pizza dea place, little ball of pizza dough,
glove that onto her head. Um. We could probably find
some cheesy poofs in your catching over here, totally grand
other bright orange. But you got those nice curls, which
is like, how a brain? Yeah, all those wrinkles. Yeah,
that's a that's a little special shade Morton trick. We

(51:23):
had done to do some brains with little cheesy poofs. Um,
and you can change the color of that with your
fake blood and stuff. But you know, I mean, any
of those shops down there, we can we can get
something syrupy and turn it into dripping blood all over
your mouth. More and just just I mean the coffee
shop downstairs, get some chocolate syrups. I mean, these are

(51:45):
all basics, but I mean I usually I don't know
what I'm going to use when it comes to that
last minute stuff until I opened that fridge look at
it and stare at that crafty table, or look at
my kit. You know. Um if if say you've been
dead for a minute and laying in the grass and
your brains been eating open and there's ants crawling on you,

(52:05):
cocoa crispies, we can get a little ketchup bottles at
the little condiment stations are the best, by the way, Sarastah,
that's that's such a nice color to use. To get
a little squirt bottle. And and as you're pulling the
brains out of her mouth, you can have someone off
camera just squeezing the catchup bottle and blood squirting all

(52:26):
over the place. I'm really goodn't do it. I think
we should do a short a short scene, and then
we can Okay, we can maybe. Okay, how does your
head get smashed open? Okay? Okay, smash it through a window,
through one of these sound booth windows. Okay. That's another
common food product. Another another common food product for special
effects is sugar glass. You ever see anybody smash somebody

(52:49):
in the head with a bottle or they'll go through
the glass. I mean, there's there's a fake rubber glass
that takes like eighteen hours to set up. It's really
fun and I love using it, but um, this is
something that's super difficult, and I haven't found anybody in
Atlanta that can actually make the sugar glass recipe work
well because it's it's getting the right colors and it
goes into the oven. Um, I haven't looked it up

(53:12):
in a little while, but if it's if you've baked
it for too long, the glass can turn like golden
and burnt. But the fake glasses just sugar, and so
we can smash your head with them, the fake sugar
glass window, and have the shards sticking out of your head. Yeah,
I'm so on board. So on board. Um, well, thank

(53:35):
you so much for being our first non house stuff
works in house guests on stuff. It's very exciting. Thank
you guys. This is great. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the
end of a super special, jam packed special effects episode. Yeah.
I hope that you enjoyed it as much as we

(53:57):
did and that you weren't too squeaked out by all
of the bodily fluids conversation. Yeah, and thanks again, so
much to be for being here. Yes, absolutely, it's awesome
to talk to her. I could have we could have
gone on and on, and she has inspired me and
hopefully some of you listeners. I want to make a
food stuff short film horror. Yes we can. We gotta

(54:20):
add in all of the things we mentioned. We gotta
find a way to incorporate like ash fall with the
coconut falling on lettuce. We need some sugar glass. I
don't know, but our one hundred episode is coming up,
and I think, you know, I'm percolating on some ideas,
but I think there's something to this. I think so too.

(54:41):
We get to go to our boss. We need one
hundred million dollars. We've got a special effects film. It's
gonna be great, but we really need the funding. Yeah,
it just makes sense business wise, I mean clearly. Yeah,
that's how all audio podcasts should celebrate exactly really large

(55:03):
scale horror production. And that brings us to the end
of this classic episode. I have to say this has
been on my mind lately because I have been watching
a lot of horror movies. I just gotten discussion with
like the best types of fake blood, and most of
them are food based um with somebody uh as you know,

(55:28):
also what's easiest to wash out of clothes and sheets? Um,
just that those sounds oh right, yeah, food sounds can
be real so much like cabbage and lettuce recommendations which
I adore. Yeah so um so I don't know. I

(55:49):
hope that this was was fun for y'all to catch
up on as well, um, and that maybe it has
inspired you for your upcoming Halloween celebrations. Yes, oh yes,
you know with the kid you reach in its spaghetti,
they tell you what's in tests and the field, grapes
of the eyes, h all kinds of things. Um. Yes,

(56:12):
we we hope that you enjoyed. We would love to
hear what you're getting up to for Halloween. You can
email us at hello at saborpod dot com. We're also
on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at savor pod, and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit

(56:34):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
superproducers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.