In one of the scenes of our short, our actress needs to look like she has marks/bruises/scratches, on her wrist. My group have decided that I am going to be the best person to create this illusion, as I did this in my film last year, so have had experience of it.
In order to do this professionally, it seems as though I would need to have access to a 'bruise wheel', these are very handy and enable the user to create realistic looking bruises and abrasions with great ease. If I can find one cheap enough and practice with it, then I may be able to create our effects this way. However, as I'm not sure whether I'll be able to get one or not, I may have to use normal make-up like I did last year.
Doing it this way, I did manage to create the desired effect. When I practiced the make-up effect on my own face, it looked fairly real and we decided to go ahead with putting it in our film, however, when shooting on location we did hit some difficulties. I found that a heavy layer of make-up was needed in order for it to show up properly on camera. I had also not accounted for the fact that our actress might rub at the make-up, causing it to begin to come off, this time I would take this into consideration and maybe apply something over the top in order to fix it in place. As the make-up will only be on the wrist, I may be able to apply a light layer of hairspray to act as a fixer.
The final option I have is to substitute face paints for a bruise wheel. I have looked at the two products and personally, I think that the texture and consistency of the two seem very similar. I will also buy some cheap face paints and experiment with these before I look into bruise wheels in more depth.
