British independent filmmakers Ben Franklin and his team at Bloody Cuts grew up with a love of horror films. Ben cites the ‘Nazis-meet-their-doom’ scene in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark‘, and Stripe taking on the Peltzer family in a particularly scary Xmas in ‘Gremlins’ as some of the formative images that sparked his own interest.

Their recent short – Stitches – is five and a half minutes of creeping horror with a gloriously gruesome finale. Opening scenes may remind fans of Ju-on (aka The Ring), but Stitches keeps you on the edge of your seat right up to the last shot.

I was surprised to learn that this isn’t the team’s day job, which typically involves corporate and more traditional editing work. But their love of the horror genre has encouraged them to explore indie film making too. With no professional backing (in other words, no money), Ben adheres to the staple filmmaking ideology of ‘grass roots horror on a low budget’. We asked him how Red Giant Software helps bring Bloody Cuts’ ideas to spine-chilling life.

“We colour-corrected and graded the whole film in Magic Bullet Looks 2.0 and used a combination of hot/cold filters, the awesome HSL filter (to really bring out the reds) and of course curves and auto-shoulder. Other bits and pieces were used elsewhere, but I found a combination of these filters really helped to give it a cinematic look. In many cases I reduced the ‘mix’ to ensure that the overall ‘Look’ wasn’t too heavy at any given time as well as being consistent, and added to that Cosmo (within ‘Looks 2.0′) gave a nice subtle soft skin appearance without being overboard” said Ben.

“The Stitches text animation was created with Trapcode 3D Stroke, by our graphics artist Alexander Purcell, and it appeared on both the teaser and the titles for main film. We also found Magic Bullet Denoiser extremely useful for the low-lit intro/title shots, which were caught on the fly during the shoot on a secondary DSLR camera. We did several tests to get to the look we wanted, which needed to be subtle, but cinematic, as well as distancing it from the (sometimes noticeable) DSLR look as much as possible. Worked like a dream!

Stitches is the second film in an anthology of 13 and we can’t wait to see the next terrifying installment.

Important Links

• Bloody Cuts
• The making of ‘Stitches’
• ‘The Lock Up’
• Interview with Ben
• Follow them on Twitter as @BloodyCutsFilms
• Join the Facebook Group