Question about using knife props safely.

H

harmonica44

For the short film I'm doing, there is a bit of a knife fight. I went around shopping to all the Halloween stores, but none of them have knives that look real at all. They are obvious fake plastic, and even spray painting them a shiny metal won't help, because they still look too fake for kids.

The real knife store has real daggers, but I don't want any of the actors to get hurt. My last place to look for a realistic looking toy dagger is Wal-mart, but I doubt they will have any, if no other Halloween stores will, where I live. I can't order one, cause I shoot in two weeks and not enough time. So I will buy the real one if Wal-mart has nothing, but I am not comfortable with it, cause I want my actors to be safe, but want to make the fight look realistic as if one person is actually trying to stab the other. The fight I want to do looks similar to the one in Eastern Promises:

There is no eye or chest stabbing though, but a stabbing that won't be shown directly. But any ideas on how to film a fight like that with a real knife, and safer? Or make the real knife dull without it looking like it's been obviously worn dull with something, or what?
 
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I made my own fake knives for one of my shorts. I bought 3 identical kitchen knives. One was untouched (for extreme closeups that were never near any other actors or the camera), one was dulled with a stone grinder (for when the actor had to swing the knife around), and the 3rd one had the blade cut off. I used that for a CU looking over the shoulder of the actor as they pretended to thrust the knife into the other actor's stomach. Looked pretty convincing. Just had to frame it in a way so you couldn't see there wasn't a blade.
 
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PaulGriffith said:
Two weeks is pleeeeeenty of time to order something online.
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/retractable-plastic-knife-movie-prop-8579

Or make it:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Create-a-Realistic-Prop-Knife/
Click to expand...

True I might have just enough time. I wont' shoot the knife scene till near the end as well. I just don't trust the mail lately this close to production lol. I will order it and hope I don't have to use a real one or fake looking one. Doesn't it suck how in the this business everything has to be ordered and the stores don't carry what you need for movie making? The only thing I could get without having to order, was the DSLR lol. I will check out that other link on how to make a fake real looking knife too.
 
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True but there is one close up shot I need of a knife close to a guys head, or at least it will be still enough to notice. I will see if I can order a fake knife, that is retractable, those are cool. I want to look for a longer one than the one on that link though.
 
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