Daniel Hentschel
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Behind the Scenes - Smashed Phone/Computer
🕑 Added 2024-07-31 14:51:51 +0000 UTCHi everyone,
Every once in a while I see these photos floating around.
It's not fair. Because when I uploaded them originally, they were both hidden/censored for graphic violence and gore. But everyone else seems to be using them fine.
Oh well. That's life. Anyway, I thought I would explain the story behind them.
The phone photo is more recent. I posted it on Twitter with the caption, "I'll never make the mistake of trusting someone again." But I shortly deleted because I was concerned my account would be suspended over it. They always freak out about blood pretty much on any platform.
And I was spooked, because I had been just been temporarily suspended over this:
Which is to date the only time I've been suspended/banned for anything on Twitter. This of course was not actually a crushed frog, it was a mixture of sardines, red and blue food coloring, and I can't remember the other thing. Grape jelly or something.
Anyway, every time I get a new phone, I keep the old one. One of the problems with using your phone as the camera is that you can't then use your actual phone as a prop. So keeping old devices that don't work and can be destroyed really comes in handy.
So for the longest time I had two back up iPhones. I used to use them a lot when I was doing TikTok relationship content. Sometimes would comment on it and be like, "Bro has an iPhone 7," or something of that nature.
I made the decision to destroy one of these devices for something. I usually just take it outside and smash it with a hammer. Not really rocket science.
But then what I'll do is keep the destroyed version so I have a "destroyed phone" or "destroyed laptop" prop. I have a blood stained shirt for the same reason. These are things you can use over and over again.
The two main things I use for fake blood are red food coloring and then actual fake blood syrup intended for that purpose. The red food coloring is good when you need A LOT of it. The downside is it will stain your skin and clothes and never come out.
The fake blood is great because it washes off with water very easily and doesn't stain, but it's very viscous. So I'll usually use that if I just need a small amount.
I've also noticed that you will usually only have a problem if the fake blood is on your body in some way or you're showing an injury. If it's on a shirt, or a wall, independent of flesh they are more lenient. Unless the object is a knife or something.
Obviously I want it to look real, so I put the (already destroyed) phone on a small shitty table I found on the side of the road. Then I applied some fake blood to my knuckles, where it realistically would originate if I actually punched a phone.
Then I just started punched the phone. Like I said, it was already broken, but mimicking the actual movement helps get a realistic spatter effect.
Here's another example. For this I used actual fake blood. I caked it on to the edge first, and then I mimicked a smashing motion into my own palm. Funny enough I actually did give myself a superficial injury doing this, because the edge was quite sharp.
It always annoys me when I see people post fake blood and there was no attention to detail of how the blood pattern would actually look. I understand that everyone is not a forensic investigator, but that is the type of detail that people can feel subconsciously. Even if they are not consciously aware of it, it doesn't "feel real."
And you don't have to get it exactly right. I'm sure it wouldn't necessarily look like any of these examples if this actually happened. But it just has to feel real enough that people buy it.
In the phone photo, you can see that my knuckles are really only in the edge of the frame. This was done both to try and subvert the community guidelines, and also because with the food coloring at a certain point your entire hand just becomes red. Which looks fake.
Now for the punching computer photo:
That is a very old desktop mac computer than I "stole" from an old job in Savannah. Around 2019-2020 I used it as my work computer. Eventually it got to the point where it was so slow and shitty that it was unusable. So it sat in my closet for the longest time.
I have a lot of crap like that laying around. I never throw anything out because I have the hoarder mentality of, I can use that for something one day. What sucks is that I am usually right. There have been a lot of times where I think of something and I'm like, oh that random object I've had in the back of my closet for 5 years would be perfect. Then I realize I threw it out because I tried to tell myself it was irrational to keep it thinking I would ever use it for something.
Anyway, a very pivotal moment in my life was in late 2023 I had bed bugs. I would not wish that psychologically on even my worst enemy. But some good did come from it because it made me less cluttered and now I clean my room and sheets every week.
Basically one night I felt two bed bugs crawling on the back of my neck and leg. Because of my experience on r/bedbugs and r/whatisthisbug I knew what they were.
So I stayed up all night basically throwing out almost everything I had. Then continued the next day deep cleaning and steaming everything.
The first reason this is relevant is that I believe the bed bugs originated from an Amazon delivery person uniform I had ordered on Poshmark. I received the vest in the mail that day and opened it and tried it on. Then that night I had two confirmed sightings. Since then I haven't found a single trace of them besides those two, and I'm confident I would have seen something if they were there, because I spiraled into a neurotic meltdown that lasted months and consumed my every waking moment.
What was even worse was the Amazon delivery driver stuff completely bombed every time I tried anything with it. It just did not work at all. Maybe it is cursed in some way.
Anywho, the second reason this is relevant is the first photo of the smashed computer on the desk was taken months before the second photo of my bloody knuckles. Smashing a computer is very messy. Glass dust gets everywhere and is very hazardous for many reasons.
So the day that I was deep cleaning, I decided to finally throw out that old desktop computer. But I didn't want it to go to waste completely. Since I was already cleaning, I smashed it with a hammer, then put it on top of my desk and took a photo. Then threw it out and vacuumed etc. I had no clear vision of what to do with this photo at the time. I just thought, I will use that for something someday.
I do this often, where I'll take a photo of a scene or setting that seems like it could be something, and then save it for a rainy day. A great example is this:
This photo was taken months before this post. One day I did a photoshoot where I just put a bunch of stuff in the toilet. So things like the magnifying glass, a phone, crystal ball, etc. I didn't have any clear goal, it was just like, I had the punch line before the joke.
So months later I saw the magnifying glass in the phone and reverse engineered it. So I tried to think, what's a funny reason a magnifying glass would be in a toilet.
It was the same process with the punched computer photo. I had the photo of the punched computer on a desk first, and then tried to think of a funny reason there would be a punched computer on a desk.
Then I just bloodied my knuckles with fake blood and took a photo at the same desk with the same keyboard. In the second photo you don't actually see the computer-- because it's not there!
So there you have it. I'm happy to see these photos in circulation, of course the egotist in me wishes my face was in them in some way so people would know they were mine, but also I think the reason they took off is because there is no face in it and they are completely anonymous.
Comments
Den
You’re a great writer!
Lyss
LMAOOOO The magnifying glass compared to all the violent shit made me so sad when it dropped cuz that detective was really really down on himself not to smash it into a million pieces until he bled, but it just simply belongs placed in the toilet to be flushed along with his dreams. Very devastating
starry
I love these long-form blog-like posts. It's fascinating how much thought goes into everything behind the scenes. I'm sorry about the bedbugs, though. Steaming your sheets can get rid of them, but the fear never really goes away. I had them in my freshman year of college, and I still wake up in a panic sometimes if I feel itchy. I look forward to the day when we get the orb in the toilet picture...
Joshua Kenneth Gray
Thank you for walking us through the process and thinking around all 6 pictures and reasoning on taking the pictures how they got posted in the end (and the 1 that got taken down). This is extremely helpful and interesting! P.S. I feel the same way about bed bugs. They basically commented biological warfare on you 🤣
looseseal
Your fake blood/practical stuff always looks amazing, really neat to know your process behind it! Thank you also for inadvertently validating the fact that I wash every item of clothing I buy the second I bring it inside
Sasha Chimaera Suraski
Incredible post
