Special Effects

The CREATURE creators at Stan Winston Studio specialize in Hollywood miracles -- they brought dinosaurs to life for "Jurassic Park" and turned metal men into movie history with "Iron Man" and "The Terminator" -- but their next trick will be their toughest. The illustrious special effects shop will try to hold onto its history even as it sheds its late founder's name and abandons his storied workshop. Stan Winston, the four-time Oscar winner, died in June in Malibu at age 62 after a seven-year battle with cancer.

As 3-D consultant and visual effects editor for the T. rex chase in "Journey to the Center of the Earth," Ed Marsh helped the filmmakers deal with a worry that most never consider: the physical health of the audience.

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman had an entire lifetime to play with in telling the story of "Synecdoche, New York," but his crew wasn't so lucky. Prosthetic makeup designer Michael Marino and key makeup artist Naomi Donne had just one month to create the makeup to age stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton and Jennifer Jason Leigh roughly 50 years on screen. "Originally, they wanted to do Michelle Williams and a lot of other actors," Marino said.

In the hands of director David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and opening Dec. 25, has been turned into a dazzling somersault of a movie that tumbles easily over decades, strange and swoony and romantic and sad. A baby is improbably born as an infant-sized old man, and as he ages and grows he actually gets younger.

If the eyes are the windows into the soul, then Kevin Carter has the power to draw the blinds. As a special effects contact lens painter, he can create everything from cataract-ridden eyes to the supernatural peepers of the living dead. Raised in Medford, Ore., and Sonoma, Calif., Carter got hooked on horror films early on. "I loved the 'Friday the 13th' movies and Freddy Krueger in 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and stuff like that," he recalls.

HOW do you light a man on fire, blow seven others to bits, choreograph a gun battle with 20 shooters, discharge 400 special-effects squibs, shatter a panoramic hotel window, separate an FBI agent's torso from his waist, then show a neo-Nazi to his seat -- which happens to be a chain saw -- all in mere minutes? The secret lies with writer-director Joe Carnahan and the team of specialists he brought in to handle the wet works in his new movie, "Smokin' Aces," opening Jan. 26.