On Location: Death in the Valley

In a warehouse in Van Nuys, Jason Collins is proudly showing off body parts.

Strewn on a table are two bloody hearts with chords sticking out them, an open chest cavity, a hand with a severed finger nearby, a necrotic liver and bag stuffed with what looks like skin tissue. At another table, a man is sopping the blood from a stomach with a gash in it.

No, this isn’t the lair of a psychopath serial killer in the Valley. It’s the workshop of Autonomous F/X Inc., a company that specializes in “forensic effects” — creating synthetic body parts and corpses for the medical dramas and police shows that each year seem to amp up the gory details of human anatomy.

As for the silicon stomach with the gash, it’s hooked up to an air compressor that ejects a stew of blood and guts that was made for a recent episode of Spike TV’s “1,000 Ways to Die” (a show that dramatizes some of the more bizarre ways people meet death).

“It makes a big mess,’’ says Collins, co-owner of Autonomous F/X, says of the splatter of which the stomach contraption is capable. “I always feel sorry for the camera crew.”

In an era of digital effects and green-screen technology, many physical effects houses have struggled to stay alive. But Collins and his partner Elvis Jones have carved out a profitable niche, thanks to a demand for ever-more realistic forensic effects.

The company works on various low-budget horror movies, but its sinews and bones are locally produced television dramas, such as the recently canceled “Undercovers,” “Law & Order: Los Angeles” and “Rizzoli & Isles.”

Collins, 35, a film school grad and self-taught makeup effects artist, first developed a fascination for fake corpses and body parts as a kid when his father took him to see “An American Werewolf in London.”

“I was terrified of the werewolf,” Collins said. “I wanted to understand how they made it, like shining a light on the darkness.”

Collins spent several years at effects companies KNB EFX Group and Almost Human Inc, where he worked with Jones on the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,”  before the pair decided to launch out on their own in 2005.

One of their first clients was “House,”  now in its seventh season. Prop master Tyler Patton said the company’s props, from tape worms to human hearts, are so realistic that even the actors sometimes react to them as if they’ve just arrived fresh from the city morgue.

“Their beating heart was a big hit because it looked so real," said Patton. “The effects are so graphic it's sometimes shocking. We’re pretty used to it, but the actors sometimes get a little queasy.”

The parts are made out of foam or silicon from molds that are cast on actors faces or limbs. The molds are made out of a spongy, seaweed-based material called “alginate,” the same stuff that dentists use for teeth impressions, and wrapped mummy-like with bandages around the face or body of the actors. Drying takes 10 to 15 minutes.

“It’s a bit like a car dealership," says Jones, sitting in an office next to a head bust of a man in the horror film “Timber Falls” whose jaw has been blown off by a shotgun blast. “We pretty much have a mold for every body part.”

To depict accurately stages of decomposition, Collins and Jones consult medical textbooks and study photos of actual murder victims supplied by homicide detectives. They mix their own blood from a corn-syrup recipe that is a “house secret.”

Autonomous F/X will generate about $700,000 in revenues this year, up from $500,000 last year, Collins said. Still, that’s down from 2008, before many service companies were hammered by the writers strike, a recession that caused studios to cutback the number of movies they are making, and the ongoing exodus of production out of Southern California.

Collins said he lost one job he was counting on, an independent feature film, when the producers decided to move the production to Louisiana, which offers steep tax incentives. To drum up business there, he is planning to open a satellite office in the state.

Still, there is plenty of work to keep him busy in Los Angeles, especially from shows like “1000 Ways to Die.” One recent episode involved creating a model of an obese man who can’t afford a liposuction and tries a home remedy — with the help of some friends, a box cutter and industrial vacuum.

“We have two or three deaths a week,” Collins said. “It’s always a challenge to see what they come up with.”

— Richard Verrier

Photo: Dead heads in the Van Nuys workshop of forensic effects artists Jason Collins and Elvis Jones. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times.

 

 

Comments

[Singer]

Why are there more negative, morbid and predator effects about human forms at this firm than uplifting; transcendent; beautiful; good; kind; healed; at peace and so forth?

Where is the respect for old people; for suffering people; for the dead in Hollywood? Death is made a joke, the dead too. It is an attitude of fear that manifests itself in obsession with death and morbidity. It is so feared that there is a constant attempt to examine it, exploit it, distance ourselves from it with laughter, rather than think soberly about death and its meaning for our lives.

Hollywood can't be summed up in a quick judgment, but this aspect can. It is a symptom of the view that we are not valuable, therefore we are laughable and we should get all we can out of life before the horror or horrors (death) takes us. That is a very fearful mindset reinforced with much latent emotion.

[jiminboulder]

SICK

[Shaking my head]

Hollywood will stop at nothing. Depicting tragic ways people have died for entertainment? I'm so very glad we killed our television.

These guys seem quite talented, I'm just sorry they've stooped to this. Hope they never lose a loved one only to find that their death is made a mockery by someone looking to make a buck or two.

[fanofeffects]

These effects are not done for the satisfaction of the owners of the company, it is a BUSINESS. Hollywood wants it, someone provides it end of story. If you don't like what's on television, don't watch. Obviously someone somewhere enjoys it or else there would not be a demand for effects such as these. These are very talented individuals who do amazing work. If a script called for something beautiful, or healed, etc. they would do that too. This is a very small piece of the entertainment pie. That's it, nothing more.

[Tom]

These are very cool guys. I know them.

Blood-and-guts is the least of what they can do. They are amazing.

[Art lover]

I have never posted before, but those first three posts make me think people live in a vacuum. These guys are artists, artists who actually make a living doing art. I've seen there work, it's amazing. Yes, gruesome, yes, provocative, that's what they do. Bravo for their work. Bravo for the article.
Signed, someone whose artistic talents die at stick figures, but has enough sense to appreciate others' talents.

[Doc Death]

You guys go! Your very good at what you do and congrats on getting some publicity for it. Very cool guys I known for a few years now.