The Magic of Physical Effects

Oftentimes there’s no school like the Old School

Special Effects is a lot of things, and sometimes there’s no better way to do something than for real, in camera and right now. Special Effects covers a broad array of productions’ needs. If it sits on camera, it’s Set Dressing. If an actor moves it, it’s a Prop. If it moves on its own, that is an Effect. That covers a remarkable number of things from mundane things like elevator doors and plants waving in a breeze outside the windows of your set on stage to far more complicated things like nitrogen cannons lifting cars or wind so strong the cast is fighting it to stay moving forward.

At Man FX Destiny, we’re Physical Effects pros. Sometimes called Mechanical Effects or SPFX or EFX. All the specifics define us in the broad array of things that move, burn or wet things on set but aren’t particularly fleshy or aren’t digital. The Make Up FX, or MUFX, department of a production handles the making of zombie corpses or bloody wounds, and we’ll work with them to set up a pressure pot and pump the arterial blood spraying from their work. The Visual Effects, or VFX, department will build all the digital elements of a shot and we’ll help them by moving the green fiberglass horse back that the actors will be standing on while riding in the stampede. They will help us by getting rid of the wires that are stopping the car on its mark so that it goes where the camera needs it to. 

We’re a bit unusual in that in our passion for all things film we provide a number of services that are somewhat outside the norm for a strictly EFX Company. We love doing the odd stuff, the challenging stuff. We’ve built a vast number of corpses and silicone creatures and rubber props. Our workshops regularly produce high quality hand props for shows all over the Southeast. Giant anchors light enough for an actor to swing around over his head, super high tech canisters filled with ominously glowing fluids, dead multi-planar dog creatures that can be stuffed in refrigerators for later study, or ice sculptures that will last through several days of filming.

We’re also the plumbers of the movie business. We make sinks work, provide warm water for showers and tubs on camera, make rain on windows or parking lots, heat swimming pools and the occasional portion of  a lake. We make snow in various ways for quick shots or extended sequences, either falling or on the ground or both.