“On a winter afternoon Robert Hall, owner of the special-effects makeup house Almost Human, is supervising the fabrication of a neck wound for a scene in a new project. While one of his cohorts squeezes a meaty piece of silicone between his fingers, another slathers it in a viscous red liquid poured from a Karo Syrup bottle. Earlier in the day [They] had perforated the silicone by rubbing it over hard Styrofoam pellets harvested from a gutted beanbag chair.”