SCENE STEALER

When director Frank Darabont needed sentient fog to star in his latest Stephen King adaptation, he didn’t rely on visual effects. Instead, he asked his special-effects coordinator, Darrell Pritchett (“The Majestic”), to figure out a way to wrangle some actual ethereal condensation for “The Mist.” While visual effects are generally executed in post-production, special effects must be achieved on set, and Pritchett can make real-world elements do the impossible on cue. To conjure Darabont’s mist, he cornered the market on “fog juice,” a chemical cocktail that, when mixed with water, clouds the air. “I don’t know how many hundreds of gallons we used,” he says. “A lot.”

-- Ron Magid