Contents Batman: A Dark and Stormy Knight: After a decade of dogged development - with countless scripts proposed and abandoned - Batman finally erupted on the screen last summer amidst a frenzy of hype and merchandising that quickly propelled it high into the ranks of all-time boxoffice champions. The man who cracked the project and finally brought it to fruition was director Tim Burton who surrounded himself with a powerhouse of moviemaking talent. Costume designer Bob Ringwood was enlisted to reconfigure Michael Keaton into the Dark Knight while makeup artist Nick Dudman was similarly engaged to transform Jack Nicholson into the Joker. At the same time, production designer Anton Furst labored to conceive and construct a brooding backlot representation of Gotham City - handsomely augmented with miniatures created by visual effects supervisor Derek Meddings and mechanical gadgetry provided by physical effects supervisor John Evans. Article by Jody Duncan Shannon

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: Backyard Odyssey: In the surprise megahit of the summer - Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - four children are accidentally reduced to a quarter-of-an-inch in height and deposited in a backyard jungle where grass and water drops and commonplace insects become horrendous life-threatening obstacles. Spearheaded by director Joe Johnston and executive producer Thomas G. Smith - both veterans of Industrial Light & Magic - the film featured a plethora of giant-size sets and props developed and supplied by production designer Gregg Fonseca and mechanical effects supervisor Peter Chesney. It also entailed a wide range of postproduction miniature and optical illusions accomplished on a shoe-string budget by stop-motion animators Phil Tippett and David Allen and by a diversity of small effects companies including Perpetual Motion Pictures, Visual Concept Engineering and Illusion Arts. The result was a minute comic fantasy on a grand scale. Article by Susan Dayton

Contents The Hunt for Red October: The Thrill of the Hunt: For their thriller, The Hunt for Red October, producer Mace Neufeld and director John McTiernan had to create not only realistic interiors for state-of-the-art Soviet and American nuclear submarines, but also convincing exterior footage of these high-tech warships in simulated underwater environments. Working with large-scale models, effects team members at Industrial Light & Magic - under visual effects supervisor Scott Squires - responded to the challenge by outfitting a cavernous new stage and employing single-pass motion control to record deep-sea submarine material in dense smoke. Article by Mark Cotta Vaz

Tremors: Beneath Perfection: In Tremors - a Ron Underwood film from a script by S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock - four subterranean predators invade a small desert town. Hired to design and build the creatures were Tom Woodruff, Jr. and Alec Gillis of Amalgamated Dynamics. Working with physical effects supervisor Art Brewer on set, the creature crew engineered footage of fearsome monsters erupting from the ground and striking out with powerful jaws and tentacles. Later they scaled down their creations and worked closely with Robert and Dennis Skotak in the production of intercutting miniature effects. Article by Jody Duncan Shannon

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Sharing the Pain: With the fifth entry in the Star Trek feature series, first-time director William Shatner set about to transport the Enterprise and her crew beyond the final frontier to a place thought to be inhabited by God. Selected as visual effects supervisor for the project was Bran Ferren whose facility - Associates and Ferren - labored to produce the effects relating to the fabled God planet and the cosmic barrier surrounding it. Serving as subcontracter for the motion control model photography was Peter Wallach Enterprises and supplying most of the composite work was The Optical House. Article by Paul Mandell

Contents Total Recall: Ego Trip: When Total Recall went before the cameras - with director Paul Verhoeven at the helm - it was only after a maddening decade of rewrites and stalled development that would have spelled terminal doom for most film properties. But the concept of a man who learns that the body he inhabits belongs to someone else and that everything he remembers of his life is nothing more than a bogus memory implant was sufficiently intriguing to sustain it through a succession of starts and stops. A key player in the production was makeup effects designer Rob Bottin who provided the futuristic tale with a wide range of prosthetic and animatronic creations. In charge of the miniatures and opticals was effects supervisor Eric Brevig of Dream Quest Images. After nearly six months of principal photography and a year of postproduction effects work, Total Recall thundered onto the screen as a relentless thriller with a haunting psychological twist. Article by Paul Roberts

Back to Back to the Future: In a leap of faith and enthusiasm - bolstered by Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures - director Robert Zemeckis undertook back-to-back sequels to his phenomenally successful Back to the Future. Reuniting most of his original cast and crew, Zemeckis continued his time travel trilogy by whisking Marty McFly and Doc Brown thirty years into the future for a mind-boggling excursion into the paradoxes of temporal displacement and then brought the series to a rousing finale by propelling them a hundred years into the past. Supplying physical effects that ranged from compact hoverboards to giant trains was mechanical effects supervisor Michael Lantieri. Providing the less tangible film magic - multiple split-screen characters, holographic sharks and flying vehicles - were visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston and the illusionists of Industrial Light & Magic. Together they enlivened a whirlwind celebration of fantasy and imagination. Article by Jody Duncan

Contents Ghost: 'Ghost' Stories: For director Jerry Zucker, Ghost was a vast departure from the broader-than-broad comedies that had made him a bankable commodity in Hollywood. Selecting a deeply romantic supernatural thriller for his first solo outing, Zucker surrounded himself with a cadre of top-notch visual effects artisans and created a stupendous boxoffice hit. Contributing ghostly pass-throughs and otherworldly spirits - even a representation of heaven - were effects teams from Industrial Light & Magic, Available Light and Boss Film Corp. Article by Jody Duncan

Dick Tracy: Crimestoppers Textbook: For nearly six decades, Dick Tracy has been a household name. But it was not until producer-director Warren Beatty tackled a big-budget ode to his childhood hero that the saga of Dick Tracy - complete with its bizarre villains and ultra-stylized settings - was fully realized on film. Aided by makeup artists John Caglione, Jr. and Doug Drexler and by miniatures and matte paintings from the Buena Vista Visual Effects Group, Beatty imbued his production with a comic strip look all its own. Article by Glenn Campbell

Always: Playing with Fire: Captivated by childhood recollections of A Guy Named Joe, producer-director Steven Spielberg launched into Always - his own remake in which the characters were contemporized from World War II bomber pilots to modern-day aerial firefighters. Physical effects supervisor Mike Wood staged massive conflagrations on location and on studio soundstages, while Industrial Light & Magic used large-scale miniatures shot in-camera to produce the really expansive scenes requiring aircraft to barnstorm over blazing forest fires. Article by Kevin H. Martin