SCENESTEALER

Why has it taken so long for Hollywood to exploit the very real horrors of the Stone Age -- the mammoths, giant birds and saber-toothed tigers that threaten the cave people in Roland Emmerich’s “10,000 BC”? Well, dinosaurs are easier to do convincingly (no one’s ever seen one, unlike elephants and tigers). Plus, prehistoric mammals have lots of hair. To accurately render this menacing saber-toothed critter,visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas shot HD footage of a lion, tiger and cheetah, then based the face on tigers. Animating the tiger was especially difficult for a sequence in which the animal was thrashing about in a pit in a pouring rainstorm. “We had to make its fur interact with the rising water,” Goulekas says. The trick was hiding the intersection of hair and water with foam and spray. “That way, you’re just seeing the hair get slick when his head goes under and clumpy when it comes back up.”