WIZARDRY OF EDLUND HAS A SPECIAL EFFECT

It’s the most memorable sequence in “Poltergeist”: A furious supernatural flurry virtually whisks a suburban tract house into the Earth’s bowels.

It was all because the spirit world was a bit upset (and that’s an understatement) at the fact that a housing development sat atop a graveyard of lost souls.

Among those making it all happen: special-effects meister Richard Edlund.

Edlund, 45, recalled that particular bit of wizardry during an afternoon interview at his Marina del Rey office, where he sat surrounded by the tricks of his trade (including a rubbery toy figurine of “Ghostbusters’ ” cheery-looking but murderous Marshmallow Man).

Ah, but you wouldn’t have known--from the script--that the house-whisking sequence would have turned out to be so memorable. Or so costly.

When he first read the script, during his tenure with George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, the scene was delineated by a scant four words. “I came to the final pages, and the words, ‘And the house implodes.’ ” Edlund smiled. “It moved onto the next scene so fast you didn’t realize that that was a $250,000 sentence.”

That’s what it cost to do the thunderous, 40-second climactic shot. “But it was really worth it, because it’s the scene that everyone remembers,” he said.

It is also one of the hallmarks of Edlund’s career.

Explained Edlund: “We basically did it like drawing a silk neckerchief through a ring. It was a situation where we built the house (a miniature about five feet wide) and pulled it apart through a funnel. There were 50 to 100 wires attached, from behind. The whole thing was bolted to the floor of the sound stage--we used a forklift to do the pulling. And we used two shotguns to shoot out particular spots.

“The whole event took about five seconds in real time. And when it was done, I wanted to do another take. Because we were a little underexposed.” He sighed, adding, “But that would have been another $50,000.”

Another challenge: the monstrous Marshmallow Man in “Ghostbusters.”

“Can you imagine--I’m turning the script’s pages and I come upon a gigantic Marshmallow Man trampling through New York! That was tricky, because if it wasn’t done right, the film’s whole climax was going to fall apart.”

So how was the scene done? “We shot it about 4 in the morning. I think we had every generator and arc light in New York City lighting up Columbus Circle.” After shooting a sequence with extras, car crashes and the rest of the resulting “terror” (as created by the monster), they added effects shots of a man in a Marshmallow suit. Edlund said the suit was about six feet tall, but “we shot him in a way that made him look real tall, then we matched lighting, angles and everything, and put him in the scene.”

What makes that sequence a particular favorite of Edlund’s is the way that the Marshmallow Man is first glimpsed between several skyscrapers. “We had this idea that his little head, with that dumb smile, should be seen just for an instant. And boy, did it work. The audience caught on right away.”

Making dreams (and sometimes, nightmares) to order is a specialty of Edlund’s Boss Film Corp., located in a two-story concrete industrial building in Marina Del Rey.

The former Coca-Cola warehouse houses a creature shop, “cloud tanks” and lots of special photographic equipment. (The 40,000-square-foot facility is also the former home of the Entertainment Effects Group, which was formed by Douglas Trumbull, creator of photographic special effects for such films as “2001,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner.”)

The better to bestow special abilities--like flying across nighttime skies and leaping over canyons--upon seemingly everyday people. And to dispatch men and women to the furthest reaches of outer space, as in “2010.” And to conjure up creatures of every size and substance, from the winged blood-sucker of “Fright Night” to the assorted supernatural critters in “Ghostbusters” to the alien that will square off against Arnold Schwarzenegger in the upcoming “Predator.” Formed three years ago by Edlund, following his eight-year association with George Lucas and the “Star Wars” films, Boss Film Corp.’s special effects can be seen in “The Boy Who Could Fly” (opening Friday), in which a teen-age boy does just that, and in “Solar Babies” (opening late November), about a group of futuristic young people befriended by an ancient force that appears as a ball of light.

The company’s effects also “starred” in a quartet of summer releases:

“Big Trouble in Little China,” all about adventures in and beneath Chinatown. The effect-laden production finds one character riding into view on a bolt of lightning animation.

“Desert Bloom,” which required a scene showing an atomic bomb blast.

“Legal Eagles,” which includes a spectacular sequence of a burning art gallery.

“Poltergeist II: The Other Side,” which depicts a journey to a purgatorial astral dimension--along with the requisite monsters.

What makes these films’ special effects all the more special is the fact that, within each film, they are unique. There is no catalogue of special effects from which film makers can choose. “They don’t just wander in and say, ‘I’ll take explosion A,’ or ‘I’ll take flying scene B,’ ” smiled Edlund. “Everyone wants something that they can call their own.”

Boss Film, which shoots its special effects on 65-millimeter film (during the final optical stage, the shots are reduced to the industry’s standard 35mm stock), is currently at work on the special-effects signatures for “Masters of the Universe” and “The Monster Squad.” (The former is based on the animated Saturday TV series about the exploits of a super hero; the latter is a comedy-adventure about a group of kids whose belief in monsters turns out to be true.)

A reporter got a glimpse of special-effects sequences-in-the-making during a morning screening of dailies. Some three dozen Boss Film workers, and the officiating Edlund, alternately oohed, aahed and discussed moments from “The Boy Who Could Fly” and “Solar Babies.” “Beautiful! Just beautiful,” boomed the tall, bearded Edlund, during a dreamy sequence from “The Boy Who Could Fly.” The scene showed a teen-age boy and girl flying romantically over nighttime skies, pausing to kneel together on a fluffy cloud for a brief kiss. (Edlund would later explain that the actors had “flown” with the use of wires. And their kiss took place as they knelt on a seesaw; their images were later placed against the starry nighttime backdrop.)

Then there was the shimmery whirlpool--just a scant few seconds long--that would be used in “Solar Babies.”

“So how’d you do that one?” Edlund asked a co-worker.

The answer: “Breakfast cereal.” The room broke into laughter, followed by an admission that glass beads had actually formed the swirling effect.

Next was a spectacular leap across a canyon for “Solar Babies.” “Looks great,” Edlund murmured. Then he turned to the row behind him, and explained to a reporter, “We did that one by photographing a guy over at Venice Beach, leaping some sand. Then we put in the painted (canyon) backdrops.”

Edlund--whose career was the subject of a tribute at the recent Toronto Film Festival--got his start with a visit to the Hollywood Unemployment Office. They sent him on an interview with special-effects photographer Joe Westheimer.

“I’ve never heard of anybody else getting into the business that way--have you?” asked Edlund, who was then nearly a junior at USC’s School of Cinema. (He’d earlier served in the Navy, where he worked with photographic equipment.)

He worked for Westheimer for five years. “I did everything. I was a cameraman. I hand-lettered titles. I set up weird, trick shots,” like those of marching Gillette razor blades and the ones showing how all those tomatoes squeeze into a bottle of Hunt’s ketchup.

Then he decided to try something new. “The hippie scene started happening. So, I decided to be a hippie. But I was the working kind,” said Edlund, who worked as a still photographer, shooting album covers and posters for groups like the Association, the Fifth Dimension and the Grass Roots.

“Then the rock ‘n’ roll scene started changing, and strange dope started coming in, and I didn’t really care for it. So I left.”

He took what he called “a sabbatical” in San Francisco, “where I drove a tour bus--a cable car on a Ford truck chassis. It was the ultimate hippie job.” During that period, he got involved in making experimental films.

When he made his way back to Los Angeles, he designed and marketed a guitar amplifier (the Pignose) that is now a standard piece of equipment for guitarists. “And I learned a lot about the business world that way: I never made any money off it. But it taught me about getting around in this business. Because the music business is sort of like the movie business, in that there are a lot of sharks swimming around.”

Edlund wound up returning to photography, working with an effects company that utilized computers to make commercials. It was there that he helped to create a 7-Up commercial that became well-known for its psychedelic look--and its beautiful “butterfly girl.” He also worked on the development of what came to be known as “the candy apple neon look. It was animated graphics with light flashes and a chromed look. It was basically eyewash, but it was more dazzling than just looking at standard title cards. “I hated commercials, generally, because of the pyramid of opinions involved. After the work was done, some advertising executive would argue about the Freudian images of soap bubbles. That kind of thing.”

It was during this period that Edlund was introduced to an associate of George Lucas, who told him “about this wild concept called ‘Star Wars.’ ”

“We were a band of renegades, really,” Edlund mused. He wasn’t even a member of the cinematographer’s union when he was first hired for “Star Wars.” (“I had quit, earlier, when I became a hippie.”) He was the film’s special-effects director of photography.

“I was in the right place at the right time with the right capabilities,” he said. “You know, when people ask me, ‘What happens to effects now? How much further can they go?’ I can only say, ‘Look back 10 years ago, at “Star Wars.” ’ Because we keep advancing. And already, there are moments in that film, that look a little, well, creaky.”

And then there are those scenes that would seem to retain their impact, well, almost forever.

At least one of them was pulled off for next to nothing.

The famed hyperspace shot was accomplished by shooting a Polaroid camera on a piece of glass.

“That effect cost about five bucks,” laughed Edlund. (He was serious as he added, “It brought me the biggest burst of applause in my career.”)

Unlike its sequels, “Star Wars” didn’t shoot under tight security. The set wasn’t even closed. The reason was simple: “No one took what we were doing seriously. It was an outer-space movie--when no one was making them. It was on Page 7 of 20th Century Fox’s list of movies to come. Everybody thought ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ was going to be the big hit.”

He laughed: “And there I was, saying, ‘Hey, we did another one!’ Because the goal was to do things that hadn’t been done before. The goal was to unseat ‘The Shark.’ ” (“Jaws” was then one of the Top 10 films.)

The result: a film that Edlund credits with helping to instigate no less than “the renaissance of special effects.” (“Close Encounters,” released a few months after “Star Wars,” also figured in that honor.)

As Edlund pointed out: “The year before, the two big genre films were ‘King Kong’ and ‘Logan’s Run.’ So you can see, the strides that were taken were enormous.

“ ‘Star Wars’ was a complete innovation. It was as if we built a Stradivarius and then had to learn to play it. We really didn’t have much time to learn how.”

Little wonder, considering what transpired, that he deems the opening shot in “Star Wars” (in which the “bad guys” go after the “good guys” following the legendary scroll that begins, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”) “one of the genre’s most significant shots--and it may be my favorite shot, because it started my career.

“It was also the most important shot in all the ‘Star Wars’ films. Because if the audience didn’t buy that shot 100%, we’d have lost it right there.”

He went on to help pioneer Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the special-effects arm of Lucas’ Marin County-based Lucasfilm. In fact, Edlund was the architect of the photographic system, which means he designed and built much of ILM’s equipment.

“In this business, you have to build your own equipment because it doesn’t exist. So if you want to do something, you sometimes start out with an idea and say, ‘OK, now we have to build the equipment to carry out the idea.’

“Sometimes you build the equipment knowing that it will spawn all sorts of ideas.”

Edlund went on to work on “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” In between, there was “The China Syndrome,” TV’s “Battlestar Gallactica,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Poltergeist.”

Along the way, he collected four Academy Awards. (They are for visual effects on “Star Wars,” several technical advances on “Empire” and visual effects on “Raiders.”)

He also got homesick for L.A. When the third film in the “Star Wars” trilogy was completed (and by the third time out, Edlund admitted, the project had become “tedious”), Edlund did what he called “a fade-out” at ILM. They’re now his chief competitor.

“In many ways, we’re also competing with ourselves,” said Edlund, who summed up his philosophy toward special effects this way: “Your only limitations are time and money.

“To say we can’t do any more with effects is like saying, ‘Well, they’ve made 100 movies. Why should they have to make any more?’ ”