Film and TV gore is the lifeblood of effects firm

In a warehouse in Van Nuys, Jason Collins is proudly showing off body parts.

Strewn on a table are two bloody hearts with cords sticking out, an open chest cavity, a hand with a severed finger nearby, a necrotic liver and a bag stuffed with what looks like skin tissue. At another table, a man is sopping the blood from a stomach with a gash in it.

No, this isn’t the lair of a psychopathic serial killer in the Valley. It’s the workshop of Autonomous F/X, a company that specializes in “forensic effects” — creating synthetic body parts and corpses for the medical dramas and police shows that each year seem to amp up the gory details of human anatomy.

As for the silicone stomach with the gash, it’s hooked up to an air compressor that spews a stew of blood and guts that was made for a recent episode of Spike TV’s “1,000 Ways to Die” (a show that dramatizes some of the more bizarre ways people meet death).

“It makes a big mess,” Collins, co-owner of Autonomous F/X, said of the splatter from the stomach contraption. “I always feel sorry for the camera crew.”

In an era of digital effects and green-screen technology, many physical effects houses have struggled to stay alive. But Collins and his partner, Elvis Jones, have carved out a profitable niche, thanks to a demand for ever-more realistic forensic effects.

The company works on low-budget horror movies, but its meat and potatoes are locally produced television dramas, such as “Law & Order: Los Angeles,” “Rizzoli & Isles” and the recently canceled “Undercovers.”

Collins, 35, a film school graduate and self-taught makeup effects artist, first developed a fascination for fake corpses and body parts as a child when his father took him to see “An American Werewolf in London.”

“I was terrified of the werewolf,” Collins said. “I wanted to understand how they made it, like shining a light on the darkness.”

Collins spent several years at effects companies KNB Effects Group and Almost Human Inc., where he worked with Jones on the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” before the pair decided to go out on their own in 2005.

One of their first clients was “House,” now in its seventh season. Prop master Tyler Patton said the company’s tapeworms, human hearts and other props are so realistic that even the actors sometimes react to them as if they’ve just arrived fresh from the morgue.

“Their beating heart was a big hit because it looked so real,” Patton said. “The effects are so graphic it’s sometimes shocking. We’re pretty used to it, but the actors sometimes get a little queasy.”

The parts are made of foam or silicone, using molds that are cast on actors’ faces or limbs. The molds are made of a spongy, seaweed-based material called alginate — the same stuff that dentists use for teeth impressions — and wrapped mummy-like with bandages around the face or body of the actors. Drying takes about 10 or 15 minutes.

“It’s a bit like a car dealership,” said Jones, sitting in an office next to a head bust of a man in the 2007 horror film “Timber Falls” whose jaw has been blown off by a shotgun blast. “We pretty much have a mold for every body part.”

To accurately depict the stages of decomposition, Collins and Jones consult medical textbooks and study photos of actual homicide victims supplied by detectives. They mix their own fake blood from a corn-syrup recipe that is a “house secret.”

Collins said he expects Autonomous F/X to generate about $700,000 in revenue this year, up from $500,000 last year. Still, that’s down from 2008, before many service companies were hammered by the writers strike, a recession that caused studios to reduce the number of movies they are making, and the ongoing exodus of production from Southern California.

Collins said he lost one job he was counting on, an independent feature film, when the producers decided to move the production to Louisiana, which offers hefty tax incentives. To drum up business there, he is planning to open a satellite office in the state.

Still, there is plenty of work to keep him busy in Los Angeles, especially from shows like “1000 Ways to Die.” One recent episode involved creating a model of an obese man who can’t afford a liposuction and tries, with the help of some friends, a home remedy: a box cutter and industrial vacuum.

“We have two or three deaths a week,” Collins said. “It’s always a challenge to see what they come up with.”

richard.verrier@latimes.com