His effects are special

Can you make a fish jump out of a lake on cue?

Can you make it rain when there’s not a cloud in the sky?

Neil Stockstill and his crew can.

“But if I told you how, I’d have to kill you,” he jokes from the back of his special effects truck on location of “In the Electric Mist,” a big-screen adaptation of a novel by New Iberia author James Lee Burke.

The St. Martinville native and resident has worked so many projects in the more than 20 years he’s been in the business that he can’t remember them all, but said he was thrilled when called upon to do one right in his own backyard.

Though the amount of work in Louisiana has increased in recent years, “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience to get to do a movie in your hometown,” he said.

The movie has been filming in New Iberia, St. Martinville and throughout the Teche Area for about a month. It is expected to continue through the end of June.

On Friday, Stockstill’s crew was at Acadian Park in New Iberia to create the illusion of Detective Dave Robicheaux (Tommy Lee Jones) getting beaned in the head with a baseball off the bat of New Orleans mobster Julie “Baby Feet” Balboni (John Goodman). Today they were scheduled to be in St. Martinville making a closed sugar mill appear in full operation. Later this week they’ll be out at Spanish Lake for still more scenes.

“Special effects aren’t just explosions and crashes,” Stockstill said. “A curtain blowing in the wind is an effect, wind and rain are effects. There are not a lot of ‘big’ effects in this movie, a lot of mist — or fog — and some heavy-duty rainfall. It’s your basic bread and butter stuff.”

Stockstill first got into the business when “Shy People,” starring Barbara Hershey and Jill Clayburgh was being filmed in South Louisiana. He had a pump company at the time and when the film company had trouble with one of their fog-producing machines, he was called in.

“I fixed it and they kept me on,” he said.

“Shy People” was released in 1987.

From there he and wife Lavonne went to California, where they learned the trade. Then it was on to jobs in Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona and more.

“I never did one in New York, but I was in Michigan once,” he said.

But he’s always lived in South Louisiana, in fact, except for 13 years in DeRidder, he’s always lived in St. Martinville.

Former films

Stockstill and company were last in Shreveport doing the special effects for “a Stephen King monster movie” titled “The Mist,” one of about a half-dozen movies currently being filmed in and around Shreveport.

“We’ve done so many things on so many projects, it would be hard to pick out a favorite or a most unusual,” he said. “But there was this one time in Denton, Texas ...”

Stockstill and crew were doing the effects for “The Prodigy” when the script called for a rain scene from a seven-story building.

“The temperature went from 45 to about 16 degrees in three or four hours,” Stockstill said. “We were up there pumping the rain but when it was hitting the sidewalk it was turning to ice.”

Stockstill said he remembers his daughter — the company, at one time or another, has been a family organization — telling him that she couldn’t feel her left leg.

“She was wearing layers of clothes and, somehow, her jeans inside the slicker got wet and froze solid,” Stockstill said. “I had to bring her back to the hotel room and help her pull the frozen pants off. I hit them on the table to break up the ice. “She put on a dry pair and went back out to finish the shoot.”

Stockstill’s son, Ian, also worked that film with the crew and said he remembers one of the camera booms freezing in mid-swing during that particular scene.

“The Prodigy” was a relatively low-budget film, but the elder Stockstill said it did provided one of his most memorable effects.

“There were a lot of bullet hits in that movie — more than 200,” he said. “One of the scenes was in a pool hall and they wanted a bullet to strike the cue ball and make the cue ball jump over another ball and sink yet another ball.

“It took some time, but it happened.”

Stockstill’s Web site, neilsfx.com, lists nearly 40 feature movies, television movies and programs, music videos and other projects that he’s been involved with, but it’s not a complete list.

“My daughter started that and it hasn’t been updated in a while,” he said.

Filming in Louisiana

Since the Louisiana Legislature enacted film incentives in 2002, the economic impact of film-industry spending in the state went from $7.5 million in 2003 to $344 million in 2005, according to a report from Economics Research Associates in Chicago.

The 2006 figures are still being calculated.

The movie-industry spending created more than 13,000 jobs by 2005 when 23 feature films were shot in the state, according to the research.

“Louisiana’s always been a pretty popular place to film movies, but it wasn’t until recently that the people of Louisiana began to benefit from them,” Stockstill said. “The state passed all these incentives, it’s time to use them.”

Louisiana offers filmmakers a generous tax incentive — a tax credit equal to 25 percent of a studio’s in-state spending and an additional 10 percent of the payroll of Louisiana residents employed for production.

“These production crews used to come in here and hire everybody out of L.A.,” Stockstill said. “My whole crew (for this film) is from St. Martinville and a lot of people out there are from around here.”

Right now, Shreveport seems to be “the hub” for productions, Stockstill said. “But I hear they’re building a big stage/studio in Baton Rouge, so look for activity in this part of the state to pick up.”