Chad Michael Murray faces off against a ghastly creature.

“I guess killing Paris [Hilton] (who played teen-in-jeopardy Paige Edwards) had its challenges,” Duguid continues. “There was an obvious solution to killing her from a technical point of view, but it was very rigorous on the actress. We had to rethink some of the ways we re-approached those shots to accommodate not harming or stressing her during the filming of elements. For example, if a shot conceived is a locked down shot, there is a vfx solution formulated for that. But on the day, the director is on the location and he sees the cinematic advantages of moving the camera, so that required a little bit of flying by the seat of our pants in acquiring the elements and adjusting our thinking on the fly, depending on what the performer was able to safely do on the day. I want to praise John Breslin’s work because he was able to accommodate those kinds of short notice changes and still ensure a result. There was a cause and effect as each change and adjustment was made, sometimes whole paradigm shifts had to occur in the way those shots were going to be tackled digitally, so that was a reasonably stressful moment, but I think the final moment was worth it.”

Pleased with their contributions on House of Wax, Duguid admits that the film has already taken them to new heights, creatively and financially. “From a conventional perspective, this film very much solidified our relationship with Warner Bros., which is great and has led on to subsequent projects with them. From a software and hardware point of view, we did some very interesting things combining motion controlling with marionette miniatures with a specialist contractor called, Norm Copeman. He’s a specialist rigger and we brought in his rigging devices with motion control, so that was a really new and interesting experience from a technical perspective. Aesthetically, we learned playing with fire is great fun, but it’s also very difficult to get it right,” he chuckles. “We learned a lot about integrating real elements with burning things.” But most importantly, Duguid says in particular one lesson above all others will last for him. “It certainly has taught me I should never build my own house out of wax and if I do, build one without a fireplace!” he laughs.

Tara DiLullo is an East Coast-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as SCI FI Magazine, Dreamwatch and ScreenTalk, as well as the websites atnzone.com and ritzfilmbill.com.