Remember that scene in Pulp Fiction where the kid had his head blown off in the back seat by John Travolta? What that actually was was a cast of the actors head connected to a funnel and an air tube. When the action signal was given, a button was pressed and oatmeal and chunks of egg were shot against the back window.

Most of us just watch these kinds of effects from our seats and go home when the movie is over, but for Greg Nicotero it is a career.

Nicotero is the one of three partners of K.N.B EFX, a special effects group that does creature, prosthetic and make-up effects for the movies. Nicotero will be on campus tonight to give a lecture and prop show about some of the effects that his company has done.

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If you ask any special effects person, you will basically get the same story, Nicotero said. This is something I have always been interested in. I can remember watching Jaws’ when I was a kid, and I knew it wasn’t a real shark, and I wanted to know how they had made it.

Nicotero attended Westminster College, where he studied biology but took a semester off when he had the opportunity to work on Day of the Dead in 1984.

Four years later, he started K.N.B EFX with partners Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger.

What makes our company a little different is that we have three partners, he said. That way we can work on more projects at once.

And the list of their projects is an extensive one. They have done effects for movies such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Dances With Wolves and Misery.

One of my favorite scenes that still gets a reaction is the hobbling scene in Misery’, Nicotero said, referring to how Kathy Bates breaks the foot of her prisoner with a sledge hammer. No matter how many times you see that movie, people still flinch when that scene comes on.

Nicotero said tonight’s show will consist of a lecture about some of the work his company has done with some slides and behind the scenes footage, as well as actual props used in some of the movies. One of those props he will have is the ear that was cut off the cop in Reservoir Dogs.

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I love doing these shows, he said. I like it when people come up afterwards and say that this is something they have always been interested in, and that they wonder how they could get into this kind of field.

I am also going to bring some behind-the-scenes footage of movies we did and some of the upcoming projects we have going, he said. I want to show people some things that they would not see by just tuning in Entertainment Tonight.’ I would recommend this program to anyone interested in movie making, and not just the effects.

As he watches the effects, it is also not uncommon for Nicotero to point out the mistakes and to praise some of the more technical ones.

There is one huge mistake in Jurassic Park,’ he said. In the scene where the kids are trapped in the kitchen by the raptor, if you look really close you can see a puppeteer’s hand move the tail into place.

When I saw that I called the company who did that effect and everyone wanted to take credit for it. I guess they wanted to be immortalized in a way.

I am also impressed with the singing plant in the movie Little Shop of Horrors.’ From a technical standpoint, that was a great scene, he said.

From sitting in his room as a kid playing with clay and making fake wounds with Elmer’s Glue to sticking a syringe into the chest of Uma Thurman. Success literally does come in many forms.

Special Effects in the Movies takes place at 8:00 tonight in Student Center Ballroom D. Admission is $2.