If you're a film buff, you probably have a favorite director, can smell a cheesy rom-com from the first five seconds of its trailer, and know that anything produced by James Cameron is going to blow your mind with computer-generated imagery.
But who's your favorite special effects make-up artist?
Aha! You don't stick around for the credits. (Admittedly, neither do we.)
However, we should acknowledge that without the artistry of special effects make-up, some of our favorite films would've totally sucked. Benjamin Button wouldn't have aged, and the Joker would've just looked like the guy from Brokeback Mountain in drag.
Enter Miami natives Derek and Eric Garcia, fraternal twin brothers with a creative knack for making totally out-there prostheses and applying special-effects make-up. They're contestants on this season of the Syfy network's most popular reality competition show, Face Off.
"[Filming the show] was an amazing experience," says Derek, a tattoo artist by trade. "I'm glad to be on the show and hopefully it'll open up some doors for me."
The Garcia brothers have always excelled artistically, beginning at a young age. As kids, Derek would work on monster make-up creations on his brother Eric. Eventually it paid off, and both men landed gigs as special effects make-up artists at Universal Studios in Orlando, honing their skills at Halloween Horror Nights.
Naturally, the twins decided to audition for Face Off together.
"At first, I really didn't want to audition--I was nervous about the cameras and that situation," says Eric, who spoke to New Times from his home in Central Florida. "My brother was going to come up from Miami and audition in Orlando, and he said, 'Just go with me.'"
Derek was also skeptical of the cameras, admitting that they're tough getting accustomed to at first.
"You have to pretend they're not there," he says. "It was definitely a weird experience, but I got used to it."
Cameras, of course, were the least of the twins' worries. After all, they were competing for $100,000 and the chance to become a guest lecturer at the Make Up Forever Academies in Paris and New York.
Neither could get into detail about the competition, though Eric says everyone on the show got along really well.
"I think we all bonded really quickly," he says. "There was no drama; we all had fun hanging out and talking. It was kind of like summer camp."
Derek agrees. He also told us that it's been incredibly difficult keeping his mouth shut about the show around friends and family.
"It's definitely hard for me to keep quiet," he says. "But I want people to be surprised and on the edge of their seat when they're watching the show. I want my friends and family to be surprised with the outcome."
Whatever that outcome is, Derek knows that his family will be proud.
"They're very supportive of anything I do. My dad wanted me to be a director, or somebody in the movies, and I think he's very proud that I'm diving into the movie industry."
Watch Derek and Eric Garcia on season three of Face Off, premiering Tuesday, August 21 at 9 p.m. on Syfy.
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