In the surprise megahit of the summer — Honey, I Shrunk the Kids — four children are accidentally reduced to a quarter-of-an-inch in height and deposited in a backyard jungle where grass and water drops and commonplace insects become horrendous life-threatening obstacles. Spearheaded by director Joe Johnston and executive producer Thomas G. Smith — both veterans of Industrial Light & Magic — the film featured a plethora of giant-size sets and props developed and supplied by production designer Gregg Fonseca and mechanical effects supervisor Peter Chesney. It also entailed a wide range of postproduction miniature and optical illusions accomplished on a shoe-string budget by stop-motion animators Phil Tippett and David Allen and by a diversity of small effects companies including Perpetual Motion Pictures, Visual Concept Engineering and Illusion Arts. The result was a minute comic fantasy on a grand scale.
