BIG-SCREEN DETAIL QUALITY COMES HOME; WITH `BUG'S LIFE,' ANIMATION TECHNOLOGY REARS ITS WILY ANTENNAE AS NEVER BEFORE.

Byline: Rob Lowman Daily News Entertainment Editor

As he calls from New York City, Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Animation, is looking out of his hotel window onto Times Square.

``I have almost the view you have a couple of times when Flik goes to Bug City,'' he explains.

Schumacher is referring to scenes in last year's Disney animated hit ``A Bug's Life'' and its hero. The film comes out on video and DVD Tuesday.

``If you look down the street toward downtown and you look over to the right where it would be the corner of 42nd and Seventh,'' he continues, referring to the film, ``you actually see a little `Lion King' sign, because John is a big `Lion King' fan.''

The John he's referring to is Pixar's John Lasseter, the director and writer of the film.

``I think it's fun to look at John's movies and seeing all the details. It's the greatest asset of video and certainly DVD.''

(``A Bug's Life'' lists for $26.95 for VHS and $34.99 for DVD, and will include both sets of comic animated outtakes that ran in theaters.)

For his part, Lasseter, who also directed ``Toy Story'' and has ``Toy Story 2'' coming out for the holidays, is excited by the fact that ``A Bug's Life'' is the first film to be digitally transferred directly from the original computer imagery rather than the standard film-to-video process.

Lasseter, who was calling while he drove to work at Pixar, says they have done two things to make ``A Bug's Life,'' which looked spectacular in theaters, play great on video.

``During the making of `Toy Story' we (were) constantly striving to correct the color but we never quite got the same quality we had on our high-resolution monitors. So, for `A Bug's Life,' we made a digital video copy every time we finished a scene. So, for the video release we went back and remastered the movie in digital video.''

Lasseter says that this eliminates the weave and dust hairs associated with film. And if a person buys ``A Bug's Life'' on DVD it's a true first, because it's the first time a film has been created digitally, remastered digitally and viewed at home digitally.

And ``A Bug's Life'' does, indeed, look spectacular on video, even on a regular TV. Like other video releases, ``A Bug's Life'' - which was made for the wide screen - will be offered in letterbox format, but Lasseter and Pixar made some adjustments for those who watch the regular format.

``It's hard to transfer (a wide-screen film) to video because you're only getting a portion of the movie as you saw it in the theater, and it's always very frustrating. So that people at home could see the movie as we intended, we went back and reframed many, many shots. Sometimes we kept the same frame width and just added the extra part of the frame above and below to fill it in. Other times we actually recomposed the frame by moving the characters closer together and recomputing it.''

Lasseter and Schumacher are excited by the advances in technology, but both stress that it's imagination that will govern the real advances in animation. At Disney, Schumacher is in a position to see what's happening. The Mouse has four major animated features coming out in a little more than a year: ``Tarzan,'' ``Toy Story 2,'' ``Fantasia 2000'' and ``Dinosaur'' for Memorial Day 2000.

Clearly the medium is still artist-dependent, Schumacher says, only with new tools - computers. ``Dinosaur,'' he says, is far more realistic-looking computer animation than anything so far, while ``Tarzan'' uses a completely different digital technology than ``A Bug's Life,'' making the traditionally painted background look three-dimensional.

``The medium itself is going to keep blending with all other aspects of film, with some things going to look highly realistic, and some things are going to be cartoony.'' But the decision of what to use will depend on the story, Schumacher emphasizes.

The pair also are aware that many people don't see a film until it comes out on video.

``When a movie of this type gets into video, that's when people and families see it again and again and again,'' Lasseter says, ``and it really becomes part of the culture, you might say.''

So, Lasseter knows that he's making films for more than the theaters.

``I jokingly say that you not only make these films for the first time a person sees it, but for the 100th time a parent has to suffer through it on video.''

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PHOTO If a person buys ``A Bug's Life'' on DVD, it's a true first, because it's the first time a film has been created digitally, remastered digitally and viewed at home digitally.