BLASTS FROM THE PAST : TECHNIQUE SHINES UP OLD FILMS.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

Peter Kuran, an expert at creating fake explosions, is on a mission to preserve the history of the world's biggest real explosions.

Kuran, founder of Sylmar-based Visual Concept Entertainment, spent a decade putting together ``Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie,'' a 95-minute documentary on nuclear weapons development and testing between 1945 and 1962. Most of the work was completed in his spare time between 1992 and 1995, while he worked on such projects as ``Nixon,'' ``Toys'' and ``Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.''

``I feel strongly that these atomic weapons blasts and tests represent a vital part of the world's history,'' Kuran said recently.

The self-produced project won awards last year at film festivals in Chicago and Houston although, as Kuran said, `` `Trinity' isn't exactly a date movie.''

Goldhil Home Media of Thousand Oaks recently bought the domestic home video rights and began marketing the video with a suggested retail price of $24.95 after Kuran sold about 800 copies on his own.

Kuran, currently in post-production for this summer's ``Starship Troopers,'' first became interested in the A-bomb after seeing the 1984 film ``Dreamscape,'' in which Edward Albert plays a president troubled by the prospect of nuclear war.

``I started looking for images of explosions and found what was available was old, scratched stock footage,'' he said. ``I'd say, `God, this stuff is in terrible condition, where's the real stuff?' and that would be all there was.''

Kuran began his career at the age of 18 working for George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic on optical and laser effects for ``Star Wars'' and has credits on more than 200 films. He founded VCE two decades ago at about the same time he was working for Lucas on the light-saber effects for ``The Empire Strikes Back.''

In the early 1990s, Kuran began collecting declassified footage of U.S. nuclear tests, government newsreels and informational videos for employees of nuclear test projects. He also bought rarely seen footage of Chinese and Russian tests, including the 1957 explosion in Siberia of a 57-megaton bomb, the largest bomb in history.

``A lot of the footage was falling apart,'' Kuran recalled. ``You'd either have blue shadows or yellow highlights, which are difficult to adjust effectively since they're opposites of each other. In other words, if you correct the yellows, it distorts the blues.''

Along the way, he invented a cost-effective technique he calls Restored Color Image, for retrieving the color from faded prints. At first, he tried to restore the colors by adjusting the red, green and blue but found the technique did not work if the print was severely degraded already.

``It was a question of necessity being the mother of invention,'' said Kuran, who claims RCI costs about 5 percent of current digital color restoration processes. He has applied for a U.S. patent for the RCI technique, which is designed to retrieve faded color from prints and replace it by using two ``masks,'' one for contrast and a second for the yellow colors.

About half of ``Trinity'' includes restored footage. Most of the film's scenes are straightforward, although there are offbeat moments such as Chinese soldiers and horses in anti-radiation gear and Marilyn Monroe on a bed, stressing the importance of national security.

``I grew up in the '50s and I think it was a special time that we won't see again,'' Kuran said. ``I think it's a point in time in need of preservation.''

Kuran has used RCI to restore about 100 badly degraded feet of the master print of the 1974 classic ``Chinatown,'' and would consider either contract work to restore other films or licensing the process, particularly for those films made between the early 1950s and the early 1970s. The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that Kuran would be restoring nuclear weapons films as part of the DOE's efforts to declassify footage on tests between 1945 and 1963.

``It's going to take time for RCI to catch on commercially since I'm not a studio with a big budget to promote it,'' he said. ``But I'm open to anything.''

Gary Goldman, president of Goldhil, reported strong response to the videos, which will start shipping this week. ``We've received hundreds of calls already,'' he said.

Goldhil has signed distribution deals with Book of the Month Club, Publisher's Clearing House, Barnes and Noble, Doubleday and Critics Choice and a pay-per-view arrangement with DirecTV.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) A scene from Peter Kuran's ``Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie'' shows VIP guests at a nuclear test in 1952.

(2--Color) Peter Kuran of Visual Concept Entertainment devised a restoration process for old movies.

(3) The filming of a nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site (circa 1957) is part of an A-bomb testing documentary by Peter Kuran.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News