BOB TO THE FUTURE HE'S TAKING ALMA MATER INTO THE DIGITAL AGE.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

Special effects have come a long way since Robert Zemeckis was studying film at USC.

With a Super 8 camera in hand, the future Hollywood director of such films as ``Cast Away,'' ``Forrest Gump'' and ``Back to the Future'' could make it look as if a person was jumping on top of a table in a single bound by shooting upside-down and cutting the film into the strip backward.

``To have your character jump up to the top of a 20-story building in a single bound, that you would have to do here at the digital center,'' said Zemeckis, who was on hand for the opening of the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts on Thursday.

The center, built in a former warehouse just north of the USC campus in South Central Los Angeles, is being called a one-of-a-kind facility. While most universities are still analog, USC is giving its film students a leg up in the digital revolution now rapidly spreading through the motion picture industry.

Zemeckis as long been fascinated with advances in film technology. You may remember, the director paired up Bob Hoskins and some animated co-stars in ``Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'' It was also Zemeckis who placed fictional Forrest Gump in historical footage for the Oscar-winning film. It was after seeing the scene of Forrest (Tom Hanks) shaking hands with President Kennedy that he got the idea for the center.

``That's the first time a shot appeared in one of my films and I didn't know how it was done,'' said Zemeckis at the gala opening of the center. ``I realized I had to learn about the future of a technology that was playing a major part in my films.''

What struck him more was knowing it also played a major role in the work of other filmmakers.

That's when Zemeckis took his idea to Elizabeth Daley, dean of his alma mater's School of Cinema-Television, and together they made it happen.

Zemeckis got the ball rolling in 1998 with a $5 million contribution.

Filmmakers George Lucas, another USC alum, and Steven Spielberg, an honorary alumnus, later pitched in to build adjoining digital stages. Spielberg named his after the late Stanley Kubrick and Lucas named his for Akira Kurosawa, the famed Japanese director.

Four of Hollywood's major studios - Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures - also contributed to the center, either giving money or equipment. The Creative Artists Agency and the William Morris Agency were also among the long list of contributors that includes filmmaker Ron Howard, entertainment mogul David Geffen and the David Kirschner family.

The center includes numerous classrooms, five stages for digital (or film) productions, studios for the campus television station, two large editing rooms with 30 digital editing machines in each, several individual editing suites for advanced projects, a computer animation laboratory and a motion-capture stage.

Although the $25 million, 35,000-square-foot center is still under construction, students are being allowed into the center to practice on the kind of state-of-the-art tools they'll be using later on in their careers.

``It's important these kids don't come into the real world without the tools and the knowledge of how to apply their talent inside a world that's rapidly changing technologically,'' said Spielberg, who said he has personally been slow to embrace the digital age, preferring to shoot movies like ``Saving Private Ryan,'' ``Jurassic Park'' and ``Raiders of the Lost Ark'' all on film.

Nevertheless, his participation is a clear indication that the digital age - although still in its infancy - is rapidly growing up. Lucas' ``Star Wars: Episode 2,'' which is currently in production, is the first major studio film being shot with new-generation digital cameras. When it's released in 2002, many theaters will use a digital projection system to exhibit it.

Despite the advantage the students now have, filmmakers agree the special effects shouldn't get in the way of the primary responsibility taught to them at USC.

That's storytelling.

``This is a school of communicating through using the moving image,'' said Lucas, another alumnus who has gone on to become one of Hollywood's great filmmakers. ``And they're just as concerned about what you're communicating as they are with how you're doing it.''

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Photo:

Robert Zemeckis talks to the media during a tour of the special-effects room of the new digital training center for film studies at USC.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer