COMPUTER EFFECTS MAY MAKE ON-SCREEN SEX SCENES SAFER.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Just as mainstream movie studios are learning that dangerous stunts can be made safer through digital trickery, health officials hope the adult-film industry could someday make on-screen sex safer through computers.

Health officials who want to require safe-sex practices in the industry hope the industry will embrace emerging technology that allows computers to remove the image of a condom.

``We have at our disposal some really amazing tools and people,'' said Steve Riera, a San Francisco special-effects artist who is starting a company that would provide such digitizing technology to adult-film companies.

``In the grand scope of things, this kind of thing is not extremely difficult. But to make it look good is difficult. Making skin look like skin is one of the hardest things in visual effects.''

But a day when actors are not needed at all, he said, is still far off. The technology is only good for duplicating certain shots - most computerized facial expressions still look digitized, he said.

He has been shopping his technology around to production companies in the Los Angeles area, and has found accelerated interest in the wake of the industry's current HIV scare, although he has yet to sign a contract. He isn't aware of any other companies already providing the service.

The technology is expensive, he concedes - he won't say how much - and likely won't be used by the smaller production companies. But it is certainly within the reach of the industry's five largest companies, he said.

Dr. Peter Kerndt, head of Los Angeles County's sexually transmitted disease-control program, foresees a day when adult films use labels similar to those that mainstream movies have regarding the safe treatment of animals. Just as those films tout that no animals were harmed during production and filming was monitored by animal-rights groups, adult films could say no actor was exposed to risk of disease.

But cost will remain an issue for the industry's smaller players.

Sharon Mitchell, a former adult-film actress who runs the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks, said just as smaller companies are reluctant to require regular testing for their actors, they will be reluctant to spend the money for such technology.

``You've got a group of people that are going to always produce films without condoms and they aren't going to have the money necessarily to spend digitizing them out of that shot footage. Those are the ones that won't come in to test and are reluctant to cooperate.''

Harrison Sheppard, [phone]

harrison.sheppard(at)dailynews.com