CONFETTI IN THE FORECAST FOR SUPER BOWL.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

Expect rain at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday - a generous showering of tiny tissue-paper footballs, that is.

When football's 1998 world champions clinch the title tomorrow, owners of Artistry in Motion Entertainment Inc. - along with millions of football fans - will watch their handiwork fall from the sky.

Employees of the Van Nuys company, which specializes in special-effects confetti, has been working overtime for weeks, turning out white, silver and gold confetti, plus 3-inch-long, die-cut paper footballs in the colors of the two competing Super Bowl XXXII teams.

More than 2 million pieces of confetti and footballs will be shot over the players and spectators - and up to 75 feet into the air - from six on-field cannons as the game clock expires.

``There'll be green and gold footballs if the Green Bay Packers win and blue and orange footballs if the Denver Broncos win,'' said Deana Sterr, who co-owns the company with Clark Bason.

A Wisconsin native, she's rooting for Green Bay.

``If the Broncos win, we'll shower the field in a spectacular display of blue and orange - then we'll take all the green and yellow footballs and have our own celebration,'' she said with a laugh.

Spectacle is nothing new to Sterr and Bason; both have been in the entertainment field for more than a decade, planning parades, political conventions, world's fairs and other celebrations.

So when they wanted to escape the eye of the event-planning whirlwind, they saw a unique niche they could fill: providing paper streamers and confetti for events like those they had produced.

Their company provided airborne paper products for the 1984 Atlanta and 1990 New Orleans Super Bowl half-time shows, for the 1996 Democratic and Republican conventions and for the current Rolling Stones world tour.

Monday, it'll be their confetti and streamers showering winners at the American Music Awards at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium. On Wednesday, they and their cannon crew will help celebrate Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. And they'll dazzle the crowd in February at the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Those events, at least, are easy to plan for. The Super Bowl will be, too, if one team is so far ahead of the other that one last play won't decide the game. Sterr said.

But if it's a game that turns on a final pass or kick, the spectators won't be the only ones biting their nails. The cannon operators will have only a second or two to load the right-colored confetti for that final celebratory blast.

Another Valley firm will show its stuff during the Super Bowl half-time show. TubeWORKS Inc. of Calabasas, which specializes in giant fabric balloon figures, will unveil its ``Puff Boys'' technology for the first time Sunday, said Brittany Austin, the company's director of communications.

The big balloons will be tethered to large fans in battery-operated backpacks worn by dancers, with two dancers to a balloon figure. As the dancers move, so will the 25- to 30-foot balloons. They'll cavort on the field, then form a backdrop for Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' stage performance.

Company president Drake Diamond calls the critters ``mobile dancing inflatables.''

No word on which team they'rerooting for.

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Photo

Photo: Artistry in Motion's Deana Sterr, left, Kerry Millerick and Clark Bason simulate the shower of confetti for the winning Super Bowl team.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News