DIGITAL L.A. : JUMPING INTO THE FILM GAME.

Byline: David Bloom 

When game guru Chris Roberts was tapped to direct a movie version of his ``Wing Commander'' series of videogames, a few eyebrows arched.

What, some wondered, was a gamer doing directing a big-time (well, relatively speaking) film?

Plenty, it seems.

At the film's premiere in Westwood recently, Roberts said it wasn't a big jump for him to do a $25 million effects-laden picture. After all, his last game, Wing Commander IV, had a $12 million budget, tons of full-motion video segments and a cast that included Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies.

``Here's the big difference: When I make a computer game, it's longer and more drawn out, more interactive. And if something doesn't work, I can go back and change it,'' Roberts said. ``Filmmaking is more cut and dried.''

The storytelling is equally compact in a film compared to a game, Roberts said. Wing Commander IV, for instance, normally gives a player 20 to 30 hours of entertainment, compared to the 1-1/2 to two hours of most movies.

``You have a much bigger canvas to work with'' in a game, Roberts said. ``With film, you have two hours to nail it.''

He did in a fun little film that makes for perfect summer fare in any summer that doesn't have the next ``Star Wars'' film coming out. That's why the movie was released in mid-March, in about 2,000 theaters nationwide.

`It's World War II in space,'' Roberts said. ``It definitely has an old-time war movie feel. I could have made it a lot more like the Wing Commander game, but I made a conscious decision to make it look different, to give it its own personality.''

The movie opened modestly, with about $8.9 million in box-office receipts in its first 10 days. Of course, it'll play not only in the United States, but overseas and should have a long life in video, so there's a good chance it'll make back its money and more.

Having survived his first movie, Roberts would like to do another, with a bigger budget, of course.

``I basically feel like I'm starting out with making movies,'' Roberts said. After ``taking everything I loved about movies and (trying) to get it into games,'' he now wants to take what he's learned in both game and film creation and make more films.

``I have a stack of scripts to read,'' Roberts said. ``I like escapist fantasy things that take you to another world. I'm less interested in doing another buddy cop movie.''

Hall of famer

Speaking of game gurus, Sid Meier has to be somewhere around the top of any list of influential game designers of the past couple of decades.

And the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences recognized just that when it announced this week that Meier would be the second person inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ceremony will take place during the first night of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, the massive game-industry convention returning to Los Angeles on May 13.

Meier is perhaps best-known for creating Civilization and Civilization II, the magnificently balanced ``God'' games that let players create and develop civilizations around the world, investing in technology, commerce, infrastructure and military while exploring the world around them.

Most recently, he released a space-based game of somewhat similar proportions, the widely praised Alpha Centauri, and also created Gettysburg and Railroad Tycoon.

``He's recognized as one of the true pioneers of interactive gaming,'' said Glenn Entis, the academy's chairman of the board. ``This year it (picking a nominee) was a very easy decision, looking at Sid's background and contributions to the field.''

Meier grew up in Michigan and studied computer science at the University of Michigan before moving to Baltimore for a computer job. But in 1982, bitten with the gaming bug, he quit to co-found MicroProse, where he wrote the first-ever flight simulator game, F-15 Strike Eagle.

The influence of that genre-starter, and of subsequent ones such as Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, was a major reason for Meier's induction, Entis said.

Three years ago, Meier left the now-giant MicroProse to create Firaxis Games, where he could concentrate on his main interest - writing games - without worrying about the headaches of distribution and marketing. Firaxis is based in Baltimore.

Meier said the secret to his many great games is his own enjoyment of playing games, despite the fact that, at 45, he's too old to have grown up playing them.

``I hope that comes through: that somebody who loves games put these things together,'' Meier said. ``The games are just something I think were cool, like when I was growing up and really liked trains,'' he said. ``I'm just trying to capture the fun you thought was there.''

His favorite recent games created by others include StarCraft, SimCity 3000 and Diablo, he said. And playing them regularly with his 8-year-old son helps keep him young.

Meier started out writing tiny, floppy-based games that had three-page manuals and were wrapped in plastic baggies. Now they're shrink-wrapped boxes of CD-ROMS with extraordinary graphics and sounds bringing complex simulations to life. But the business hasn't changed that much, he said.

``It's really a lot less different than you might think,'' Meier said. ``The technology has come a long way, of course. ... But, you're still trying to capture a gamer's imagination and make them the star of the story, instead of just watching it.''

The Hall of Fame nomination was a bit of a shock for Meier because such honors often imply that a winner's best days may be behind him, he said.

``I was certainly surprised,'' Meier said. ``I don't see myself as winding down.''

Pleasant viewing

It may pain the film purists, but sometimes digital really can be the way to go in watching some movies. Certainly, the folks over New Line Cinema would make a case for that regarding the DVD version of ``Pleasantville,'' which will be released Tuesday.

The good-natured tale of '90s-era youths transported into a black-and-white 1950s world used impressive special effects to selectively color parts of the screen, as the transported youths change the way the community thinks of itself and each other.

Ultimately, said New Line vice president for post-production Evan Edelist, ``the color really becomes a character in the movie.''

Creating 1,700 special-effects shots involved a torturous process that involved shooting the film in color, then converting it back and forth between a digital version and film version a couple of times, while stripping out all color and selectively reintroducing it.

The result smoothed out the transitions between color areas and black-and-white ones, but is best seen in a digital format. Thus, Edelist said, ``the DVD is the most representative of the vision of director Gary Ross, the director of photography and the color effects team.''

The DVD version does look smashing, and the disc comes with a ton of extras (beyond a really fine movie) that make the release one of the more satisfying in recent times.

Aong the features are an audio track featuring Ross' comments on the film; another audio track featuring composer Randy Newman's comments on his Oscar-nominated score; and a ``special effects film school'' feature describing how some scenes were created.

It also has the terrific Fiona Apple music video of ``Across the Universe,'' created for the film by ``Boogie Nights'' director Paul Thomas Andersen; a look at the two fat volumes of storyboards Ross created in planning the film; and a visit to East L.A. muralist Frank Romero's studio, where he discusses the mural he created for the film.

The disc also includes some computer-only features such as a complete script, tied to storyboards, that can be printed or used to jump through scenes in the film. A complete cast and crew list links to the Internet Movie Database to provide always up-to-date information about each participant.

This is pleasant viewing indeed.

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Photo

Photo: The DVD version of ``Pleasantville,'' being released Tuesday, is considered most representative of what the director, cinematographer and color-effects team tried to achieve.