DOING IT HIS WAY : `FRIGHTENERS' DIRECTOR STAYS CLOSE TO HOME.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

With enough special-effects footage to power three or four conventional summer blockbusters, Peter Jackson's ``The Frighteners'' looks like it kept the Industrial Light and Magic folks up all night for a year.

But none of ``The Frighteners' '' effects were generated at Marin County's computer graphics paradise - which was booked solid with ``Twister,'' ``Mission: Impossible'' and ``Dragonheart'' anyway. They didn't come out of any big, Hollywood special-effects houses, either.

They were done nearly half a world away in Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson has made all of his films - ``Dead Alive'' (a k a ``Braindead''), a hilariously excessive zombie comedy; ``Meet the Feebles,'' a grotesque ``Muppets'' parody; ``Heavenly Creatures,'' the critically acclaimed psychological study of two real-life teen-age murderers - in his native land. Just because ``The Frighteners'' was set up as a pop supernatural comedy with a major American star (Michael J. Fox), Jackson, 34, saw no reason to leave home for it.

``This was definitely an attempt to be more commercial,'' the filmmaker, who wrote ``The Frighteners'' screenplay with his longtime scripting partner (and mother of their 13-month-old son) Frances Walsh, said by phone from New Zealand. ``It's my first film with a big star, and it has a lot more computer effects.

``But I felt more comfortable about making it in New Zealand; it's a security thing. I know how to make films here and I don't know how to make them in America. I'm aware of the way Hollywood takes foreign directors it perceives to be interesting and then homogenizes them. Working in New Zealand very much protects me from that possibility. I can be more attuned to my instincts here, rather than constantly thinking, `What does Hollywood want me to do?' ''

The example of his countryman Lee Tamahori, who went from the distinctively homegrown ``Once Were Warriors'' to the unfocused L.A. thriller ``Mulholland Falls,'' pretty well proves Jackson's point. Still, there's only one town in the world where anyone can get financing to make a $38 million effects movie, and you need a big Hollywood gorilla on your side to do it.

Jackson got a 1,000-pounder. Robert Zemeckis, director of the Oscar-winning ``Forrest Gump,'' the ``Back to the Future'' trilogy and ``Who Framed Roger Rabbit,'' agreed to executive produce ``The Frighteners'' on the strength of Jackson and Walsh's script.

``It was a brilliant screenplay,'' said Zemeckis, the most financially successful filmmaker in history after his own mentor, Steven Spielberg. ``I found it wildly entertaining and really clever, a movie I really wanted to see. What's interesting is that it uses the best parts from all the folklore and movies involving death and dying and the occult - the best ideas of `Ghost' and `Poltergeist' and `Ghostbusters' - and blends them into a totally coherent story. I thought it was wonderful.''

Set in a small, seaside city that's presumably American, ``The Frighteners'' starts out as a kind of ``Ghostbusters'' meets ``The Sting.'' Fox plays Frank Bannister, a sleazy sort who promotes his questionable exorcism abilities to graveside mourners.

Not that Bannister is a complete fraud. He can communicate with undeparted spirits, the result of a near-fatal auto accident. But the ghosts he chases out of haunted homes for a fee are his partners. It's a living, marginally, until some malevolent ghost Bannister isn't in cahoots with starts frightening people to death.

As Bannister is drawn deeper into this new mystery, the comedy levels out, the horror increases, and we start to learn a lot more about what really makes the troubled scam artist tick.

``I like to try to make characters deeper than the ones you usually encounter in genre films,'' Jackson explained, ``give them a psychological journey to travel through in the course of the film. It intrigues me to have intelligence going on under masks of incredible gore or gags.

``It's fun to take an initial idea - the guy pretends to be a ghostbuster - then add intellectual stuff, depth and character development to it,'' Jackson continued. ``Who is this guy that lives with ghosts? The story really becomes about how he can't live with human beings anymore, and how he overcomes that. He has to find his way back into living like a real person again.''

And find that way through a maze of pulsating walls, glowing undead creatures, homicidal maniacs and murderous paranoids. To bring off some 570 special-effects shots - 51 minutes of the final film's screen time - Jackson turned to Wes Takahashi, a computer graphics animator (``The Mask,'' ``Star Trek Generations'') and longtime effects animation supervisor, whose credits include ``Roger Rabbit'' and the Fox-starring ``Back to the Future'' films.

Takahashi's team spent a year developing the programs and tools ``The Frighteners'' required. Jackson put in a long seven months actually shooting the film, often with multiple passes of motion-controlled (i.e., digital memory-driven robot) cameras over the same action. ``So many scenes had to be shot twice,'' Jackson lamented. ``Once with Michael Fox, then again with the ghosts. That made it much longer than a usual production.''

Then came a year of post-production, in which all of the effects were composited and enhanced digitally. This had its good side, but also its bad points.

``I do like what computers can do,'' Jackson said. ``But you're used to finishing a shoot and knowing what you made; you can usually see a rough cut one week after you've wrapped. With `Frighteners,' 500-plus shots were still in segments at the end of principal photography. With so much to composite, it took a long time for it all to slowly materialize.

``But the good thing about computers is that they make post-production very interesting,'' Jackson added. ``I was able to keep directing animated figures, like one character we call the Reaper, all through its `performance,' long after the crew had packed up and left the movie.''

While all this was going on, techno-wiz Zemeckis was doing his best to stay out of Jackson's wildly ample hair. The executive producer's primary task was keeping his corporate buddies at Universal Pictures away from the director's mane, too.

``I was more instrumental in godfathering it through at the studio,'' Zemeckis said. ``The biggest fear everybody had was, `How can a movie this elaborate be done anywhere but at ILM?' Basically, I had to calm nerves.''

Zemeckis' contribution went somewhat beyond that, according to Jackson. And the director welcomed it.

``I couldn't dream of a producer who would treat me with more respect than Bob did,'' Jackson said. ``But it was great to have one of the most successful filmmakers in the world give me ideas. There's no one else you'd want doing that more than Bob Zemeckis - but he always said, `Use 'em or don't, it's your decision.' ''

``I think what Peter is saying is the same thing that I always found to be great about the relationship I have with Spielberg,'' Zemeckis added. ``It's wonderful to have a powerful producer who is actually a filmmaker, because you're able to talk in the same language.

Known for making major technical advances with practically every film he shoots, Zemeckis admitted there's nothing really new along those lines to be seen in ``The Frighteners.'' Ah, but behind the scenes ...

``The idea that a creative filmmaker can set up shop anywhere in the world is the breakthrough,'' Zemeckis noted. ``The same computer workstations that are sold to these big effects houses are the same ones we sent down to New Zealand.``What it signals, to me, is the beginning of this type of digital imaging being part of any filmmaker's standard equipment package. Peter's editing rooms were upstairs and all these images were being created downstairs in the same building.

It remains to be seen whether Jackson will break his self-imposed location ban and film some of his next feature - what he calls a ``faithful to the original'' remake of ``King Kong'' - in New York. For the moment, though, he's pleased with the way he has bridged the vast ocean between Wellington and California, as well as between personal filmmaking and commercial product, for ``The Frighteners.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) In ``The Frighteners,'' scam artist Frank Ban nister (Michael J. Fox, center) makes a living running his own ghostly business partners - Stuart (Jim Fyfe, left) and Cyrus (Chi McBride) - out of haunted houses. Things get hairy when Bannister meets up with a ghost that isn't part of the scam.

(2) With the blessing of executive producer Robert Zemeckis, director Peter Jackson opted to shoot ``The Frighteners'' in New Zealand.