FEELING THE FX; `PHANTOM MENACE' TAKES US WHERE WE'VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Like it or loathe it or just wish that the Jar Jar thing would shut up, it's hard not to be impressed by the new ``Star Wars'' prequel's rich designs.

``Episode I - The Phantom Menace'' boasts completely realized alien worlds, 60 new species to inhabit them and dozens of never-before-seen vehicles to travel upon and between them.

To bring George Lucas' storybook universe to photorealistic life, some 250 computer artists spent two years creating more than 2,000 digital shots. Industrial Light & Magic, the field-leading effects outfit Lucas formed nearly a quarter-century ago, was virtually dedicated to developing the kind of computer-generated imagery tools the director needed to bring his vision of ``Phantom Menace'' to the screen.

``I'm very happy,'' reports Lucas, who has not directed a feature film since the first ``Star Wars'' 22 years ago. ``At this point, I've managed to overcome a lot of my creative roadblocks in terms of the technology of moving the medium that I work in to a different level. That means I'm more like a kid in a candy store now. I've moved from doing these very difficult frescoes on the wall to having oil paints.''

Not only were elaborate castles, chandelierlike underwater cities, giant carnivorous fish and battalions of skeletal battle droids whipped up out of bits and bytes, but such relatively simple things as ceilings and foliage were also computer generated. This saved on set construction for the $125 million production. Of course, since Lucas is ILM's sole owner, he got the digital work at cost, much cheaper than what clients like James Cameron (``The Abyss,'' ``Terminator 2: Judgment Day'') and Lucas pal Steven Spielberg (``Jurassic Park'') would be charged.

But in reality, the research and development ILM put into other directors' groundbreaking effects films helped lower ``Phantom Menace's'' actual price tag.

``Everything that everybody else has developed we take on board and everything that we develop goes on to the next person, and the stakes are always risen,'' says ``Phantom Menace'' producer Rick McCallum. ``It started with `The Abyss' and then it went on to `T2,' `Jurassic Park,' `Toy Story,' `Men in Black' and `Bug's Life.' The great thing, though, is that for the first time, all of this stuff is converging at a speed where a shot that cost $100,000 two years ago costs $20,000 now.''

Not just the finished shots, which intimately integrate the most fantastic visual elements with footage of live actors and practical sets, but the starting fundamentals of ``Phantom Menace'' were assisted and economized by computers. Detailed ``animatics'' - moving versions of the static, storyboard sketches most movies use as rough blueprints - were worked up on high-powered Macintoshes. This gave Lucas and his designers detailed guides to how every element would move within any given frame before a foot of film was exposed.

The most striking example of digital virtuosity in the movie is the character of Jar Jar Binks. An alien of the amphibious Gungan race, Jar Jar is clumsy, hyperactive, floppy-eared and 7 feet tall - and entirely computer generated, although he interacts with the film's human stars with a never-before-seen complexity.

Many find the purposely childish Jar Jar ``Phantom Menace's'' most irritating element. But most complaints overlook the point that the thing wouldn't bother them so much if it didn't come off so convincingly real. Although voiced by actor/dancer Ahmed Best, who also played the character during the live shoot for the other actors' benefit, the Jar Jar you see on screen is 100 percent CG.

``Ahmed was terrific, I used his voice, he turned in a great performance on the set,'' Lucas says. ``But to make the digital character, you had to hire a second actor. That actor has the same techniques and the same skills and the same talents plus some, and that actor's called an animator.''

Animation supervisor Rob Coleman, a veteran of such breakthrough digital character pieces as ``The Mask'' and ``Men in Black,'' headed the Jar Jar CG team.

``He works in collaboration with the original actor,'' Lucas explains. ``Sometimes they work together doing the motion capture (the process of feeding real movement information into a computer), sometimes they spend time together. But he takes the performance that the actor on the set did and turns it into minute facial expressions and body movements that really create the character on the next level. (That whole process) takes three to four months.''

The movie's most impressive setpiece is a 10-minute pod race on the desert planet of Tatooine. Inspired by the ``Ben Hur'' chariot race sequence, the high-speed contest involves rickety, jet engine-powered ``hot rods'' that zip along a few feet above the rocky surface.

The race's highly kinetic visuals were overseen by John Knoll, a CG genius who was one of the authors of the popular Photoshop software system. But just as impressive as Knoll's breakneck movement is the way the sound flies around your senses in sync with the images.

That sonic assault, among some 1,000 of the film's sound cues, was designed by longtime Lucas collaborator Ben Burtt. Burtt's created most ``Star Wars'' noises, from the lightsabers' distinctive buzz to impossible outer space explosions. But the loud, varied, almost living pod race sound showcases Burtt's wizardry like nothing before.

``The sound is 50 percent of the experience,'' McCallum believes. ``Every pod, every engine has its own sound, which gives it character. Ben just has this wacky imagination for figuring out where he's going to pull every single noise from. Those aren't just sounds that you go off and record. You've got to build them layer by layer by layer. In one driver's engine, I think there are 120 different sounds that had to be mixed and modulated; even my Porsche is in one of them.''

Despite all of the post-production wizardry on display in ``Phantom Menace,'' a big physical production needed to be mounted first. Footage was filmed in England, Italy and the Tunisian desert; lots of the exotic vehicles and even the creatures had to at least be mocked-up in the real world.

``We built 65 huge sets, we made 1,100 costumes, we still had a lot of animatronic work and puppetry,'' McCallum explains. ``Everything is designed, everything has to work. That's a serious bit of brain damage, believe me.''

Speaking of serious damage, history repeated itself when an exceedingly rare Sahara thunderstorm struck the Tatooine set in Tunisia as production there was getting under way - just as a similar windstorm did when the first ``Star Wars'' filmed there more than 20 years earlier.

``Thank God for insurance,'' McCallum says. ``It was intense. It took us three months to build the city and a couple of months to build the base camp. We had to actually create all the roads to get to it in the middle of the desert where we were. To see it wiped out on its second day of use was pretty heartbreaking. But luckily, the Tunisian army was doing maneuvers about 30 miles away, and they came out and helped us rebuild the whole city.''

When things like this keep happening to him, it makes sense that Lucas prefers to make as much of his movies as he can on computer consoles. Still, for all the creative and manipulative power new technology gives the director, some say that ``Phantom Menace'' is alarming proof of how high tech can morph the humanity out of a film.

Lucas, unsurprisingly, disagrees.

``It is a director's medium, there's no question about that,'' he says of movies in general and his kind of movies in particular. ``In film, you basically change performance through the editing process and, hopefully, make it better. But I think digital actually makes it easier for the actors, because a lot of the difficult parts of getting a performance can be fused together much more easily.''

Whether you believe that or not, there's no question that ``Phantom Menace,'' however groundbreaking, is just a launching pad for inconceivable new filmmaking technologies of the future. Inconceivable, that is, to those of us not named George Lucas.

``We were actually planning to do II and III back to back,'' McCallum says, referring to the next two films in the prequel trilogy, at least one of which Lucas has said will be completely made digital. ``But once George started talking about what he really wanted to do, we realized that we don't have the technology for the third one yet.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: From a special-effects standpoint, the most impressive scene in ``Phantom Menace'' is a 10-minute surface-skimming pod race on the desert planet of Tatooine. Just as impressive as the breakneck movement is the way the sound flies around in sync with the images.