FILM SHOWS HOT `VOLCANO' IN THE VALLEY : PYROTECHNICS FOR ACTION THRILLER WARM THINGS UP FOR MOVIE HEROES.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Mount St. Helens in the Santa Clarita Valley?

Only in the world of make-believe would this valley have a lava-spewing volcano ferocious enough to rival the one in Washington.

But Universal Studios chose movie ranches and soundstages in the Santa Clarita Valley to film much of ``Dante's Peak,'' the Pierce Brosnan-Linda Hamilton volcano-disaster epic that will open Friday.

The filmmakers used Agua Dulce Movie Ranch and Veluzat Motion Picture Ranch in Saugus for some of the special-effects scenes that had to be shot outdoors, along with Santa Clarita Studios for some interior sequences.

Set in a fictional small town in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, ``Dante's Peak'' also was filmed in Wallace, a former mining town in northern Idaho.

Because of environmental protection of dense forests around Wallace, filmmakers had to find a safer place to shoot several fiery scenes.

``The reason (the production) came out here is because they couldn't do the pyrotechnics in Idaho,'' said George Sack Jr., owner and president of Hollywood Fires, an Agua Dulce company that worked on the film. ``Up there in the national forest, (officials) wouldn't allow them,'' he said.

So designers added groves of artificial trees to the Santa Clarita Valley's canyons and chaparral, and the movie ranches became the backdrop for a make-believe volcano.

``They built a model of a volcano and they brought in 60-foot steel trees. They were on fire for about 15 minutes at a time,'' Sack said. ``You can't tell the difference between a real (tree) and a fake one when they're on fire.''

In the film, Brosnan plays a volcanologist for the U.S. Geological Survey who warns the foothill community of Dante's Peak - including Hamilton, who plays the town's mayor - that the neighboring mountain is about to erupt.

In one scene, characters played by Brosnan and Hamilton rescue her children and their grandmother from a mountain cabin the elderly woman refuses to evacuate. A huge stream of digitally created lava slams into the lodge, which bursts into flames. The molten rock and debris, in turn, set the forest ablaze.

Crews built propane lines inside steel pine trees at the 1,000-acre Agua Dulce Movie Ranch, off Davenport Road northwest of the Antelope Valley Freeway. Although the ``forest'' was steel and the site safe for fire, Sack said, there was nothing phony about the heat.

``The heat was just incredible. We were probably 100 feet away from it, and we could hardly bear it,'' Sack said.

Hollywood Fires provided fire-prevention services. Sack's company also supplied water-tanker trucks, trucks to store props and crew equipment and dozens of cars that characters drove in the movie, Sack said.

Hollywood Fires also bulldozed and graded sites on the movie ranches where crews then built outdoor sets, he added.

One set, for volcano-wall scenes, was about 250 feet tall and almost 300 feet wide, he said. ``They had the actors climbing all over it. There was steam coming out of it.''

On another Agua Dulce set, crews built a full-size freeway overpass about 60 yards long. The script called for a road to be damaged in the volcano blast, and Sack said real cars and trucks drove on the fake bridge during filming.

Crews built a trailer park at the 750-acre Veluzat Motion Picture Ranch in Bouquet Canyon. Ranch manager Daniel Veluzat said the family business was started in the 1950s by Paul Veluzat and passed on to his sons, Renaud, Andre and Rene.

At Agua Dulce, crews dug a hole and built a pond next to the mountain cabin.

One Agua Dulce set showed the volcano's aftermath: the wrecked freeway overpass, toppled trees and overturned cars, all covered with simulated volcanic ash, said William Fix, general manager and co-owner with Sack of Agua Dulce Movie Ranch.

Starting last March, crews spent months building sets at Agua Dulce, including a mine shaft and a lava-covered road. Actual filming there was spread over 32 days, and production wrapped up in early December, Fix said.

``Probably the most visible thing they built was the mountaintop. That's where Pierce Brosnan rescues another actor who's fallen off the mountain,'' Fix said.

Local residents got bit parts in three days of shooting a volcano-aftermath scene. Producers got the Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce to coordinate a casting call, and about 100 people from Agua Dulce were extras, Fix said.

``They (played) FEMA workers and Army reservists and ambulance crews and basically the government-type officials that you would see,'' Fix said. In all, there were about 1,400 in the cast and crew on the set during that period.

Production was held up during the major brush fire in October in Castaic. County firefighters put pyrotechnics on hold while they were fighting a major fire.

``Dante's Peak'' is the second big-budget release that was filmed at Agua Dulce Movie Ranch, in business about four years. Parts of ``Independence Day'' were also shot there, Fix said.