MUMMY DEAREST; EFFECTS WIZARDS AT INDUSTRIAL LIGHT AND MAGIC TOOK GREAT PAINS NOT TO RESURRECT THE OLD BANDAGED ZOMBIE OR STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT.

Byline: Marla Matzer Daily News Staff Writer

When the average viewer sees ``The Mummy,'' the horror classic remake being released today, he may not appreciate the amount and difficulty of the special effects involved. That's just the way the filmmakers want it.

``We hate it more than anybody when the critics write, `The effects stole the show - if only the story were as good,''' says John Berton of George Lucas-owned Industrial Light and Magic, who was the visual effects supervisor on the film.

``We've always aimed at ILM to be a completely integrated part of the movie, which just supports the story and the characters,'' Berton says.

Writer-director Stephen Sommers agrees wholeheartedly. ``Studio executives always say, `Kids love effects, let's spend a lot of money to get more special effects,' '' says the director, whose previous credits include ``Deep Rising'' and ``Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.'' ``But I hope that in this movie, we've really tried to keep the story and the characters going in the forefront. The effects should really be in the service of the story.''

In fact, without computer wizardry, ``The Mummy'' would have been a much different movie. As it is, the movie is a complete overhaul of the original 1932 film starring Boris Karloff. The basic story is the same - mummy wakes up after 3,000 years, tries to get girl and kill people - but this film is able to conjure up a whole new cast of otherworldly ghouls that can change form at the stroke of a computer key.

The real and computer worlds are so intertwined that the Mummy himself is a combination of digital effects and actor Arnold Vosloo. Many scenes feature effects that are impressively realistic but would have been impossible without computer-generated images (CGI): beetles crawling under the skin of hapless victims, swarms of bugs flying through the air or chasing people down dark hallways, sand rising and shifting into the form of an enormous human face.

Ben Snow of ILM, who served as computer graphics supervisor on the film, says the ``particle systems'' used in creating swarms of bugs and sand formations is an example of the cutting-edge techniques employed in the film. ``In the case of the insects,'' Snow said in an interview from ILM's San Rafael headquarters, ``each has to be a detailed little model that has to be animated. Thousands have to be animated; the first problem is to choreograph the motion.''

This is done through particle systems. That is, in the computer, ILM artists start with a representation of the space that their creation has to occupy on-screen. One tiny dot represents each object (grain of sand, bug), that has to be animated to avoid or interact with the other dots/objects.

This is how the shape-shifting sand scenes were done. In order to emulate real sand, which is composed of billions of individual grains, multiple points had to be animated, rather than a single mass. Particle systems direct the movement of these thousands of points in concert with each other.

The Mummy character also presented challenges - first of all, in its design. ``We knew it couldn't look like a guy in a mummy suit,'' says Sommers, ``a guy wrapped in bandages, that you could outrun.''

But, as Sommers says, ``what would a 3,000-year-old corpse look like?'' The result is part skeleton, part Terminator. As the creature regenerates by taking over the body parts of hapless humans, ILM had to animate the look of skin moving over a muscle, another envelope-pushing effect.

As Vosloo's image becomes meshed with the computer-generated mummy, there are several layers of effects at work.

``We built a physical model, which is then `sculpted' into a 3-D image in the computer,'' explains Snow. ``It's then connected by little lines, which look like chicken wire. Each of these connected points can then be moved around in relation to each other.''

Onto this model was added data from ``motion capture'' animation of Vosloo. On a set in England, Vosloo put on a ``suit'' of reflective-ball sensors and played out the scenes his character has in the movie. This data went into the computer, and was mixed with the CGI animation to give it a more realistic feel. This can save some animation time, and make a character appear to be in the same space as the real actors on screen.

After the motion capture and CGI animation was combined, ILM artists still had to add detail to make the character look believable.

``An animator comes in and adds facial motions, lip-syncing. You sometimes play around with the timing, to make it fit in the scene,'' explains Snow. ``Then we apply the stuff that makes it look real: Painters add surface material that makes it blend with the scene and not look like a computer image.''

Sommers says probably the most complicated scene was a battle scene near the end of the movie, where multiple CGI mummies battle with real characters. Berton, who was on the set with Sommers every day of filming, points out that that scene required the entire arsenal of effects tricks: real actors went through the motions of the mummies on the set, then duplicated their moves exactly in a studio wearing motion capture equipment. Their images, along with CGI ones, then replaced the real actors in the finished film. Detail was painted in to the finished scene.

Though Sommers and his ILM team hope the overall effect is seamless, the effects have become a key element in ``The Mummy's'' marketing campaign. Early on, the studio considered keeping the mummy's look secret, a la Sony's strategy for ``Godzilla'' last year. But the mummy and other key CGI elements are now featured prominently in movie trailers and TV ads.

``The marketing people felt very strongly that we had to let people know that this isn't just a guy wrapped in bandages,'' says Sommers. ``We wanted to tell people, `This isn't your Daddy's Mummy.' ''

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4 photos

PHOTO (1) Thanks to computer-generated imagery, the Mummy isn't the only monster who is unleashed when explorers Brendan Fraser and John Hannah stumble across an ancient tomb.

(2) The 3,000-year-old Mummy who terrorizes the film is actually a combination of digital effects and live action.

(3 -- color -- cover) Wrap party

(4) no caption (face of Mummy)