ENTER THE AGE OF VIDEO-MADE MOVIES

The cinematographer has always been the easiest person to find on a movie set. Just look for the camera.

But in the case of “Do It Up,” a drama being directed at Queens’ Kaufman Astoria Studios by actor Robby Benson, you are less likely to find the cinematographer at the camera than in a room down the hall where the action is being viewed and recorded live on $1 million worth of video equipment.

“Better Movies Through Science” someone has written on a card outside the room. Inside, cinematographer Neil Smith and a team of engineers stare into a pair of TV monitors examining the stunningly clear images being relayed from the set by a video camera.

The scene is of several drug users sitting in the living room of a drug dealer’s modern silver-and-black apartment. Benson is ready to call “action,” but first looks into the camera and asks, “Is the tape ready?”

One of the engineers in the control room notices a “hot spot”--a shine--on the forehead of one of the actors and word is relayed to the set. A moment later, a makeup person appears on the TV monitor, touches up the actor’s head and leaves.

“You wouldn’t notice that if you were shooting on film,” says Dennis Bieber, a partner in the New York-based Rebo High Definition Studio, a company set up to provide the equipment and crews for video-made movies. “With this, you can be sure everything is perfect before you start.”

If Bieber’s immodest predictions come true, we are watching the dawning of a new age in the motion-picture industry, the inexorable shift from film to high-definition videotape as the standard for movie productions. Since almost the beginning of movies, the standard has been 35-millimeter film.

“Within a year, every major studio will be making a movie in high definition,” says Bieber. “They’re going to find that they can save up to 30% on production costs without losing anything.”

Rebo is the first American company to buy a state-of-the-art video system from Sony and attempt to prove its cost-saving advantages to studios and its quality-control value to film makers.

Without getting into technical descriptions, high-definition video reproduces images that contain five times more information than the television sets Americans now watch at home. When you freeze-frame with high-definition, the image has the clarity, detail and brightness of a 35-millimeter slide photo.

When the tapes are transferred to film for theatrical projection, Bieber claims, the quality of the image is preserved, but on screen it looks like film, not tape.

“Do It Up,” being produced by Rebo on an announced $5-million budget, is the first American feature being shot on tape for transfer to film. Rebo has done several music videos with the process. The most recent one, John Lennon’s “Imagine,” was selected for competition in the short-subject category of the Cannes Film Festival.

“We’re pioneers,” Bieber says. “This may be the most significant development in the history of the movies.”

Maybe--and maybe not. Francis Coppola made similar predictions a few years ago when he experimented with video on “One From the Heart,” the film that ultimately led to the downfall of his Zoetrope Studios. Video technology has made quantum strides since then, but it is still a different medium.

It is impossible to judge the process based on what is being done with “Do It Up,” or on what Rebo has done so far with its music videos. The videos are so saturated with special-effects gimmicks, there are no relevant references to film at all.

The biggest question to be answered is what video-made movies will look like on theater screens. Bieber acknowledged that if it looks like video, it will not be accepted. One of the greatest advantages of tape over film for telecasting is that the taped events appear to be “live.” That’s OK for “As the World Turns.” It would look ridiculous with “Platoon.”

The first test of the process will come this fall when Cinecom Entertainment Group releases “Julia and Julia,” an $8-million Italian-made film starring Kathleen Turner.

“Julia and Julia” was shown for buyers during the recent Cannes Film Festival, but its producers refused to allow any members of the media into the screening. The closed-door policy, unprecedented at Cannes, left angered critics wondering what they were trying to hide, the movie or the process.

Rebo has already raised eyebrows with “Do It Up.” When the film was announced, Rebo officials placed its budget at $5 million. It is hard for any savvy film person to see how this movie--with a first-time director who is also the only known star, and with a rushed six-week schedule following only five days of pre-production--could cost that much money.

“It is not costing $5 million,” said Robby Benson, during a short break on the set. “It is costing less, a lot less.”

Bieber acknowledged that the budget figure “is not realistic,” but said the true costs will not be released until the movie is.

There seems to be no question that the tape-to-film system would save some production costs. At $90 per hour’s worth, tape is vastly cheaper than raw film, and it can be edited instantly. Bieber says you can have a rough cut of a movie within days after shooting it, and if you are in a real hurry, you can have it transferred--by laser--to film in three hours.

Movies also can be shot with available light, Bieber says, cutting down enormously on the amount of set-up time film requires.

But there are drawbacks too. Film cameras are battery-driven and untethered. Video cameras are connected by thick cables to the control center. The “high-def” cameras can be adapted to the Steadicam (a harness contraption that allows a a person to carry it without getting a bouncy image), but with the 60-pound bulk of the current model, you’d have to hire Lou Ferrigno as the operator.

Benson said the shooting of “Do It Up” has been a nightmare of production problems and that he has been severely limited by the small range of lenses available for video cameras. But given the budget, he added, “I don’t think we could have survived without this.”

For the moment, high-definition videotape movie making is experimental. Most of the people who supply the American film industry with product don’t set out to do movies where merely surviving is an issue. Established film directors aren’t likely to embrace a shift to television techniques, and to cinematographers, video will be about as popular as Styrofoam cheese.

If video becomes a serious player in the film industry, it is likely to make its first inroads among low-budget exploitation film makers. It is most useful now as a special-effects tool. For very little money, film makers can create some spectacular illusions, and do them fast.

Bieber said that Rebo’s four-minute “Imagine” music video would have taken eight months to do at a cost of $800,000 on film. With video, it took three days and cost $100,000.

“The only reason we didn’t get it done quicker is that we had technical problems with the dolly,” he said.