A Key Stop on Road to Film Glory : Movies: Wednesday’s a big day for those chasing Oscar. The path to nomination is paved with advertising and videos and letters sent to voters.

By sunrise in New Hampshire Wednesday, one set of candidates will be sorted out, and by sunrise in Hollywood, so will another: candidates for this year’s Academy Awards.

Wednesday morning the names of the Oscar contenders--five in each category ranging from best picture to acting, writing and other crafts--will be revealed at a 5:30 a.m. press conference at the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. The timing of the announcement is geared toward attracting the widest possible media exposure. By staging the press conference that early, the Academy knows it can command coverage from the major networks, whose morning news shows are on the air live in the East at that time, and from CNN for live coverage in Europe.

Based on awards by critics’ groups, the Golden Globes and nominations by the writers and directors guilds, the best picture nominees are likely to be drawn from a group that includes “Bugsy,” “The Fisher King,” “JFK,” “The Prince of Tides,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Thelma & Louise” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

But none of them got into possible consideration for the final five without a campaign. As usual, much of the campaigning has been on the pages of the entertainment trade newspapers, the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. Although Variety itself reported that Oscar advertising was somewhat down this year, film companies still plunked down thousands of dollars to advertise candidates for Oscar consideration.

According to one informal poll, the leader in the number of full-page trade newspaper ads was “JFK,” followed by “Bugsy.”

Producer Norman Lear sent letters out on behalf of his production, “Fried Green Tomatoes,” and a group of well-known German directors made news by signing a letter protesting the German film committee’s overlooking of “Europa Europa” as the German entry in the best foreign language film competition.

In one of the more impromptu Oscar efforts, director Henry Jaglom wrote a letter to the members of the Academy directors’ branch urging them to nominate Andrei Konchalovsky for his work on “The Inner Circle.” Jaglom has no ties to the film.

“I had received more than 40 videotapes and all those booklets,” Jaglom said. “And it shocked me when I finally saw ‘Inner Circle,’ that here was a movie that I had heard practically nothing about. It seemed criminal to me that more people were not aware of it.”

Jaglom said he faxed half the 260 directors’ branch members and called the rest. He said distributor Columbia Pictures had not arranged to do anything on behalf of the movie. “I think the film was made in an earlier administration, and the new one was concentrating on its bigger films. But once I called attention to it, Columbia was very responsive and sent out videotapes.”

This year, the number of potential major Oscar contenders was unusually plentiful among the 238 eligible films released in 1991. For many observers, like Mason Wiley, the co-author of “Inside Oscar--the Unofficial History of the Academy Awards,” that meant a front-runner never emerged as in some years when there has been a film widely viewed as the favorite.

“There were so many mixed signals from the beginning when the critics started handing out their awards,” he said. “You didn’t sense a consensus.”

But there have been signs that the field already has narrowed.

There was, for instance, the first-in-the-nation caucus to determine 1991 film honors, conducted by the Los Angeles film critics in December. They gave their prize to “Bugsy,” the Barry Levinson biographical film starring Warren Beatty as the mobster Benjamin (Bugsy) Seigel.

But a week later, the New York critics opted for the dark suspense drama “The Silence of the Lambs,” starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. The National Board of Review also gave the nod to “Silence of the Lambs.”

In early January, the National Society of Film Critics added a wild card by choosing an unconventional British movie, “Life Is Sweet,” for best picture.

Then along came the Golden Globe Awards. Although the Golden Globes are voted by only 86 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., they have begun to take on a role in the Oscar race, akin to New Hampshire’s role in presidential politics. In other words, like New Hampshire, the Globe voters may not be a big group, but they have influence.

In the Golden Globe competition, which divides the year’s films into two categories, the best musical or comedy prize was won by the animated feature film “Beauty and the Beast,” and the best dramatic film honor went to “Bugsy.”

At the Globe ceremonies, “Beauty” won the most awards, while “Bugsy,” nominated in eight categories, ended up with only one. But that one , is often the one that goes on to win the best picture prize.

What might have been “Bugsy’s” chance to dominate the spotlight was somewhat diminished by the two Globe awards taken by “The Fisher King” and the choice of Oliver Stone as best director for “JFK.”

Finally, the Directors Guild of America announced its nominations for feature film directing in late January. The guild has an uncanny knack for picking the eventual winner of the best director’s Oscar and, in turn, the movie that individual directed usually goes on to take home the Oscar for best picture.

The directors nominated the work of “Bugsy’s” Levinson, “JFK’s” Stone and “Lambs’ ” Jonathan Demme. Plus, they nominated Barbra Streisand for her romantic psychodrama “The Prince of Tides” and Ridley Scott for his female buddy film, “Thelma & Louise.” With the nomination of the latter two, the directors boosted the prospects for those films as serious best picture contenders.

There is always room for a dark-horse candidate. And those could be such other Golden Globe or Writers Guild nominees as “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Boyz ‘N the Hood” and “Grand Canyon.”

“What we do now is wait for Wednesday,” said a spokesperson for the Walt Disney Studios.

Long before the cutoff for proposed nominations two weeks ago, Academy members received mailings of elaborate, full-color glossy souvenir books to remind them of the achievements of “Bugsy,” “For the Boys,” “Hook” and “Prince of Tides.” Orion Pictures mailed an expensive gift package with videotape and videocassette to remind voters of their early 1991 release, “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Oscar watchers could also not recall a precedent for the mother-and-daughter ad that was purchased on behalf of Laura Dern and her mother Diane Ladd. Dern was promoted for best actress and Ladd for best supporting actress for their work together in “Rambling Rose.”

Academy members are not permitted to talk about their voting preferences and the Academy itself keeps the identity of its nearly 5,000 members a closely guarded secret. But, off the record, several voters said they could not remember a year when they had received so many feature films on videotape. One screenwriter said he received as many as 20 cassettes.

“The biggest disappointment was the one for ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ” the voter said. “Here, I got the whole family together and we were all excited, only to find out that the tape was a 10-minute promo.” A Disney spokesperson said the company did not send a complete videotape because of piracy considerations.

This year, Disney believes it has a good chance to win a best picture Oscar nomination for an animated movie, “Beauty and the Beast,” a feat never previously achieved by any company. In all the years, in fact, the studio has had only two best picture nominations, “Mary Poppins” in 1964 and “Dead Poets Society” in 1989.

“We believed at the beginning that with the critical response to ‘Beauty’ and with the fact the critics suggested a best picture possibility, we should build on it,” the spokesperson said. Disney started the talk going with a special screening of the unfinished work at the New York Film Festival last September.

The studio also bought a two-page color ad in The Times Sunday Calendar that specifically was addressed to Academy voters.

The company also sent Academy members copies of audio cassettes of the song score, which is widely acknowledged to be the front-runner in the musical categories.