COLUMN ONE : Invasion of the Film Computers : The high-tech revolution thrills, chills Hollywood. Some applaud ‘Jurassic’ dinosaurs and cost-saving wonders. Others are wary of the ways new technology may change the soul of movie-making.

The dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” were hatched on a hard drive, incubated in computer technology that did not exist a year ago.

Only 1,500 extras were hired for a crowd scene in “In the Line of Fire,” but they were digitally replicated--five times--to beef up the throng.

The crew editing “The Coneheads” sliced days off post-production using tools of a new electronic cut-and-paste era.

And before shooting the upcoming “Addams Family Values,” producer David Nicksay used a couple of Macs and some off-the-shelf software to “view” entire scenes before deciding how--or whether--to shoot them.

Like alien spores descending upon Tinseltown, computers have begun to insinuate themselves into every aspect of filmmaking, challenging the hegemony of decades-old equipment and opening vast possibilities for the manufacture of illusion.

Warp-speed advances in computer performance coupled with falling hardware and software prices are driving a digital revolution that will fundamentally alter the way movies are made, the kinds of movies that get made and, potentially, who gets to make them.

Ultimately, computers will enable the studios to make and distribute more movies in less time for less money--so much less that someday the task may not require a studio at all.

“We’re talking about individual empowerment,” said Scott Billups, a former ad executive who has set up a digital production studio in his West Los Angeles home. “Now, anybody can make a movie. There are a lot of old curmudgeons out here who have outgrown their usefulness, and they’re going to have to make way.”

Hollywood’s entrenched habits and habitues are a big reason this revolution will not happen overnight, industry observers say. A forward-looking few have seen the light on the computer screen, but the industry as a whole, notorious for its historical resistance to technological change, continues to view computers with deep-seated suspicion.

Studio executives who may sink $40 million into a single movie fret that investments in sophisticated computer equipment will not pay off--and if they do, that the threat new technology poses to the established hierarchy of the production system may not be worth it. Directors, editors and cinematographers see the 0s and 1s of the digital world as anathema to the creative process. Unions worry technology will sweep away jobs.

Then there is the underlying fear that in an industry where personal relationships supposedly count for everything, computers will somehow seize control in a “Hollywood meets ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ ” scenario.

“It’s not just that Hollywood isn’t into high-tech,” said Nick DeMartino, whose computer classes at the American Film Institute have produced several of the new technology’s most fervent proselytizers. “Hollywood is downright technophobic.”

Ironically, the recent films that made the most extensive use of computer effects--smash-hits “Terminator 2” and “Jurassic Park”--are about well-meaning humans struggling to regain control over technology run amok, an enduring Hollywood theme that runs from Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Computers in Hollywood have a ways to go before they rival Kubrick’s evil know-it-all, HAL. Conservative businesses from Detroit to Wall Street have embraced the microchip revolution, but even as Hollywood is agog over the potential of multimedia, computer executives say the entertainment business remains a tough sell.

“Typically, they always want to find a way for Apple to pay for it,” said Daniel Paul, who has been assigned to the firm’s desert outpost for three years. “They say: ‘Hey, we’ll put your computer on screen if you give it to us for free.’ Well, we don’t make a lot of money that way.”

Paul and his colleagues try not to take it personally. Hollywood is known as a town where everyone wants to be second, and it has a history of not being quick to grasp technical innovation. When AT&T; representatives came knocking on Adolph Zuckor’s door in the ‘20s offering to put sound in his pictures, the Paramount chief repeatedly turned them away. Louis B. Mayer at MGM wasn’t too keen on the idea either.

It took the upstart Warner Bros. to risk introducing talkies, just as it took David O. Selznick, working without major studio backing on “Gone With the Wind,” to prove the color processes everyone had been experimenting with for years could bring in the crowds. Television was staunchly opposed by the entertainment Establishment, and Hollywood fought videocassette recorders tooth and nail. Now VCRs are a bigger source of film revenue than theaters.

Hollywood’s aversion to hardware may not be totally misplaced. “The industry evolved as a software business--and rightly so,” said Neal Gabler, author of “An Empire of Their Own,” a history of Hollywood’s Jewish founders. “No one goes to see a movie camera. People go to see movies.”

And if Hollywood needed evidence that boy-meets-girl and black hat-white hat showdowns are more important than technology gimmicks, its futile attempts to counter TV with 3-D and Odorama drove the point home.

Today’s executives insist that it is money, not fear of the unknown, that prevents them from investing heavily in computers. Tight production schedules do not leave much room for on-the-job learning, and at a time when cost-cutting is crucial, an extra $50,000 for equipment that no one has figured out how to amortize can be hard to justify.

Depending on whom you ask, Paramount’s experiments with digital editing on “Sliver” and “The Coneheads” saved lots of time--or almost none. But equipment snafus, the hiring of extra editors, the time directors spent pondering options, and the cumbersome process of printing back to film made it indisputably expensive.

“What it offers is increased creative choice,” said one post-production executive. “Maybe too much choice.”

And although fancy equipment can sometimes be used to attract talent, studio executives resent spending a lot of money teaching producers and directors how to use it when they will only go elsewhere for their next project.

Dissidents pushing computers within the studios say the economic proofs demanded by overly cautious executives are impossible to supply. “It’s always: ‘Show me the numbers,’ ” said a strategic planner at one of the major studios. “Well, there are no numbers. This is all new--that’s the whole point.”

Actually, there are some numbers. An average day of film production costs from about $60,000 to $150,000. So when “Addams Family” producer Nicksay used Macintosh previewing to decide against shooting a model airplane dogfight between Gomez and Morticia, it saved an expensive day.

“In the Line of Fire,” a Columbia release produced by Castle Rock, cut costs by using footage of President Clinton’s campaign rallies for crowd scenes. Sony’s digital effects team inserted Clint Eastwood into a composite shot and erased Clinton placards with the technique used to blot out stunt wires in films such as “Cliffhanger” and “Last Action Hero.”

“Jurassic Park” producer Kathleen Kennedy estimates her production saved $2 million using computer-generated images for most of the dinosaur effects. But, she says, the importance of computer technology goes beyond savings.

“With pay-per-view and the role that TV is going to have, I like to believe that all this works to heighten the experience in the theater,” Kennedy said. “If we don’t improve the way movies are exhibited and experienced by the audience, there really is no argument for why not to just watch movies at home.”

Consumers already have VCRs and home computers. What happens when high-definition TV and fiber-optics bring theater-quality images, dial-up movies, banking, shopping and other services into the home? Computer-assisted spectacle may be the biggest draw theaters can offer.

Indeed, as Hollywood’s embrace of technology becomes less tepid, some worry that the quest for good stories will give way to the pursuit of pure sensation. “They’re moving away from storytelling toward a kind of theme park experience,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a well-known critic of the industry at Johns Hopkins University.

But proponents insist computers will enhance the creative side of the business, lowering the barriers to entry and allowing directors to spend less time on logistics and more time on working with actors and their story.

George Lucas, whose pioneering special effects work on “Star Wars” inspired a generation of experimentation with computer techniques, often dispenses with the time-consuming search for the right set for his digitally edited TV series “Young Indiana Jones.” A recent episode called for six characters to disembark from a ship on an African dock. Lucas set up some stairs and rigging in an empty field, filmed three actors walking down, and let his computer experts fill in the rest.

Interest in such techniques is starting to seep into the studios. Top executives such as Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sony Pictures Chairman Peter Guber have made it known within their firms that they are interested in experimenting with computers.

The computer-generated dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” are propelling the Universal Pictures film to record grosses, raising audience expectations for the spectacular. And as several prosperous studios move to boost film production, they are beginning to think computers may be crucial in doing so efficiently.

Deep inside the studios, the pro-computer factions are beginning to make headway, fortified by each organization’s fear of being left behind as all the studios mull the best way to digitally evolve. Studio executives may want to be second, but they do not want to be third.

Disney recently became the latest to set up an in-house digital effects division, designed to help internal productions use technology as well as to compete with special effects firms such as Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic and the IBM-backed upstart Digital Domain, founded by James Cameron.

TriStar Vice Chairman Kenneth Lemberger, who also heads Sony Pictures’ Image Works digital effects unit, says he is considering scripts he would not have thought conceivable before his studio’s investment in digital technology.

“We’re limited by what is possible, and a lot more is possible now,” Lemberger said. “We think this new technology will allow us to make films that we would not otherwise have made.”

No matter how Hollywood reconciles itself to the new era, Lucas says the industry will have to contend with a new breed of filmmakers who will spring from the democratizing influence of the technology revolution.

“What all this does is allow high-quality films to be made at very low cost. It’s going to allow for a lot of the gatekeepers to disperse,” said Lucas, adding: “A lot more people are going to be able to make movies.”

Steve Regan, a technology consultant for Warner Bros., predicts vast databases of digital images for rent via modem, virtually eliminating the need for locations--or constructing sets on Hollywood lots.

Already, a computer system handling full-motion video and then printing to tape costs less than $15,000. Software such as Adobe System’s Premiere for the Macintosh, available for $695, allows digital editing that could cost as much as $1,000 per hour in a typical post-production facility.

Even high-tech special effects such as “morphing,” the liquid transformation of a human into a cyborg made famous by “Terminator 2,” can be done on the desktop. Billups, who volunteers much of his time to preach the digital revolution at AFI, is producing these effects for the upcoming comic book flick “Fantastic Four” and New Line Cinema’s “Man’s Best Friend” with a computer--from home.

Nor is it just special effects. People are beginning to make digital movies using Apple’s popular QuickTime software. Distribution and exhibition have a ways to go--there is none--but an annual QuickTime film festival has gained a loyal following.

But even as technology makes filmmaking more accessible, most Hollywood investment in computers--and the people who know how to use them--continues to be made on an ad-hoc basis, one production at a time. That is in part because of the talent.

Many older film editors who have spent decades bent over a flatbed cutting table are loath to abandon it. Michael Kahn, the respected editor of the super high-tech “Jurassic Park,” insisted on using a Movieola, long the defining fixture of the editing suite and a device that has not changed since it was invented in the 1920s.

Cameron, whose films “The Abyss” and “Terminator 2” are milestones in the brief history of computer effects, blames the studios for holding back the digital age. “The few effects movies that have been done are the result of filmmakers talking a bunch of hand-wringing studio executives into ponying up the big bucks to make them happen,” he said. “They’re followers, not leaders.”

Charles (Skip) Paul, executive vice president at MCA, put it another way. “You need two things to invest in technology: You need a champion, and you need an economic rationale.”

Paul cited MCA’s introduction of a digital sound system this summer that is much cheaper than competitors. The move was driven largely by director Steven Spielberg, who wanted the sound in “Jurassic Park” to be top of the line.

Paramount’s champion of the moment is Nicksay, who with his wife, Heather, was determined to use “Addams Family Values” as a testing ground for some of the computer tricks they had seen around town. The Nicksays filled a cramped room with two high-powered Macs, a film scanner, a color laser printer, high-speed modems and software.

The technology saved time in an unusually tight shooting schedule. Photos of Uncle Fester’s wig styles were sent by modem to co-producer Scott Rudin on the East Coast. A decision was made not to shoot the model airplane dogfight, based on how it looked on animated story boards scanned into the Mac.

Frank Dutro, a computer whiz hired for the production, created an interactive set on a computer screen that allowed Nicksay and Rudin to get a feel for the Addams mansion. He and fellow techie Bruce Wright created a visual database for keeping track of special effects, and used off-the-shelf software to create a simulation that helped Nicksay decide not to paint the Beverly Hills house used for the villain’s lair.

“You can make your mistakes on the computer, and you can try out infinite variations on a theme at essentially no cost,” Nicksay said. “The importance of it is mind-blowing, and this is just the beginning. The entire entertainment experience is going to be changed.”

For Paramount, the equation is not that simple. Although computer tricks saved time on “Addams Family Values,” they also caused a lot of fretting within the studio and among craft unions, whose representatives spent much time peering over Wright’s shoulder.

“Nobody could figure out what I was,” he said. “I change a light source on the computer; does that mean I’m a gaffer? I choose a lens; am I a cinematographer? When I previsualize a scene, is that set construction?”

The “Family Values” technology experiments were documented and shown to senior management this year in a multimedia presentation that some hoped would be the basis for a technology revolution.

It has not happened yet. Although the studio is considering setting up a production resource center stocked with computer equipment for general use, “we’re not going to force technology down anybody’s throats,” said Bruce Churchill, vice president of business development for Paramount’s technology group. “You can’t--you know Hollywood. It’s a question of educating people, and that takes time.”

Thus, Dutro, who thought the studio would come through with a permanent offer after “Family Values,” found himself out of a job. He has started his own digital technology center in Burbank. Wright, still employed at Paramount, spends much of his time making computer pie charts for executive slide shows.