Guided Imaging : Is It Digital or Is It on Location?

When a Touchstone Pictures film crew needed to shoot a bounteous cornfield in Northern California for a pivotal closing sequence in “Phenomenon,” director Jon Turteltaub didn’t fret when a bona fide harvest didn’t flourish off-season. He turned to experts at Sony Pictures Imageworks, who digitally enhanced the crop on their computers.

And when Paramount Pictures had difficulty obtaining access to a Catholic church for “Primal Fear” because of the unflattering portrayal of a murdered archbishop, staffers at Dream Quest Images came to the rescue. For the crime scene, they digitally created a religious edifice by adding on to a real-life building.

Breakthroughs in digital technology are revolutionizing the way filmmakers think about where to shoot movies. With digital wizardry, filmmakers can make the action appear in whatever location they desire, without even going there.

Directors no longer need to rule out a scenic site simply because it contains a pesky telephone cable or other such blemish. They simply digitally remove such eyesores. And if vital elements are missing, they can add them.

So far, studios haven’t drastically cut back on actual location work. But for futuristic and historic movies, in particular, filmmakers are relying more heavily on digital magic and less on actual locations.

At the same time, digital technology is making it easier for location scouts and managers to view sites on a computer without ever leaving the office. (When they do check out potential filming spots, location experts often need to bear in mind that the site ultimately will be altered digitally.)

But the digital movement has its complications. The ability to manipulate images is raising troubling questions about copyright and trademark laws.

In the meantime, most insiders are hailing the digital onslaught.

“The technology clearly will allow more work to be done in the studios using digital techniques and actors with a blue-screen backdrop,” said Nick Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers.

This may benefit an entertainment town such as Los Angeles. “In the long run, it will reduce the need to go on location for all of your shots,” said Counter, noting a substantial upswing in work on sound stages around town.

Despite the increase in digital-effects work, most industry insiders say filmmakers almost always will long for the incomparable beauty of live-action shots on location.

“I’m not worried about digital effects totally supplanting on-location shooting,” said Leigh von der Esch, president of the Assn. of Film Commissioners International and executive director of the Utah Film Commission. “For the [best] feeling and mood, isn’t it easier to get a performance in a real setting rather than in front of a blue screen?”

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who considers the island of Alcatraz a principal character in his film “The Rock,” believes digital technology will spice up unusual location shots.

“The effects that layer on top of the location will become cheaper and will look very real,” Bruckheimer said, adding that “The Rock” features a digitally enhanced explosion on Alcatraz and a computer-generated segment where F-18 fighter planes appear to speed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. “Had we done these prior to digital effects, it would be enormously expensive and the quality wouldn’t be nearly as good.”

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More and more, particularly for science-fiction and historic films, locations are being invented on computer.

“You can’t have a 15-mile spaceship move in over the major cities and destroy those cities,” said Tricia Ashford, digital effects supervisor and producer for “Independence Day.” “Those environments had to have been created digitally.”

VisionArt is taking the digital process even further. It is computer-generating all exterior space for its sci-fi thriller “Omega Factor,” which will be shot nearly entirely at Santa Monica Studios, its parent company.

“By building an environment digitally, we can design it exactly the way we want,” said Josh Rose, VisionArt executive vice president. “If we were going to shoot on location, we would have to mold our design around the existing cavern.”

Sometimes what you see on screen wasn’t shot anywhere near the location of the movie’s setting.

“It’s becoming less important to take the people to locations,” said Jon Farhat, visual effects supervisor for “The Nutty Professor,” which includes a scene in which Eddie Murphy and Jada Pinkett are ostensibly at the beach. “We had to [digitally] bring the beach to them.”

Digital Domain President and Chief Executive Scott Ross said that “the only reason to use visual effects is if you can’t do it any other way.” To that end, his company is now using computer-generated water and people, a digital cruise liner and scale models to realistically stage James Cameron’s “Titanic,” a romance set against the 1912 shipwreck.

Location scouts are finding other benefits to digitalization. “The digital world . . . actually streamlines the location process,” said Chris Ursitti, owner of Hollywood Location Co., which developed a computer network system that stores about 3,000 digital color images of locations shown from multiple angles.

“Location managers sit in front of the computer, and they can jump from rooftop to rooftop within the city without going outdoors,” Ursitti said. “They can narrow down the choices quickly.”

In the fall, the California Film Commission--with the help of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory--will unveil a site-location digital library with more than 300,000 digital images.

Studio executives and entertainment attorneys are now being forced to consider the legal ramifications of the technological ability to reproduce buildings.

In fact, Cincinnati officials were up in arms when Warner Bros.’ “Batman Forever” was released, because it contained an altered version of the city’s historic Art Deco Union Terminal train station--and the city received no compensation or credit. Interestingly, the images were used with the help of blueprints and without a film crew ever setting foot in the city.

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Although the complaint was quietly settled for an undisclosed amount, the incident--and the replicate-any-building-in-the-world technology--has made some film commissioners wary of supplying original photos and blueprints to movie makers.

“We’re out there selling people to come to our area,” said Lori Holladay, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Film Commission. “Yet at the same time we have to protect it from being digitally copied. But it’s impossible to do.”

“This is a very intriguing cutting-edge issue,” said entertainment attorney George Vradenburg, a partner at Latham & Watkins and a former Twentieth Century Fox executive, adding that it would be prudent for studios “to obtain copyright clearance for buildings whose images are in their movies.”

One potentially precedent-setting lawsuit is attracting the attention of lawyers, filmmakers and photographers nationwide.

Three months ago, the nearly year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, which relies heavily on its $2 million or so in licensing revenue, sued photographer Charles M. Gentile over trademark infringement for selling posters portraying the name and likeness of the pyramid-shaped, I.M. Pei-designed structure. A federal district judge slapped a preliminary injunction on Gentile, ordering him to turn over unsold posters to the museum to be destroyed.

Vradenburg contends that the Cleveland lawsuit could have some interesting ramifications, including causing more owners to register their buildings as trademarks. Fewer than 100 nationwide now qualify.

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Faking It

Digital technologies are changing the way filmmakers choose where to shoot their movies. In the case of “Primal Fear,” Catholic churches declined to participate in the film because of the unflattering portrayal of a murdered cleric. So the filmmakers chose a location that worked for the film in other respects, and Paramount Pictures hired Dream Quest Images to do the rest. Working with the filmmakers, technologists digitally created a religious edifice and fit it into the footage. Other ways technology is revolutionizing the selection of movie locations:

Directors no longer have to rule out a site just because it contains an eyesore such as apower line or telephone pole. They can digitally erase the offending object.

With digital wizardry, filmmakers can make the action appear in whatever location they want without going there. This could eventually benefit lower-budget films. “All-digital movies can allow independent filmmakers to be more creative on a lower budget,” says San Francisco-based director and producer Robert Miller.

Digital databases are making it possible for location scouts and managers to view--and manipulate--sites around the world without ever leaving the office.

The ability to digitally alter and combine images raises troubling questions about copyright and trademark laws. Hoping to attract film business, cities with interesting buildings could find their structures digitally inserted in films without the producers ever making an appearance in town.