HOW DREAM QUEST KEPT "THE CROW" ALOFT

After actor Brandon Lee was accidentally killed on the set of The Crow, Edward R. Pressman Films enlisted Dream Quest Images to save the Gothic fantasy.

"We were working on the project before the accident," said Mark Galvin, executive producer for Dream Quest. "But after the accident, the work changed."

The filmmakers needed to place Lee in scenes that had never been filmed, Galvin noted. They asked the Simi Valley, Calif., digital-technology company whether it could be done, and, Galvin recalled, "We said sure we could do that - if they had the money."

It's not the first time filmmakers have faced such a problem: Bela Lugosi's dentist filled in for him after Lugosi died during filming of Plan 9 Outer Space, and a big floppy hat tried to cover for Jean Harlow's Saratoga stand-in. But Dream Quest's technology made the changes barely detectable.

"We began talking about much more complex shots," he said.

Lee had to be taken from one scene and placed in another. Shots taken as Lee staggered down an alley were used to place him in scenes that show him entering his apartment.

Dream Quest uses a film-based digital system to solve technological problems in filmmaking. Its image stabilization and tracking for unsteady shots, for example, help clients repair existing footage and avoid reshoots. The company also developed the technology used in The Crow to remove actors from one scene and place them in another.

"Basically, it is a handheld-camera shot coming into the alleyway. He has just come back to life in the film," Galvin said. "There wasn't much footage at all of Brandon without makeup. We needed to show him in his apartment putting on his makeup."

Dream Quest digitally traced around the outer edge of Lee's image and lifted him out of the original background. New colors had to be given to the scene and to Lee, Galvin said, to create a warmer tone. Rain also had to be digitally added to the apartment scene to compensate for the rain that made Lee wet in the original footage.

"Then we ran into a different problem of stabilizing the image. We had no way of knowing what the original camera was doing," Galvin said. "There was a lot of weave or movement, causing two separate elements - one moving, one not."

The opposing camera movements would make the scene unbelievable to the audience, Galvin explained. Taking the "shake" out of the scene solved the problem and, after 350 hours of work, creates a scene that leads the audience into one of the most dramatic segments of the film.

"We had to make the audience believe that he's not only walking toward the camera but walking through the door and around the door," Galvin said. "Then we had to reintroduce the shake because the surrounding scenes are wild camera scenes."

Three more scenes had to be created by Dream Quest, two completed with the aid of a body double. "The other scene was taken from a scene of a trash-can fire with a lot of flashing light and put him in the mirror in his apartment, a cracked mirror," he said, noting that a "shattered image" of Lee had to be created. "The final composite makes one believe he is in fact reflected in the mirror."

The body double was used in a transition scene placing Lee in front of the large round window of his apartment building. "The scene is in Brandon's apartment, where he's looking out on the city of Detroit after putting on the makeup."

Two scenes were shot of an actor in the window, and Brandon's face was taken from another scene and placed over the body double's face. The scene from which Lee's image was taken had to be corrected to remove Lee's hand from his chin. Then the image was laid in along the cheek and hairline of the body double.

Galvin believes Dream Quest's work on such films as The Crow and, more recently, The Mask will help the film industry use stunt doubles more safely. He also believes it will improve films since directors won't have to shoot around stand-ins. Instead, the camera can photograph the stunt double, and the image can be corrected later.

"That's really the benefit of the technology," Galvin said. "Sloppier work can be fixed."

At the same time, Galvin is critical of technology that he believes pushes too far. Special effects in movies like Forest Gump, where history is altered, is not what he considers prudent use of technology. "Forest Gump is altering things, altering President Kennedy. That's the big difference. We're not looking to change the actor's performance. With The Crow, we didn't change what Lee did; we merely change where he did it. We still try not to tread on the artist's work."

Galvin believes that what the industry does with new technology is now a concern. Many things can be done, he explained, such as creating "Gone With the Wind II" via outtakes, but he questions the ethics of such work. "We don't want to change the actors. Putting a Tom Hanks or some other highpaid actor in old footage and having him dance in Tara or visit the Wizard of Oz can be done and done well. My hope is people won't do that."

Video Business; 8/12/1994; Magiera, Marcy