Its pioneering moments are forever stamped on the psyches of audiences everywhere: the water tentacle shaping itself into Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's face in The Abyss; Arnold Schwarzenegger turning bad cop Robert Patrick's body into a liquid-metal pretzel in Terminator 2; and, of course, a roadside Jeff Goldblumbeing stalked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex in Jurassic Park. Computer Generated Imagery, or CGI as it's known in film circles, has allowed moviemakersthe ability to create, quite literally, anything, anywhere, and gradually, anyone that their imaginations can conjure. But the advent of digital technology has also unleashed an exciting new arsenal for the first person in the moviemaking process-the screenwriter. With CGI, screenwriters now have groundbreaking storytelling devices at their fingertips. In addition to writing more dynamic visual sequences, they can place digitallydeveloped characters in real environments, enhance those environments to unlimited degrees, and allow themselves the luxury of creating entirely unreal worlds in which their stories can be set. Aside from the obvious production limitations of budgets and schedules, screenwriters more than ever before have a palette at their disposal that will only keep expanding as CGI tools are refined.

Tarzan

For screenwriter Duncan Kennedy, a first produced screenplay has provided new insight into the process of using visual technology to tell a story. Kennedy studied industrial design in his native Australia and was inspired to go to USC School of Cinema-Television after reading George Lucas' autobiography, Skywalking. While directing a student feature, Kennedy interned at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) where he worked in the art department, designing prop and set elements for Terminator 2. After several spec scripts gained major studio attention but failed to reach the screen, Kennedy sold Deep Blue Sea to Warner Bros. in 1995.

With its tale of intelligent sharks who attack an oceanic genetic research facility, Deep Blue Sea promises to present its share of dazzling visuals. "I gave thought to how some of the stuff would look on screen," Kennedy explained. "The fact that the script called for Mako sharks, which are extremely quick and agile, lends itself to computer effects." Principal photography took place at Rosarito Beach, Mexico, primarily in an outdoor tank facility built for James Cameron's full-scale Titanic ship set. Director Renny Harlin and visual effects supervisor Jeff Okun are realizing Kennedy's vision with a unique combination of the live-action elements, CGI, and traditional miniature photography.

Godzilla

When he conceived the story, Kennedy realized his script had to allow the filmmakers the ability to create a realistic scenario for the action. "For pragmatic reasons, the script had to read as something that would be possible to film:' he noted. "Digital effects, which make whatever's in your head a reality on screen, free you up as a writer. The great thing about CGI is that there's a mystique to it that says `you can do anything."

In contrast to Kennedy's concern and anticipation of his film's craft, according to David Koepp, the writer's last priority is understanding the technology and how it will be used to execute his or her ideas. Many will find that an ironic proposition, considering that among Koepp's long list of 1990s screenwriting credits he has the distinction of having written both Jurassic Park, and its sequel The Lost World for director Steven Spielberg. "As a writer, you just write what you think will be incredible and let them figure it out," he said. "You get into bad effects writing if you start limiting it in terms of what you think is practical, or expanding it, thinking `digital effects are so great, I'm going to go crazy.' The writer should have zero concern with how the effects people are going to do their jobs."

Koepp notes that, at the forefront of CG characters with Jurassic Park, he met immediate stumbling blocks as the screenwriter. "The problem with some effects-driven stuff is that the filmmakers have great ideas for their set pieces, but that stuff is often thought up first and given the most attention," he commented. "Then the writer has to string it together. Any time you approach it backwards like that, when you're coming up with connective tissue last, it makes the characters become somewhat unimpressive. It's certainly the hardest writing I've ever done."

The Wild Wild West

If Jurassic Park's menacingly realistic dinosaurs were a breakthrough, the effectsoriented films that have followed in its huge footprints, The Lost World among them, have certainly given audiences increasingly more astounding visual effects. That this wave of films has brought spectacle at the expense of good writing may indicate a limited perspective on the overall state of the industry. "People have decried the lack of ideas in the last few years," said Koepp, "but whenever anew piece of technology comes along, there's a fascination with it. Eventually, the public who flocks to see the new tool will get tired of it.You have to come up with another new tool or give us story and characters as well."

Following his directorial feature film debut with The Trigger Effect, Koepp's Stir of Echoes, based on a ghost-story novel by Richard Matheson, will be released in 1999. His basic advice to aspiring and working screenwriters is simple, even in the wake of the digital movie universe. "You're doomed to failure if you try to anticipate the market," he related. "Just write what you like; if your story calls for effects, great. If it doesn't, big deal."

The Thirteenth Floor

Screenwriter Ed Neumeier has also under gone the transition from seeing his work realized with traditional-or practical-visual effects to the digital realm. Neumeier collabo rated with director Paul Verhoeven, producer Jon Davison, and visual effects artist Phil Tippett for both of his produced screenplays: first, on kobocop, which he co-wrote with Michael Miner, and most recently on Starship Troopers. "In the Robocop era, you were confined to one animated fantasy character," he observed, "whereas in the post Jurassic Park era, it's more like, `what could we do that's cool?"' Robocop featured Peter Weller in a combination of makeup and costume courtesy of Rob Bottin with convincing stop-motion effects by Tippett, and was punctuated by Neumeier's satirical vision of the near future.

After Robocop, Neumeier and Davison discussed a movie version of Robert Heinlein's novel, Starship Troopers, sensing that Steven Spielberg and Amblin were working on the groundbreaking technology ofJurassic Park." It was like this brave new world where you could do anything," Neumeier recalled. "The nice thing about the digital age, and this is just going to continue, is that it takes the shackles off: What we didn't know then is how expensive it could be, but it's getting so that you can do anything if you have enough money"

The Lost World

Largely created with the CG bugs fiiom Tippett's studio, Starship Troopers features a dizzying array of Neumeier creations. "I feel that I have a certain operational knowledge of special effects, but in the end it's not very important," he noted. "It's fun to know your visual effects tools, but it's not something that enters into my process much. I think the technology has sent me more back to basics than ever.

"After Jurassic Park," he continued, "I felt that the good thing about digital effects was that we can do anything, and bad thing about was the audience very quickly expects that we could do anything.Thus, the actual craft of storytelling becomes more important than ever. That's our challenge now"

Accomplished screenwriter Ed Solomon discovered that the experience of writing an effects-driven film for a major studio can present unexpected dilemmas. After a rewarding series of produced spec scripts, Solomon wrote Men In Black on assignment. "I came in to Men In Black at the beginning and the producers told me, "Let your mind go crazydon't reign in your imagination. Go as far as you can go," he recollects. "When I turned the script in, they said "Are you nuts? Didn't you reign in your imagination at all? We can't possibly shoot this movie." With creature effects supervised by Rick Baker and CGI overseen by Eric Brevig and ILM, the Barry Sonnenfeld comic-fantasy became one of the biggest hits in the summer of 1997.

My Phil Tippett animates a stop motion puppet from Robocop, the realizatin of one of Ed Neumeier's concepts.

Solomon wrote 30 to 40 internal drafts of the Men In Black script and a dozen officially submitted drafts, then actively worked with Sonnenfeld during principal photography. To varying degrees, the descriptions in Solomon's script were incorporated by his collaborators. "The only phone call I've ever made from an airplane was to Barry when I had the idea to have the jeweler's head open at the morgue to reveal the tiny guy inside, running everything from a little chair," he recalls. "The guy next to me on the plane heard the conversation and switched his seat! You describe things like that in the script, and they ask you, `How little? How green?' In the case of Men In Black, a lot of the stuff looked way better than I had originally conceived."

For Solomon, the screenwriting process for any type of film becomes one based on central elements of storytelling. "It doesn't matter how you describe something in a script unless you are creating in concert with the director," he noted. "Then, what ends up on screen is very much going to reflect your description. What you really need to know and focus on as a writer is how you tell a good story."

Solomon has written a draft of X-Men for director Bryan Singer and formed his own production company, Infinite Monkeys, which is creating a TV show, "The Unbelievables," about a bunch of over-the-hill superheros. Ironically Solomon had first written it in 1987 as a feature film, but it was deemed not makeable since it was considered too expensive at the time. With current available technologies, "The Unbelievables" is now possible, though Solomon warns of the potential abuses of the digital landscape. "For a short amount of time, digital effects could change the way directors approach the material because they may get fascinated with the technology, but ultimately you still have to write reality-something that feels grounded in some kind of human truth-even if it's fantastic subject matter:"

Starship Troppers

In another branch of moviemaking, traveling between the worlds of live action and animation, screenwriter Tab Murphy, on the strength of his script for Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, was assigned to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic story, Tarzan, for an animated feature. Directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck, the project is trailblazing in its integration of traditional animation and CGI.

"I knew that they wanted to do a wide screen version of the story with an epic feel to it," Murphy said. "You keep that in the back of your mind while you're writing. There was an opportunity to really explore an aspect of the story that hadn't been previously duplicated on film." At Disney, art director Dan St. Pierre and CGI artistic supervisor Eric Daniels developed revolutionary CG innovation labeled "deep canvas," which allow twodimensional Tarzan to move through a background jungle environment of unprecedented depth and detail.

Based on a detailed 15-page treatment that often undergoes rigorous re-writing, an animated feature is typically turned over to artists who generate visual concepts and additional story ideas before a first draft of the screenplay is written. The necessarily collaborative nature of animation found Murphy integrating the technological achievements into his writing. "If the artists have an idea, they are absolutely encouraged to run with it," related Murphy. "These people are so brilliant at design and visual storytelling, it is magical when it happens."

The Wild Wild West

On the brink of the new digital cinema, Murphy, who is working on a CG-based project for producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla,Independence Day), cautions writers of the pitfalls of computer-generated scenarios, whether in liveaction, animation, or a combination thereof. "We are at a time now where we may start to rely too much on that technology," he said. "I firmly believe that CGI will only prove to be long-lasting if it is integrated with traditional storytelling. For the project with Dean and Roland, we're spending every waking moment working on the story, not trying to shoehorn it into the technology."

Writer-director Stephen Sommers insists that "writing is the fun part" of making a movie-understandable when considering that movies of the size and complexity he has undertaken require a year and a half of 16-18hour days to complete, including a minimum of nine months in post-production. After writing and directing Deep Rising, Sommers pitched a new live-action version of the 1932 horror classic, The Mummy, a May 1999 release, to Universal Studios. "Everyone had an idea of what the mummy looked like," explained Sommers, "but I said, `we can't do that-we've got to surprise people. We must surpass their expectations."

Taking the basic concepts from the original film, Sommers conceived a new story and characters for his version, a "re-do" instead of a remake." I didn't want to have a guy wrapped in bandages, so he is dramatically CGenhanced," Sommers described. "Part of my pitch to the studio before I even started writing was that you couldn't unwrap the mummy, and you can't outrun him, so I knew that we would be working with Industrial Light and Magic from moment one." Using motion-capture techniques, Mummy actor Arnold Vosloo's basic movements were recorded and his likeness, fashioned by prosthetics expert Nick Dudman, was reconstructed for animators at ILM. "I came up with stuff in my script that I was not even sure ILM could do," Sommers confessed. "But I knew that John Berton, the visual effects supervisor, would take it to the next level and really flesh my ideas out."

Sommers the director cursed Sommers the writer all through the production of The Mummy, though he concedes that his writing pushed his directing into uncharted territory. "We went way beyond what I ever thought we could achieve," admitted Sommers. "You see a guy turn, half his head is missing, and you can see through himit's pretty spectacular. Most of the stuff that's in my movie couldn't have been done five.years ago."

Back in the 1970s, filmmakers Brent Maddock & S.S. Wilson worked in industrial and educational films with minuscule budgets. Presently, after a string of produced spec scripts, including the Short Circuit and Tremors movies, they are writing on assignment for the most ambitious of studio projects, among them, the summer, 1999 mega-budget movie Wild Wild West. Even in their newfound context of digital imagery, utilized in Wild Wild West to articulate a gigantic mechanical tarantula, Maddock and Wilson turned to their roots during the writing process. "We still find ourselves stepping back and saying, `let's not write a scene that can only be done on the computer. Let's write a scene that can be done conventionally, and save money for the few standout moments: Right now, CGI is still a very high-end, expensive operation."

Maddock and Wilson went directly from Wild Wild West to their most visionary project to date, one sure to pique the curiosity of filmmakers and audiences alike: a totally computer-generated film. Originating at ILM in conjunction with Universal, Frankenstein and 771e Wolf Man will feature CG characters, sets, locations, everything. Once Maddock and Wilson's script was approved, Maddock got the job of codirecting the project Dave Carson, who has worked at ILM since the early 1980s."We're trying to be true to the original Universal films and be respectful of them," Maddock said. Wilson added, "and yet this is not in any way a remake of Frankenstein or The Wolf Man; it is an entirely new story with those characters."
For the pair, the concept of writing a fully-CG film offered few limitations, aside from a 85-90 page maximum, set for budgetary restrictions. "We knew we had the freedom to come up with sets and locations that would not have to be filmed," Maddock remarked, "so we got a pretty fantastic with some of the ideas." According to Wilson, after a screenplay draft was submitted and ILM entered the scene, the script continued to evolve to maximize each facet of the film. "An enormous amount of thought and discussion went into almost every detail," he said. "Each scene and line of dialogue is being studied over and over to make sure were getting the most out of it.The storyboarding phase is causing us to revamp the script as the story department at ILM comes up with more ideas and possibilities."

Whereas movies such as Antz, A Bug's Life and Toy Story created fully CG worlds utilizing non-human characters, Wilson confirmed that Frankenstein and The Wolf Man will not retread familiar cinematic ground. "In each line of scene description in our screenplay," he noted, "we went out of our way to set a tone in the artists' minds and achieve a look that is very different from anything that anybody has ever done in film."

As developing CGI technologies take the future of movies in ever more unpredictable directions, screenwriters will undoubtedly face the coming changes regardless of their chosen subject matter. Whether the project is shot on a set or becomes fabricated on a workstation, writers will continue to remain the point of origin for any technical marvels. Still, Duncan Kennedy, for one, hopes that fixture projects, like his first feature release, Deep Blue Sea, continue to employ a variety of techniques to achieve their desired effect. "There's something about the way that light falls on aminiature that makes it look real," he said. "CG effects miss the hard edge and human touch of a physical creation. If George Lucas gets his wish and all movies are done completely in a computer, I think it will be a sad day."

Freelance author Scott Essman has been writing about makeup artistry and visual effects since 1995. Write to him at: sessman@ibm.mtsac.edu. MM