By Mary Alice Casey

We sit in the dim light that peeks around the drawn shades in Anderson Auditorium in Scripps Hall, all eyes fixed on a large screen at the front of the room. Save for an occasional wave of chuckles or expression of awe, we are silent, all 100 of us engrossed in Film Professor Rajko Grlic's demonstration of his first-of-a-kind CD-ROM program.

As he directs our travels with the mouse of a Macintosh computer, we enter an abandoned film school through a side door off the alley. The front entra nce along an empty, wind-swept city street is locked. A salty security guard awaits, advising us to poke around as long as we behave. "I'll be watching," he warns.

Ascending creaky stairs to the second floor, we discover five rooms. Our lessons are about to begin. Grlic tutors us this time, showing us a film grammar room that offers hands-on experience in the basics of filmmaking and an equipment room that features an interactive lighting studio and light metering exercise.

Our tour takes us through the production of a short film on the third floor and a bevy of lectures on editing, sound and music by real-life filmmakers and educators some of the top names in the business on the fourth floor. Here, too, we try to enter the diploma room for our sheepskin and a glass of champagne. "You're not ready yet," grumbles the guard. "Try again later."

Viewers can spend literally hundreds of hours taking in the lessons and amusements of "How to Make Your Movie: An Interactive Film School." Many say the three-disc set, a joint project of Ohio University and Electronic Vision Inc. of Athens that was due on the market in June, will forever change the way filmmaking is taught. Others foresee even greater implications, saying the program could alter the course of educational software and interactive instruction. What everyone agrees is that the program is educational and fun.

"It is so huge and so comprehensive and so clever," says Bob Winters, OU theater professor, interim director of the School of Film and most importantly to this project the actor behind the crabby security guard. "Sometimes I wonder if this isn't the beginning of a whole new way for interactive teaching to occur."

Lavish endorsements of the program are not rare. Some other views:

• "I would highly recommend it for students and professionals alike. (It is) the best, most complete and innovative guide I have ever seen, in any format," says film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, who won two Ac ademy Awards in 1997 for "The English Patient" and another in 1979 for "Apocalypse Now."
• "If there were an Oscar for interactive CD-ROMs, this would be nominated for Best Script, Best Creativity, Best Humor, Best Design. And it would certainly win all four categories," notes Gyorgy Karpati, director of the Hungarian Film School in Budapest.

Grlic's interactive film school is making a big impression. Photo: Rick Fatica

Key players in "How to Make Your Movie : An Interactive Film School" -- (from left) Tom Erlewine, Rajko Grlic and Dan Krivicich -- take a last minute trek through the CD-ROM program before it hit the market. Photo: Bruce Bennett

The beauty of the program is that the users be they prospective film students or Sunday afternoon videographers can practice the basics of filmmaking at their own pace and at their own computers. They can delve into a dozen different "rooms" or chapters of inter active course content, including scriptwriting, production, equipment and more. Each room of the school contains layer after layer of interactive instruction, and one click of the mouse accesses video clips, historical information, and lists of recommended books and must-see films.

The seeds for the new project were planted shortly after Grlic joined OU in 1993. The Croatian-born Grlic already had written and directed seven feature films, including "That Summer of White Roses," which took Grand Prix and Best Director awards at the 1989 Tokyo International Film Festival, and 1981's "The Melody Haunts My Reverie," shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Grlic rejected a suggestion that he write a textbook on filmmaking, thinking there already were far too many "cookbooks" on the subject. But sitting at his new computer one day, it struck him that he had found the perfect medium for sharing the lessons he had learned in his three decades as a filmmaker.

"Nothing exists close to this, whic h was a huge advantage to us and a huge disadvantage," Grlic says. Rather than work within the existing parameters for educational CD-ROMs, the team produced a program that falls somewhere between an educational CD-ROM and a game.

Grlic wrote an initial script and took the idea to Ed Talavera, an Ohio University film professor who would become his co-producer. Together they approached Electronic Vision, a 12-year-old Athens firm that develops multimedia-based educational programs. The firm was co -founded in 1985 by Dan Krivicich, BFA '73, a former instructor of educational media courses at OU, and David Burke, who has taught production management courses in the School of Telecommunications.

Krivicich, Electronic Vision's CEO, and Tom Erlewine, its art director, signed on as executive producer and art director/program designer, respectively, of the groundbreaking CD-ROM program. Hundreds of OU students and faculty members were involved in the project from new School of Theater Director V incent Cardinal, who wrote the screenplay for the short film that the program uses to demonstrate filmmaking concepts, to radio personalities Connie Stevens and Rusty Smith, whose voices offer guidance as the user navigates through the program. Students served in crew and acting positions throughout the process.

"The project sounded and is very different from anything out on the market," Krivicich says. The project also presented an opportunity for Electronic Vision to team up with the university on a major project, something Krivicich and Burke had been looking forward to.

Grlic expects the CD program to be most popular with 15- to 20-year-olds, especially those thinking about studying film. Film school directors and faculty members are interested in using it as an instructional tool. The software package sells for $89.95 (www.interactivefilmschool.com or 1-800-516-9361).

Grlic will collaborate with faculty members at UCLA and Ne w York University next year to offer an online film school that uses the new software. Classes will be conducted via the Internet once a week, and the 15 students around the world participating in the trial project will come to Ohio University for 10-day sessions three times during the academic year.

Mary Alice Casey is assistant editor of Ohio University Today.