November 9, 2001 Paramount Simulation Uses Scripts, Technology to Test Handling of Crisis
By JOHN LIPPMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

LOS ANGELES -- In Bosnia, cable-news correspondent Jackie Banberry has just completed an interview in which Balkan warlord Dragon Vatroslav issued threats against American troops. As she prepares to tape a lead-in, machine-gun fire is heard off camera.

"What is that?" a panicked Ms. Banberry shouts, seconds before her satellite link cuts abruptly to a test pattern.
This isn't a new international crisis. It's part of an interactive training exercise created for the Pentagon that had its origins in a project developed at Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures. Ms. Banberry and Mr. Vatroslav are fictional characters, the machine gun is a sound-effect, and the whole exercise is an effort by Hollywood to give the military a hand.

This weekend in Los Angeles, about 40 top Hollywood executives will meet with President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, to discuss what roles Hollywood might play in the war on terrorism. The meeting probably will focus on public-service announcements, movie-theater shorts and other bits of entertainment that Hollywood can produce to support the war. Among the expected attendees are Walt Disney Co. President Robert Iger and DreamWorks SKG partner Jeffrey Katzenberg.

As the Paramount project demonstrates, some pockets of Hollywood are already doing something for the military. A few weeks ago, more than a dozen screenwriters, including John Milius, co-writer of "Apocalypse Now," and Steven De Souza, who wrote two "Die Hard" movies, got together to brainstorm about military scenarios under the auspices of the Institute for Creative Technologies. The institute, based in Marina Del Rey, Calif., was launched in 1999 with a $45 million contract from the Army to enlist the help of the entertainment industry and computer scientists in developing "immersive simulation" technologies. The Paramount training exercise, written and produced by veterans of shows including "Star Trek" and "Columbo," tries to simulate the sights, sounds and pressures of an intelligence command post during an international crisis. It has been used at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington to test the strategic-thinking skills of students there -- mainly midcareer military officers and some government civilians headed for senior positions.

The exercise was the brainchild of Richard Lindheim, a Paramount TV executive who got interested in exploring ways the military and entertainment industries might work together in the field of information technology. In 1997, Mr. Lindheim and director Alex Singer developed what they termed a StoryDrive Engine, which would combine scripts, computer graphics and audio-visual material. Studios don't normally bid for government contracts, but Mr. Lindheim hoped that developing such a tool for the military could lead to applications in the then-nascent area of interactive entertainment.
Mr. Singer, a director of "Star Trek" episodes, pitched Paramount's idea to the Pentagon by arguing that simulation exercises involving three-dimensional characters with complex histories and personalities could prepare trainees for an actual crisis. Paramount would write and produce fake versions of the flood of information -- classified intelligence reports, State Department cables, military analysis and live cable-news coverage -- that comes at real national-security teams.

The Paramount proposal received a friendly reception from the Department of Defense. Paramount officials got a tour of military simulation facilities around the country. Defense officials made several trips to Paramount's studios in 1997 to immerse themselves in how movies and TV shows are created. The Pentagon agreed to fund the StoryDrive Engine project at Paramount for about $800,000, and now owns the system. Writers and producers were hired. Working alongside people designing the "Star Trek" Web site (www.startrek.com) in an office on the Paramount lot, Mr. Singer's team spent 18 months in 1998 and 1999 writing and producing.

The chief story writer was Larry Tuch, who has written episodes of "Columbo" and was a "clue writer" on the video game "Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?" He sketched out various regional crisis scenarios that would take place in 2008: a drought in Mexico that triggers a huge influx of Mexicans into the U.S. Southwest; a Persian Gulf crisis involving the Sixth Fleet; car bombings at U.S. embassies in Tokyo and Russia; and rising tensions between Russia and NATO.

Enter the Dragon

Mr. Tuch crafted the roles played by a dozen characters, ranging from U.S. senators to fictional heads of state such as "Sham Kani," the president of Iran, and Mexican president "Jose Cantu." Balkan characters like Dragon Vatroslav -- described as a former paramilitary commander connected to ethnic-cleansing incidents -- are being added to a successor version of the project. Mr. Tuch's phony intelligence reports detailed the fictional histories of the various characters; his "sitreps" -- situational reports -- outlined the unfolding crisis.

For the all-news channel, Paramount produced video footage of a fictional network called ZNN and hired actors to play correspondents and anchors.

Among those cast was David Brancaccio, host of the public-radio business show "Marketplace," who says he signed a nondisclosure agreement about his work for the project. The ZNN correspondents were then filmed by Mr. Singer in front of a "blue screen" -- a blank background that allows producers to later place correspondents digitally in other locales, such as the White House lawn or a war zone. In total, Mr. Tuch says, they produced a novel-length scenario and shot video equivalent to a two-hour movie.

The materials were shipped off on laser discs to the National Defense University, where they became part of the "final flurry," the strategic-thinking exercise given to graduating students. For the weeklong exercise, students are set up in a room that resembles an NSC situation room with banks of monitors and computer screens and overhead TV sets showing the ZNN news footage. As the scripted information about the crisis flows in, the students access the background materials on their laptops, confer with each other, and then write up a strategic response for the president. An instructor in another room can alter the scenarios in the StoryDrive Engine, tailoring the situation presented to the students depending on their answers.

A Prescient Scenario

Some of the scenarios have turned out to be prescient. "We had a scenario that involves a homeland biological attack two years ago," says Alan Whittaker, a professor of political science at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, also part of the National Defense University. Prof. Whittaker, who advised Mr. Tuch, administers the exercise to his students. More than 3,000 students have passed through the final flurry exercise produced by Paramount, many of them in top intelligence and military roles today. Since last year, the university has been producing more of the SDE material itself, using its own staff to write the scenarios and act in the mock video segments. A spokesman for Paramount said the studio wouldn't talk about its involvement in the StoryDrive Engine project. People associated with the project have found new careers working on its next generation and on other simulation technology at the Institute for Creative Technologies, now headed by Mr. Lindheim. With about 100 employees, the ICT is trying to develop artificial-intelligence and virtual-reality technology. In one project, soldiers would interact in "virtual" situations with computer-generated characters and events on a screen.