It’s the year 2095, or thereabouts. The earth has been so thoroughly ravaged by the wicked habits and wasteful ways of humanity that its surface is not fit to live on. Mankind is an adaptable species and dwells underground, albeit pining for the light of day, simple pleasures such as fresh fruit and, most of all, freedom.

Existence is bleak amid subterranean shelters and the only escape is virtual reality. The omnipotent force of evil struggles for the upper hand by way of an addictive vr game that promises to get you through the Pearly Gates but, alas, never delivers. Gradually, instead of dreaming of life on earth, humanity is hooked on getting one step beyond and landing in the safe haven of heaven.

Welcome to a warehouse in Etobicoke, where actors are caked in blood, masked in frightening plastics, carrying scythes, outfitted in futuristic Trekkie-style jumpsuits, and sucking the life out of one another.

Behind the scenes, the producers of this low-budget sci-fi picture called Carver’s Gate are banking on the odds that with a few bucks ($2.25 million, in fact) and some ingenuity it’s possible to make an actioner the Pacific Rim will adore and reward with heaps of cash.

The cash is important, but for now, coproducer Daniel Dior of Toronto-based Producers Network Associates (Replikator) is most keyed up about the film’s premise. ‘What would you choose?’ he asks. ‘To live in a fantasy forever or in a degraded world?’

It’s a trick question; the answer lies about one hundred feet from Dior and coproducer Philip Jackson’s office where, on set, our strapping hero Carver (Michael Pare) is presently battling the vr dreammakers, wielding his talent as a dreambreaker to fight the good fight in the name of freedom.

Right now, he’s getting knocked around by a morphable vixen with jet-black ringlets called Angel (Tara Maria Manuel) who doesn’t know whether to love him or kill him.

He’s had a rough day that started off with an unexpected encounter with his ex-lover Diana, a woman pushed too far by ambition who is now stuck in virtual purgatory with a gaping wound to the side of her head.

The set is a small, cavernous quadrangle within a large, well-ventilated space that betrays the winter temperatures outside.

One camera (with Replikator dop Michael Freeman at the lens), one assistant director in view, a few extras, the leads, Diana’s blood-soaked double (Carin Moffat) and director Sheldon Inkol are working painstakingly to block out one scene after another.

They’re setting the stage for a blue-screen shoot that will take place Nov. 23 (the last day of production) and will transform – via f/x at Dan Krech Productions and Greystone Production Services – the actors into masses of exploded body fragments before they are reformed into virtual game creatures.

Today, in early November, the second-to-last scene is before camera amid industrial gray walls, an unassuming smoke machine and, considering the terms of this future, the unusual presence of greenery.

Carver has imagined himself back into time about 25 years, to his childhood when sunshine was readily apparent. Through an irregular doorway (imagine a fedora on its side) streams daylight through which Serena (Marian Skretas), his true love, emerges just in time to save him from the clutches of Angel.

Production designer Taavo Soodor’s creation, through the director’s monitor, looks slick and eerie. The signs of a fiscal challenge, present everywhere, are somehow absent from the monitor’s interpretation of the scene.

That’s part of the plan for Dior and Jackson, who, with a low-budget formula in mind, commissioned the script for Carver’s Gate from writers Tim Lee and Doug Bagot. This project is a jumping-off point for what looks to be an intense year ahead for pna, if plans to tackle the Pacific Rim market with five more low-budget films (four sci-fi’s and one crime thriller) run smoothly. Dior and Jackson anticipate making the six-pack between now and the end of 1996.

The concepts for each of the five next scripts came from pna, and certain fundamental elements, including the fixed $2 million to $3 million budget, have to be in place to make the movies viable.

You need a noir feel, says Jackson, ‘playfulness with fashion, good production values, technology, and a certain sensibility of mood.’

Talent is key as well, and Pare, although he is not signed to do another movie with pna, has been approached. A star in Asia, Pare’s visage – in black and white and color – graces a soft-cover book published in Japan that is entirely devoted to his career.

‘Japan, Korea and Germany essentially rule the market,’ says Jackson.

Carver’s Gate and its subsequent relatives are all funded entirely sans public monies and with a combination of Canadian and foreign private money.

The shrinking availability of government funds and the waiting period often involved before cash is obtained from an agency necessitated the search for an alternative, say Dior and Jackson. The answer was found in the Export Development Corporation, a federal government initiative which ensures Canadian-held foreign contracts for anything from tractors to tv movies.

Jackson says the policy needed some tweaking in order to be really useful for film producers, so pna hired a lawyer in Los Angeles to transform the policy into a magnet for foreign bankers. Dior and Jackson offered the suggested amendments to the government, followed up with eight months of lobbying, and when Ottawa agreed to make the changes this past June, the team presented the new paper to a room full of American bankers and distributors.

The results were promising and now pna says it has backing for the entire new crop. The films are: Dark Wake, with Jackson at the helm, written by Andrew Dowler and distributed by Cineplex in Canada and Gel (Bill Shields’ company) in the States; The Cusp, written by Peter I. Horton and distributed by Roger Corman’s company Concord/New Horizons; Elvis and the Red Queen, written by Glen Cullen and Jules Delerome, which will also be distributed by Concord/New Horizons; Dragonfly, attached to Cinequanon Pictures International and written by Rick Filon; and The Ethics Committee, written by H. Brian Goldman and to be directed by Jackson and distributed by Gel.

Are these virtual pics? Jackson says no way, each of the projects has a 100% distribution guarantee and the financing in place.

Latest word on Carver’s Gate following mifed is the feature has sold to German, Korean, Japanese and Brazilian territories. Distributing in Canada is CPF Distribution; in the States it’s Gel.