Just pretend

What with Fox's quick trigger finger, one of the more promising series this spring, "Drive," got a quick hook.

The network burns off the final two hours Friday (7 and 8 p.m., Ch. 13), but it's not a finale. It's just two more episodes of a show that will never resolve its storyline.

If there's anything good that came out of the show about a group of people involved in a secret, illegal cross-country road trip, it's what technology bodes for future series. "Drive" is full of really cool race scenes as the actors race down the highways.

Except the actors aren't really racing anywhere.

"What we've discovered is that, because of technology, we can actually create a cross-country road race and shoot it all in Santa Clarita," said executive producer Tim Minear.

The actors sit in cars in a warehouse in Santa Clarita, Calif., doing what actors do — acting like they're in cars going really fast.

The difference is that the technology has advanced so far that, unless you know the actors are in front of green screens, you can't tell.

"The question was — could you make a show that took place partially in moving vehicles that go across the country? Could you do that and have it not look bad?" Minear said. "Because you want it to look good."

And there's an additional challenge to special effects involving things we see every day as opposed to things more out-of-this-world.

"It's easy to do spaceships because they're spaceships," Minear said, "but everybody ... has been in cars. So you really want that stuff to feel real."

And, on "Drive," it does.

"The series uses all cutting-edge, new technology to create these virtual environments," said executive producer Greg Yaitanes. "So we do all the driving work without ever taking the cars and people on the road. ... We've created a whole new way of doing things, to do all the driving stuff so that we can always preserve performance and always keep the excitement."

The major difference is "all very technical," Minear said. To simplify it greatly, the backgrounds are "not just rear-screen projections" they are "360 degree plates."