CHEAP THRILLS

Score one for frugal film makers: First RCA spends about $35,000 shooting a video for singer Deborah Allen’s “Telepathy.” Then for kicks, Allen and husband Raf Van Hoy ad-lib a video (their first) on Super 8 film with a hand-held camera. They pay for it out-of-pocket--about $10,000. And that’s the video RCA is distributing.

“Telepathy,” written by Prince, is dark and eerie--but the professionally shot video was cheery . For her video, Allen relied on props--Ouija board, burning candles, crystal ball, a crucifix against her skin--sensuous choreography and imagination.

“It’s not that the (professional) video was bad,” said Randy Miller, the RCA executive who led the fight for the economy version. “It just didn’t have the look we wanted for the artist and didn’t capture the mood of the song.”