Phil Tippett, vfx legend, makes his directorial debut with the direct-to-DVD release of Starship Troopers 2. Photo courtesy of Tippett Studios.

BD: And what about other effects besides the bugs?

PT: Certainly there were a number of shots that did require atmosphere or a spaceship here or there… some kind of an effect enhancement. A great deal of the effects were done actually onstage, like all the blowing of smoke and debris and that kind of thing by [supervisor] Michael Lantieri, who is quite well known in the business for doing that kind of floor effects stuff. He was able to come on and I had worked with him quite a bit on Spielberg and Lucas film projects, and we were really lucky to get him on this film. He did it as a favor. That’s how you can make these kinds of things for that amount.

BD: Overall was it more helpful shooting in high-definition?

PT: No, it’s got some pluses and minuses. I think with any type of emerging technology is it has a tendency to be in the hands of the rocket scientists for its trial period, and there’s a tendency for everybody to want everything to be perfect, and, as a filmmaker, that’s not really what you want. And many times, particularly for a war or horror picture, you want things to not be pretty. So it took a great deal of work for a person to involve the director of photography and myself to get the kind of [gritty] look we were looking for in high definition with the contrast range and the color palette. And it really necessitated working in quite a bit of smoke, which was very uncomfortable, but we needed that to get the kind of images that we wanted. Plus I wanted to do everything hand held and the cameras are huge! They’re just gigantic so that makes it kind of difficult for the camera operators on a day-to-day basis. It really helped me out in a number of situations where I might not have been able to get the coverage that I really needed. Well, you can really blow the digital images up significantly and they really don’t fall apart that bad, so that’s a huge asset.

Tippett featured recycled bugs from the original movie, as well as parasite and spy bugs, which were designed for the sequel.

BD: What was it like directing?

PT: It was not a huge surprise. I mean, I’ve been doing this stuff for the last 30 years and my previous incarnation as a visual effects supervisor gave me the opportunity to work on everything. You know, from the cradle to the grave on any production. You’re there right in the beginning with the producers, directors and writers figuring out how you’re going to do this stuff, and then you’re there shooting the whole thing and then you’re there all the way through post-production and the delivery of the final release print. You just deal with every single department.

BD: Do you see any interesting visual effects trends taking place these days?

PT: Not yet. I hope to at some point in the future, but it seems as though the insatiable need for summer spectacle kind of continues to be the driving drug of choice. At least in my milieu that’s kind of what side our bread is buttered on.

BD: Lately, it seems with many of the comic book and superhero movies that the blending of live action and CG creates more and more proportional problems.

PT: Yeah, there’s a number of tricks that you need to apply to hand massage them into being in the same world… so you know just getting the weight and the mass and the lighting is pretty darn tricky. And a lot of places you see these days that by the sheer volume of shots that it’s harder and harder to apply the craft as rigorously as one needs to get all that stuff working together, and some of it falls a little bit short.

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. DVD. Columbia TriStar Home Ent., $24.96.

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.com.