BUG BRAIN

Effects Wiz Phil Tippett Draws on His Monster Talents to Create the Alien Invaders of "Starship Troopers"

by Michael Payne

It all started with "King Kong." Phil Tippett first saw the classic creature feature on '50s TV as a child, and from that moment his future was set in motion -- or stop-motion. "I had to figure out how all that stuff was done," Tippett explains.
The Oscar and Emmy award-winning visual effects artist has spent his life not only figuring out how the giant ape came alive but also bringing to life many of his own creatures. Jabba the Hutt from "Return of the Jedi," the robots in "RoboCop" and the T-Rex in "Jurassic Park" are just a few among Tippett's personal monster menagerie.
Today, he owns his own visual effects shop, Berkeley, Calif.-based Tippett Studio, and his latest effort is "Starship Troopers." In the futuristic war movie, the enemy is an army of, well, bugs. But LARGE bugs. With an attitude.

BOXOFFICE: Is "Starship Troopers" the biggest film you've worked on?

PHIL TIPPETT: Yeah, by far. It's like the "Lawrence of Arabia" of sci-fi pictures.

BOXOFFICE: Is it true the studio made you shoot a test of the bugs before it would commit to the project?

TIPPETT: It's strange. The studios are just into tests now, to justify going ahead with stuff. It's not as though one's reputation or skill can justify taking the risk. So we went out to Vasquez Rocks and shot [Olympic] gold medalist Mitch Gaylord dressed up in an armored trooper's outfit. Paul directed it. [Laughs] We ripped Mitch apart.

BOXOFFICE: Is the film going to be as violent as that suggests?

TIPPETT: It's a Paul Verhoeven war/monster picture. I don't think it's going to be anything too soft and cuddly.

BOXOFFICE: "Bug movies" seem to be in these days, what with "Mimic" and "Men In Black."

TIPPETT: Part of that is a strategic decision because of the nature of the technology. The computer graphics [are better at creating] exoskeletons than continuous fleshy surfaces.

BOXOFFICE: Such as human beings. But aren't you also using computer graphics to render humans when they're being ripped apart by the bugs?

TIPPETT: Oh, sure. I characterize them as "computer graphic stunt doubles."

BOXOFFICE: That's a great term. But the bugs are obviously the main show. They're divided into different breeds, aren't they?

TIPPETT: Yes. The film pretty much follows the generic rules of World War II pictures, so the "warrior bugs" are the infantry. The "plasma bugs" -- these giant three-story bugs that shoot plasma out of their butts like a big stink bug and blast spaceships down out of the sky -- are kind of like the guns of Navarone, the heavy artillery. The "hoppers" are the equivalent of the air force. The "tanker bugs" are like tanks that have viscous liquid, like flame throwers, that they spray on people and melt them. The king bug -- the "brain bug" -- is the evil emperor. He rides on the back of his minions that are called "chariot bugs."

BOXOFFICE: It's what they used to call "a cast of thousands," except these thousands are all computer-generated. Was that the biggest challenge on "Troopers" -- the sheer enormity of it?

TIPPETT: That was the main thing. The problem with special effects-type pictures is that you're dealing with a lot of virtual material. You're on the set with maybe 200 to 300 people, and you're asking them to imagine something that isn't there, that you will put in later on. It's very important that everybody be all on the same page of the choreography and the camera work. There was a tremendous amount of production meetings so that Paul and I knew what the bugs were going to do, and then for communicating that effectively with Jost Vacano, the director of photography, and then for carrying that continuity all the way through the work with the editor, Mark Goldblatt. And assembling all the material so that it would make sense later on when we started to put our bugs in the shots.

BOXOFFICE: Has this given you the urge to direct yourself?

TIPPETT: When you're safe at home in bed with the covers pulled up really close, you think about directing, yeah. But then you go out and see how these guys work, and it's a pretty tough job. It's brutal.

BOXOFFICE: What's in the future for Tippett Studio?

TIPPETT: We're in the process now of working on the Disney project "My Favorite Martian." It's got a lot of cute and funny stuff in it. And then we have a Universal project, called "Virus," that has a big scary monster-type alien thing. So we're going to be doing more of that.