I was rather proud of myself that it wasn't until I saw this photo in the LA Times that I thought to myself, "hey, I wonder if I know anyone with a burned down house that I can shoot?"
I watched part of Starship Troopers 2 the other day. I was reading a Phil Tippet interview about the film and I was curious to see how he handled the miniscule budget and short shooting schedule. To his credit, on the DVD commentaries, Tippet and company don't take the film too seriously. At the same time, though, I see the film as a good example of first-time director bad decisions.
Faced with the tiny budget, Tippet and his writer decided to go with a "monster in the house" approach ala Ridley Scott's Alien. Not a great idea to start with. But the main problem is that whole thing looks tiny, miniscule. Tippet flooded the sets with fog because he thought that otherwise HD looked terrible. But fog always looks cheap, like Roger Corman's Undead. It looks like it's there to obscure the lack of a set. There was some money spent on creature effects and lots of aliens. But they should have spent some of it on some digital set extensions or mattes. Give us the feeling that we're going somewhere. Instead, we spend the whole movie in a dusty, dreary night environment. They also shot really tight, like our film. I never before realized how obvious a dodge that is. It feels like everyone is framed huge so you don't see the light stands just out of frame.
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