Cinematographer Jost Vacano, ASC, BVK and a team of effects experts conjure up marauding swarms of immense insects for Starship Troopers
In 1959, science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein published Starship Troopers, an award-winning novel detailing Earth's battles against mammoth insectoids, as well as the lives of the soldiers who fought in the war. But adapting the epic scope of Heinlein's classic tome for the cinema necessitated nearly 40 years' worth of special effects innovations. The enormous amount of effects work entailed by such a project, however, is nothing new for director Paul Verhoeven and cinematographer Jost Vacano, ASC, BVK, who had previously collaborated on the future-flung films RoboCop and Total Recall (see AC July '90).
"What's unexpected in this film are primarily the bugs they're the main actors," explains Vacano. "And they're coming out of the computer, which meant that we had to shoot things without having the main actors in frame they were only in our minds.
"Whether you're doing opticals or using computer-generated images, the procedures [for the cinematographer] are very similar," Vacano continues. "The main artistic problem is that you have to frame objects which are not there. You always have to keep in mind the size of the bugs even the eyelines are important. You start working with cutouts, or long poles with flags on top, so you can determine the height of the bugs. This made it difficult for me, the actors, and especially A-camera operators Billy O'Drobinak and Mark Emery Moore."
Vacano is one of two cameramen employed by Verhoeven throughout his feature-film career in both Holland and America the other being cinematographer/ director Jan DeBont, ASC. In the past, the Dutch director staggered his relationship with each cameraman: he would work with one on a pair of movies, and then switch to the other for his next two cinematic endeavors.
Born in Munich, Vacano began shooting for Verhoeven on the World War II-resistance drama Soldier of Orange, followed by the controversial coming-of-age film Spetters. Since their pair of aforementioned science-fiction epics, Vacano and Verhoeven have worked together on Showgirls (AC Nov. '95). The cinematographer's other credits include his Oscar-nominated imagery on Das Boot (AC May '97), The Neverending Story, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The 21 Hours of Munich, 52 Pick-Up, Rocket Gibraltar and Untamed Heart.
With DeBont concentrating on his directorial career, Vacano may find himself shooting even more of Verhoeven's films, although the cinematographer says that he has found their existing arrangement to be quite satisfying. "Alternating every two years has kept our working relationship very fresh," notes Vacano. "Back in Germany, I had an experience where I worked for a director on maybe 10 to 15 films in a row. Working together too many times can be dangerous, because you start to develop a routine and you don't have to talk anymore. The cameraman knows exactly how the director will stage the action, and the director knows exactly how the director of photography will shoot the whole film. That can become a bit sterile. The way Jan and I alternated with Paul over the course of a two-film period always resulted in a fresh perspective and a new energy."
Location shooting for Starship Troopers in Hell's Half Acre (a county park west of Casper, Wyoming) and the Badlands of South Dakota began in March 1996 and lasted four long months. Hell's Half Acre is a remote canyon with strange rock formations well-suited to depict Tango Urilla, an alien world where Earth's troopers make their last stand against the rampaging insects. The crew built roads which navigated to the bottom of the crevices so that the art department could erect the humans' command center; equipment not transportable by four-wheel-drive vehicles had to be lowered into the pit by helicopter. "That was the biggest set I've ever lit in my life!" Vacano exclaims. "Night-lighting a landscape is always a problem: it's usually lit by the moon or a distant light source. Whatever you can duplicate is always relatively close [to the camera]. This set was about a mile long and a half-mile wide, and it was absolutely inaccessible to Musco Lights; there was no way to get fixtures into that area. So we ended up putting about 25 6K HMI Pars on one of the cliffs by helicopter, and we staged the action in a way which never showed the top of that hill. Those Pars became our main lighting source, and we hid other lights behind rocks and on many other hills.
"Because the cliff with the lighting was otherwise inaccessible, we built a secure path so the electricians could climb to the top: it took about a half-hour to 45 minutes to get up there. The ballasts for the lights got very hot and stayed warm for a few hours after wrap. Attracted by the heat, hundreds of small, young scorpions took refuge on top of the ballasts. We called it 'Scorpion Hill.'"
Extreme, desert-like climactic conditions made for hot, dusty days and quite frigid nights. After two shooting days, the ballasts' sensitive electronics succumbed to the elements, causing one-third of Vacano's Par lights to go out. The production had to constantly fly in new fixtures. Later, two weeks of constant rainfall forced the production to evacuate the site. The crew took refuge in a warehouse, where, because the production was on an evening schedule, daylight interior scenes were shot at night.
Recalls motion-control operator Mark Hardin, "One night, we ran into a difficult situation where we had a very wide panning shot with the troops charging over one road, up a slope, over the top of the hill and down the opposite side. Because of the scope of the shot, we had to back everybody onto a little pinnacle so the crew would not be visible. The motion-control system was parked on a little horizontal pad; we had just gotten the shot and were starting to shoot the clean reference passes when it began to rain. We were down in these pits of bentonite, which is mined for use as an oil-drilling lubricant. As it started to rain, this stuff became very slick. For the next two hours we wrapped as much as we could out of there using four-wheel-drive Gators. Everything was coated with muck since it was just pouring rain. The stuff builds up on the soles of your shoes, so you're slipping around wearing six-inch Frankenstein boots. Then it continued to rain for the next two weeks. [When we got back], gaffer Jim Grce had miles and miles of electrical line buried, in some cases, under seven feet of mud." After the rains subsided, whatever couldn't be unearthed from the bentonite pit be it cable, ballasts or cars remained entombed in the area.
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