Starship Theory Bugs

When Jurassic Worldstomped into multiplexes earlier this summer, its visual effects were inevitably compared to its predecessor – 1993’s Jurassic Park. At a time when CGI was in its relative infancy, Steven Spielberg’s movie set a new standard in visual effects. For those two-or-so hours, an entire generation believed that dinosaurs were once again walking the earth.

Starship Troopers is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first published (in abridged form) as a serial in The Magazine of Fantasy& Science Fiction (October, November 1959, as 'Starship Soldier') and published hardcover in 1959. The first-person narrative is about a young Filipino. Jun 25, 2017  Starship Theory, developed and published by Reconnect Software is a spaceship building, survival game. You must mine, research, and fight your way to building the best ship you can, all while.

In fact, Jurassic Park’s effects are so good that it still stands up more than 20 years later – and, as many other writers have already pointed out, its dinosaurs are hardly less convincing than the ones that charged across the screen in this summer’s Jurassic World.

Another ’90s film commonly held up for the quality of its visual effects isStarship Troopers. Directed by Paul Verhoeven and released in 1997, it wasn’t a hit ofJurassic Park’s magnitude, but its anarchic humour and superbly-wrought planet of giant, bloodthirsty bugs has earned it a cult following. So why do the effects seen in Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers still look so good today?

This very subject came up when we spoke to Fon Davis, a longstanding miniature maker and production designer who worked on Starship Troopersin 1997. He points out that, whileJurassic Park, Starship Troopers, and the Star Warsprequels (the first of which also came out in 1999) were all praised for their groundbreaking use of CGI, a great percentage of their effects were achieved practically.

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“Jurassic Parkhad a lot of Stan Winston creatures in it,” Davis says. “There are the close-ups for the feet and the heads, and we had a lot of beautiful, beautiful animatronics in that movie. Those things always integrate with the lighting in the scenes perfectly because they’re actually there. They glisten, they do all the things your brain expects an object to do, or a dinosaur to do. So I think those are the best visual effects, probably, that have ever been done.”

Starship Troopers was created with a similar mix of miniature effects, animatronics and CGI, with each technique carefully chosen to suit its particular sequence.

“[Starship Troopers] is a good example of hybrid moviemaking,” Davis tells us. “We had a lot of miniatures, a lot of really spectacular CGI from Phil Tippet’s studio for the bugs. We had prosthetics and they had all the physical effects artists in that movie. The movie holds up a lot better than movies that have come out since.”

The reason for this? Davis refers to a theory put forward by Dennis Muren, the Oscar-winning special effects artist who worked on theStar Wars movies: practical effects give CG artists a physical, real-world basis for their own work.

“Dennis Muren is always saying that CG artists copying photographs makes it easier for them to make the CG look real too,” Davis explains. “So you have a bunch of real objects, a bunch of miniature objects, and then there’s CG to bind all those things. The miniature things based on reality raise the bar for CG, and CG raises the bar for the whole thing. So you have a benchmark you have to hit. It’s too easy to get lazy and think you’ve nailed it when you’re not copying some sort of reality, you’re creating reality completely from scratch. It’s so easy to get it wrong, because the physics engines and rendering packages on computers don’t always get it right.”

For Davis, the balance between established practical effects techniques and CGI was one of the main reasons why the visuals inJurassic Park andStarshipTrooperslook so good. But there’s also another reason: those movies arrived at the beginning of a visual effects boom; compared to the movies of the 21st century, the number of effects shots inJurassic Parkwas relatively tiny, as Davis explains:

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“It’s interesting, because I think CG came in right about the time movies also started to amp up the number of visual effects. It’s like the birth of the rollercoaster ride visual effects movie, right? So this all happened while we were still at ILM. You used to get movies that would come in and there would be like a hundred shots, and we’d be like, ‘Wow, a hundred VFX shots. Jurassic Park only had 65.’ But then we’d hit 200, and then 300, and we’d be saying, ‘Woah! 300 effects shots in a movie!’ Then the next thing you know we’re doing 900, then a thousand. By the time we’d finished the third Star Wars prequel it was over 2,000 shots and we stopped counting!”

With increasing workloads like that, it’s little surprise that the effects shots in some modern movies can look variable at times – technology may have evolved, but the pressure on VFX artists and designers to get 100s of shots done on time and on budget has also escalated.

Working within the constraints of time and budget, effects artists are continuously trying find new, effective ways of making audiences believe that what they’re seeing on the screen is real. For Davis, the best way to create those effects is with the same hybrid approach we saw in Jurassic Parkor Starship Troopers – and if we look at some of the movies with the best visual effects over the past five years, almost all of them have mixed the physical with the digital to create their illusions.

In Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 film Elysium, a mix of CGI and miniature effects was used to create its futuristic landscape. For one sequence, Davis and his team built a 12-foot long scale model of the Raven – the ship belonging to Sharlto Copley’s villainous character – and crashed it into an 80-foot long set. Terrifyingly, budget and time constraints meant that they only had one chance to get the shot right.

“We only had one shot to crash the ship, have it laying on the ground, spin on its side, its wings break off, flames shoot out, and it has to come to a stop at a very specific location,” Davis tells us. “Seven cameras on it, one take, and we did not have a second version of the set or the ship. That was definitely one of the most stressful moments of my career. It was seven months of work leading up to a couple of seconds of shooting.”

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Stress aside, this is a modern example of multiple disciplines coming together in one shot to create a realistic whole. The scale model effects (or “bigiatures” as they’re sometimes dubbed) were later augmented with CGI, while a full-scale version of the crashed Raven was created from the model for the live-action scenes which came after it.

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Davis cites Christopher Nolan as another director who’s using the same hybrid approach asJurassic Parkand Starship Troopers. For 2014’s Interstellar, Nolan used a blend of model spacecraft – some spanning as much as 50 feet in length – physical sets and CGI to fill in the gaps.

The resulting effects shots – some 900 of them – create the illusion of real craft flying through space precisely because so much of what we see was physically built; as Davis puts it, “You don’t have to fight it – you don’t have to try to make it look real. In so much of computer graphics, you have to go to a huge effort to really do that.”

So while CGI has become a hugely powerful filmmaking tool, it’s when the digital and the physical are combined that the most effective sequences arise. It was true in the days of Jurassic ParkandStarship Troopers, and it’s still the case in movies like Elysium, Interstellar and this summer’s Mad Max: Fury Road, with its stunning mix practical stunts augmented with CG.

Whether it’s bringing dinosaurs back from extinction, scaring up hordes of giant bugs or sending spaceships to the other side of the universe, the visual effects artist’s job remains the same as it ever was: using technology to tell a story. As Fon Davis puts it, “You don’t want people to think about visual effects. You want people to care about the characters. So if we’re doing our jobs right, we go completely unnoticed.”

The Terran Federation is the fictional global government of Earth and her space colonies in Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 science fiction novel Starship Troopers. The Starship Troopers film adaptation uses the United Citizen Federation in its place.

Background[edit]

Passages in the book give some details on how the Terran Federation originated.

At the end of 20th century, national governments of the world collapsed due to the failure of 'unlimited democracies', civil unrest and social workers and child psychologists, a 'pre-scientific pseudo-professional class', banning corporal punishment, resulting in crime reaching endemic proportions.

Illegal activity which took place all around the world, including in Russia and in the United Kingdom, brought down the North American Republic. In 1987, the resulting Russo-Anglo-American alliance became engaged in a war with the Chinese Hegemony. Shortly before the war's end, the 'Revolt of the Scientists' tried to create a utopia through a coup d'état but soon failed. The war ended in 2130 with the humiliating Treaty of New Delhi, which made large concessions to the Hegemony. This treaty freed prisoners captured by the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance, but left 65,000 civilians (Japanese, Filipino and Russian) and two divisions of British paratroopers (sentenced for political crimes) in Chinese incarceration, leaving them escape as the only way to freedom. The loss of the war (or rather, a negotiated peace on extremely unfavorable terms, somewhat similar to the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I) left the West and Russia on the brink of anarchy.

After the collapse of national governments, a group of veterans in Aberdeen, Scotland, formed a vigilante group to stop rioting and looting. They hanged a few people (including two veterans) and decided to only allow veterans to join their committee due to a mistrust of politicians. This contingency plan became routine after a couple of generations, and this group of vigilantes originated the Terran Federation. It is expressly stated that this was never intended to be a coup d'état and was more comparable to the Russian Revolution: one system collapsed on its own and another rose to fill its place.

Government[edit]

The Terran Federation has a multicultural society that votes for a global leader, similar to a representative democracy. However people of higher levels of authority also have to suffer tougher repercussions of their actions: e.g. a lieutenant could hang for making a mistake that a private would merely be dismissed and maybe lashed for. Corporal and capital punishment are practiced by the government as well as spanking children being standard use amongst the population.

A 'History and Moral philosophy' instructor in the Army says 'personal freedom for all is [the] greatest in history, laws are few, taxes are low, living standards are as high as productivity permits, crime is at its lowest ebb.'

Federal Service[edit]

The people of the Terran Federation are either 'Citizens' or 'Civilians'. Everyone is born a 'Civilian', and at age 18 every 'Civilian' has the right to enroll for a minimal 2-year term of 'Federal Service'. After completing a term of Federal Service 'Civilians' become 'Citizens' and gain the right to vote.

In theory a completed term of Federal Service ensures a 'Citizen' is willing to put the needs of the community before their own personal well-being. This is because Federal Service is tough and dangerous (by design). It can involve joining the military, being a human guinea pig, testing survival equipment, or manual labour. The Federation makes it quite easy to quit a term of service before completion (even during war-time), but once someone has quit they are never allowed to enroll again. There is also a 48-hour long 'cool off' period right after a new recruit takes oath, when they are given a leave to pack their things and say their goodbyes, but are also instructed that they will not be punished for not actually returning, they would just be permanently discharged without being granted citizenship. This is to ensure that all volunteers are dedicated, whilst also discouraging people from leaving.

The Federation makes the opportunity of Federal Service open to everyone, able-bodied or not. A doctor giving a medical examination says 'if you came in here in a wheelchair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find you something silly to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe.' The only impediment that can render one ineligible for federal service is if a psychiatrist determines that one cannot understand the oath of service.

'Civilians' are neither discriminated against, nor deprived of legal rights other than that of the ballot. Several examples from the book bear this out, particularly the fact that Juan Rico's family is prosperous and lacks for nothing save the right to vote (which Rico's father regards as 'useless' anyway).

Military[edit]

The Terran Federation's military appears to be divided into an Army and a Navy, the latter of which is essentially a space force that utilises advanced military spaceships. The dozens of non-combat and support branches include units for logistics, biological/chemical weapons development, and terraforming. The 'Sky Marshal' commands the entire military. To be eligible for the post of Sky Marshal, an officer must reach certain high ranks in both the Army and the Navy.

Once in the military a volunteer has the choice to 'go career', choosing to devote 20 years of service to the Federation instead of the usual two years required to gain Citizenship. After these 20 years they can then leave and get a 'reserved job', for example in the police. If they quit before then, after choosing the career path, the Federation is less supportive to them in the Civilian world. A minimal 2-year service can be extended if the Federation deems it necessary, as explicitly stated in the 'Service Oath' taken upon enrollment.

Distinctive military units include:

• the 'Mobile Infantry' (Army). They use 'Powered Armor Suits' (and are featured largely in the book). These suits are very versatile and combine the powers of tanks and paratroopers making earlier battlefield units obsolete.
• the 'K9 Corps' act as reconnaissance units using 'Neodogs' via an emotional bond with them. A Neodog, an 'artificially mutated symbiote derived from dog stock', can speak and has the average intelligence of a child aged 8 – 12 years.
• clairvoyants and psychics. The only psychic in the book's job is to find where the arachnids are tunneling. Because their tunneling makes a great deal of noise, Rico predicts that he simply has very good hearing. It's left ambiguous if he was right.
• engineers who do not use powered suits; Rico describes them as valiant even though unskilled fighters.

The Navy has powerful weapons capable of destroying planets (e.g. 'Nova Bombs').A majority of ship-board ranks are filled by females. The primary role of the Navy involves providing transportation and fire support for the ground forces.

Society[edit]

Heinlein suggests that 'revolution is impossible' in the Terran Federation: stability ensues from arming aggressive types as 'sheepdogs' while 'the sheep will never give you any trouble'.^[1]According to Franklin, '[t]he underlying premise of the new social order is that the only people fit to govern the state are those willing to sacrifice their lives for the state'.^[2]

Analysis[edit]

Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox describe the Terran Federation as 'Heinlein's last attempt to articulate a perfect government' and as 'the ultimate embrace of both military and democratic ideas within a single state. This fantasy utopia lends itself to a historical comparison of the positive effects of the military on liberty and personal freedom. Such a comparison will also highlight the inherent potential threat to liberty the military poses simply by its existence. If, in this idealized state militarism can be recognized as an ever present menace, then, a fortiori, the danger it represents is even more critical for existing democracies. Broadly drawn, the Terran Federation is a liberal, representative democracy.'^[3]

Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison note that the 'Terran Federation, which Heinlein clearly expects us to admire, is said by his most extreme detractors to be analogous to Nazi Germany.'^[4]

United Citizen Federation[edit]

In the film adaptation, the United Citizen Federation (UCF) was used in place of the Terran Federation and has many of the hallmarks of a fascist government, including heavy-handed propaganda, the demonization of an external foe, the centralized organization of society for total war, military (or militarized) and not civilian leadership, and omnipresent uniforms.

The formation of the UCF is not fully explained in the movie. However, dialogue at the beginning of the film suggests its formation was similar to the Terran Federation (albeit more bloody).

Like in the novel, in order to vote in the UCF one must provide 'Federal Service' by serving in the military or other service. The social structure of the world is, just like the Terran Federation, divided between citizens (people who have served) and civilians (people who haven't served).

References[edit]

1. ^Heinlein in Starship Troopers, quoted in: Dolman, Everett Carl (1997), 'Military, Democracy and the State in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers', in Hassler, Donald M.; Wilcox, Clyde (eds.), Political science fiction, Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, pp. 196–213 [203], ISBN978-1-57003-113-7
2. ^Franklin, Howard Bruce (1980). Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science fiction. Science-Fiction Writers. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 114. ISBN0-19-502746-9. The underlying premise of the new social order is that the only people fit to govern the state are those willing to sacrifice their lives for the state
3. ^Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox, Political science fiction (Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997), 197.
4. ^Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison, 100 must-read science fiction novels (A & C Black, 2006), 69.

External links[edit]

• ChrisW's Thoughts on Starship Troopers (A fan-written Essay on the Novel)
• The Nature of Federal Service(PDF File)