Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation
 | In this rapid-fire sequel to the cult favorite, the Federations best Mobile Infantry unit goes back into action against the Bug horde. But this time, the Bugs are waiting for them. Trapped on a remote outpost light years from the nearest reinforcements, a small group of soldiers fights an enemy smarter and more cunning than any they've ever faced. Now they must join forces with an infamous traitor to the Federation if they are to have any hope. And it's not just their lives at stake, it's the survival of the human race. If they want to live, they'll have to use their heads before the Bugs do Academy Award winner Phil Tippett (1994, Best Visual Effects for Jurassic Park), one of the greatest visual effects wizards in movie history, makes his directorial debut. |
 | Dan McNamara, Head of Operations at Tippett has this to say:
Taking on "Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation" was a challenge for Tippett Studio. We had no infrastructure to deal with HD plates and the production was going to use both the Sony CineAlta and the Panasonic Varicam systems. Because the project was low budget we needed a HD DDR system that was flexible and cost effective. After evaluating the existing DDRs and looking into building something in-house we decided that going with the SpectSoft RaveHD system was the way to go. There were a number of reasons for this decision. Foremost the system needed to be flexible. SpectSoft's software license guaranteed us access to the code so we could add new features without having to wait. RaveHD runs on linux and we were very comfortable customizing it to integrate with our existing linux network. The ability to have a specific set of robust features was very important. We were not looking for a swiss army knife - we required specific tools to handle the HD I/O and RaveHD fit the bill perfectly. |
The development team at SpectSoft has been great to work with. They listened to our input and, where necessary, made changes quickly. Integrating Varicam support is an example of this collaboration. The decision was made well into production that some of the model and miniature work would be shot slo-mo using the 48fps mode on the Varicam camera. We shot a few tests and worked with the SpectSoft engineers to read the active frame marker and make sure the DDR only grabbed those frames. The ability to do this on the DDR saved us lots of time. Plus we did not have to rent or buy any additional equipment.
Bottom line - the RaveHD DDR was a big part of Tippett Studio's success with the Starship Troopers 2 project. |  |
 | The "Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation" principal photography was shot with the Sony CineAlta at 1080p24, however miniatures and elements were shot with the Panasonic Varicam at 720p60 (usually in some factor of 24). So right off the bat, we were faced with working with both formats, having both formats exist on the DDR at the same time. We also gained quite a bit of experience working with both Sony and Panasonic decks. Also, RP188 support was a must as we had to pull out the active frames from a Panasonic Varicam sequence. |
 | All the visual effects plates were captured and exported via RaveHD over the course of about 8 months in post production. Also, finals of each shot were done on RaveHD by the director (Phil Tippett) and the visual effects supervisor (Eric Leven). Frames were moved on/off the DDR via NFS, the standard Unix file sharing method. They were then converted from the YUV color space and they were captured into a floating point RGB colorspace designed by Tippett for use by the artists. |
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