As the buggy summer looms, I have to confess to a sadistic enjoyment of this splatter film.
I think the insects are real animals filmed with high speed cameras, but the actual impacts are faked with CGI — the physics weren't quite right, and the flying insects should have bounced out of the camera field more. It just makes it funnier that no arthropods were actually harmed in the making of this movie.
(via Byzantium's Shores)
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I'm a fan of Randy Olson. Don't get me wrong about that. His Flock of Dodos makes a valuable point about science communication, and goes beyond the trite standard narrative of brilliant scientists battling ignorant creationists. There's a real problem, and caricature won't solve it.
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Cute, but I'm still not about to go out and buy a Samsung cell phone. Oh, maybe the film was really a subtle inducement to switch to metric, that I might forgive.
From http://www.rushes.co.uk/Rushes.aspx?screenID=129
via Google cache http://tinyurl.com/3c6322
A group of mad scientists set out to prove that millimetres really do matter when firing pies at insects! The film is a marvel of high-speed macro film techniques from one of the world's top specialist photographers, Steve Downer working in collaboration with director Richard De Aragues, and producers Nicholas Unsworth and Jonas Blanchard, based at Mad Cow Productions.
The team shot high-speed footage of the insects being hit by droplets of coloured viscous liquid. Maquettes were then created to match the shapes and positions of the 'heroic' insects and painted blue. Real pies were then thrown at the maquettes and shot at high speed.
Rushes' Flame and Smoke artists Brian Carbin, Richie White, Paul Hannaford, Matt Jackson and Emir Hasham composited the real pies to the impacts made on the real insects making it appear as though miniature pies were hitting them. The insects were then composited to backgrounds shot on HD Cam. Brad Le Riche added graphics and titles using After Effects.
They could have been stunt arthropods, then they would know how to not get bounced out of the frame.
So the bees are leaving because of this?
Sorry... :P
At least my husband will be comforted by the title.