Spurlock said:
Well I don't think you intended for me to give any real thought on how you wouldn't use CGI ants, But I did anyway.
Use real ants, at least for the important parts. They proved in ToD that lots of bugs are no problem. Here you could have them outside too, so no worries of an infestation. I understand CGI gives you more freedom and a more thematic control over them, but for close up or mob scenes, real ants could be used (harmless ants of course). I just feel like that would've been the case if KotCS had been made at the same time as the other 3. But yes, animatronic ants is a no-no.
And no hostility detected
Great! Then, I shall post my ripost without guilt...
Those bugs in TOD were not required to complexly attack, swarm and devour the people on screen. (That, and CG wasn't around back then, of course.
)
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of, "how would you be able to train ants to do stuff like 1) swarm in a perfect circle around two men fighting, 3) create a ladder out of themselves to allow one ant to crawl onto Spalko's legs and then be squished into oblivion, 2) crawl
en mass into the open mouth of a screaming Pat Roach substitute, and best of all, 4) carry same Pat Roach substitute across the ground and head-first into an anthill to his certain death?"
My point is that for the scene, CG was going to be required no matter what, so I'm sure Berg thought it was only logical to make 'em all CG to ensure total control over what they did in the scene. This, of course leads to the thought, "Well, then, they shouldn't have bothered at all, if it meant such conspicuous usage of CG." A valid argument, but I'll admit I'm biased against that one, since I happened to really enjoy the ant scene in the film and am glad it was created (I happen to love swarming little creatures that eat people in movies.
)
Heck, if I may be so bold, I think the only reason people decry the ant effects in KOTCS is because our brains fundamentally know that the stuff they pull on-screen is not possible to do with actual ants, and so we immediately recognize effects. Nothing to do with their realism; simply our common sense ruining our suspension of disbelief. This is probably the case with
any effect used to create a being or event not practical in reality, hence the unfair hate for CGI when it's actually quite useful for that kind of thing.