Low Budget

Bite Me! Spiders and Strippers and Clay

There’s a movie called Bite Me!, which is about a strip club being assaulted by mutant spiders who’ve been eating Government enhanced killer pot. While the movie is obviously marvelous, the interviews are really fun. The part that’s relevant to Authenticy is the claim, made by two of the oft-naked stars, that claymation is more authentic than CGI. My first, intuitive response is agreement. But to what?

Really, you have two technology for adding effects to a movie about things that are not real. In either case, you are presenting the final viewer with an image that never occurred, and which does not portray something which ever occurred. Obviously high-end movie-makers are betting that CGI looks more real to the viewer.

Could they mean merely that claymation is more authentic behind the scenes? Perhaps giving the actress more to react too, as she screams at something not there? But claymation is usually added afterwards, too. The frame by frame shooting produces something which is then layered over the live-action shot. So, to the actress, there is no difference between being choked by an imaginary CGI mutant spider, or by an imaginary claymation mutant spider. In either case, she’s still acting in an empty room.

Still, I think there is something to it. Directors and actors are building off of something with claymation, they are being true to a genre. The genre has an authenticity in terms of its own history and self-referential nature. Claymation, precisely because it is visibly fake in a very traditional way, is true to this history. And, if you have mutant spiders attacking a strip club, you’re probably better off appealing to that kind of authenticity than to any CGI-inspired realism.

posted by dan @ 2/21/2005 09:09:00 AM