Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Would you let a big scorpion walk on your body?
For some people it is sufficient to spot a scorpion to get scared to death.
You guess what would happen if the scorpion was on their neck.
Well, Lorenzo Pinna submitted to this dangerous trial and he survived
bringing back this reportage that we will see on a moment.
A reportage about a meeting with an enthomologist with a unique job:
to rear and to coach insects for the scenes in the movies where insects,
like scorpions, spiders and tarantulas, are supposed to scare the viewers.
Of course all this could happen only in Hollywood. Let's see
Often animals are very good actors.
Who does not remember the everlasting Lassie whose episodes are still rerun?
Or Rex one of the stars glowing in the television skies?
But what about other animals much less charming.
Insects for instance. Can they be good actors?
There are many examples.
To direct these animals in front of the cameras appears to be more
difficult than directing dogs or cats.
What is the secret of these sequences where the insect
or the spider seems to act exactly following the screenplay?
To find out the trick we have visited a specialist living in the outskirts of L.A.
Tarantula on duty.
Here lives the enthomologist who stocks with insects
the Hollywood movie industry.
It is this specialist who coached insects and spiders to behave,
with a few limits, following the director's instructions.
He revealed us a few tricks of his trade.
First of all , the insects with a really scary appearence ,
like this tarantula, are not really the dangerous ones.
They are not poisonous, they belong to species that are harmless (or almost)
but look very much alike the more dangerous relatives.
Then it is impossible to teach an insect how to act,
the only way is to know its behaviour to exploit their characteristics.
Here for example Steven Kutcher is demonstrating
how a shadow stops a tarantula in its run.
It enough to shade the light with a hand and the bug stops.
By gently touching its rear legs the disquieting arthropod moves on again.
Let's look how it is possible to set up a special effect.
A gigantic tarantula climbs onto the roof of the White House,
the legendary mansion of United States presidents.
And maybe this wouldn't be the worst worry for their inhabitants.
The tarantula is slid into a cardboard pipe.
In the darkness the tarantula doesn't move.
The pipe is attached to the scaled down model of the White House.
By gently touching its rear legs the tarantula gets out of the pipe
and climbs up onto the White House roof.
Of course these are the basics.
In a real special effect there would be many other elements
to convey a "reality" impression.
There would be people, cars and so on.
The tarantula walks again on the White House roof.
How to make a butterfly land on an actor's nose
and have it stay as long as it's necessary to film it?
The secret is simple. The butterfly should stay some time in a fridge.
When taken out of the fridge the multicoloured lepidopter will stay still
,wings spread out, to warm itself up and eventually will fly away.
There should be a lot of time to shoot the scene.Not this time.
The butterfly flew away. It a rare tropical butterfly.
Quick! A net! No way. The butterfly is gone. Steven could not catch it.
Clearly the butterfly didn' t like the idea of a second stay in the fridge.
The US movie industry forbids to kill or to injure an animal even the insects.
And in our reportage no animal was killed or wounded.
A huge scorpion from Madagascar.
This scorpion too is not one of the most dangerous
and it is often used for a walk on an actor's body.
We want to try the "walk".
Someone from the TV crew volunteers?
That's how it always ends up.
Here is the scorpion. What a scare!
No, to tell the truth after Steve's reassuring explanations
these bugs look almost nice.
Here too same trick. The shadow stops the scorpion
and a gentle touch on the rear legs makes it move on again
on the actor (or journalist) body.
These are cockroaches and they show a behaviour
fairly spread in the animal kingdom.
To feign to be dead to escape a predator closing in.
It is this curious behaviour to save one's life
that Steven exploits for an act that is more an advertisement feat
than a scene from an horror movie.
Here the cockroach, motionless, on the cart seems to hold the flag
while the other , prodded on the rear legs, moves on pulling the cart around.
All the insects that go in front of the Hollywood cameras,
end up as horrible, disgusting, poisonous and, at times, lethal villains.
Maybe it is because Steven feels responsible,
at least partially,for this bad press
that he asked us to finish this reportage with a message.
Insects are the most interesting and wonderful creatures on the planet
and they too are in danger of extintion
due to the rapid expansion of human activities.
As Steven Kutcher can witness :
finding insects for the Hollywood cameras is getting more and more
difficult.