Falling into Snakes?!

Beatlesfan1225

Beatlesfan1225

Hey Everyone,
In my current adventure film the main character (Which is actually ME this time) falls into a pit of snakes. My question is fairly straight forward.. how.. on a budget.. can I make this look real and good? I'm on a budget, that is what's tough about this.

Now, I suppose I could fill my pit with fake snakes... but that seems like it would just be too motionless. I then considered non-harmful snakes from a pet store, but I think in the long run it would be too costly to maintain that many snakes haha... What I'm considering is mostly fake snakes with one or two real, but safe non-venomous snakes? That way they add some movement to it.

How would you film this scene on a budget?

I also considered hanging a greenscreen at the bottom of the pit, and chroma keying in a large amount of snakes in the bottom.
 
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Its hard to say exactly how I'd film it without seeing the script. I might try in front of a green screen, I would shoot a pile of fakes snakes with real snakes on top of them. Shoot them on dirt and rocks. Then drop footage of you behind them. If you are shooting from above the pit. Shoot the same pile from above, then put a green screen down in the pit and multiply your pile using different parts of the footage for each pile and reversing the image for a couple. You could probably get away with that for a few seconds, if you want to make it look like a monstrous pile of snakes. Let me know if this helps at all.
 
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tblaquiere said:
Its hard to say exactly how I'd film it without seeing the script. I might try in front of a green screen, I would shoot a pile of fakes snakes with real snakes on top of them. Shoot them on dirt and rocks. Then drop footage of you behind them. If you are shooting from above the pit. Shoot the same pile from above, then put a green screen down in the pit and multiply your pile using different parts of the footage for each pile and reversing the image for a couple. You could probably get away with that for a few seconds, if you want to make it look like a monstrous pile of snakes. Let me know if this helps at all.
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Thanks for the ideas! What I was thinking about doing was filling the pit with a few real snakes, and a bunch of fake ones. Shooting from above the pit to show the snakes in it, then, we cut the SIDE of the pit where you can't see what's inside, and that's when I fall in. We'll remove the real snakes when I fall in, and put a mat down where I'm falling. Then the 3rd angle cuts back to the top of the pit where I'm surrounded by fake snakes and I quickly hop out. Do you think this would work?
 
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Can you do it with sound effects? Hissing, rattles, actor's reaction, cutaways of real snakes, a few rubber snakes he brushes off as he gets out of there.
 
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indietalk said:
Can you do it with sound effects? Hissing, rattles, actor's reaction, cutaways of real snakes, a few rubber snakes he brushes off as he gets out of there.
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Yeah that's kind of what I'm planning on. Also I thought I might butter up the rubber snakes or something, make them really slippery to look a bit more realistic. And they will move around better when I fall into them.
 
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What you also can do istalk to your local zoo, reptile sactuary (if one is near buy), or petting zoo to use theres they usally will do it for a small donation. You can also talk to your local pet store about borrowing the snakes> Maybe they will do it for a product placement in your movie.
 
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