National Geographic: Wild Passions Page #4

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Tom decides to take a chance

to get closer to the action.

Be a lot nicer to see her low.

It's risky going down on the ground.

But the mother bear seems

a safe distance away.

She's not gonna leave the cubs

to get us.

But Tom doesn't see the huge male

walking up from behind the buggy.

He and Cara race up the steps,

leaving the camera behind.

That's a little excitement

for a change, huh?

That was too close!

Good thing Spencer saw him, huh?

You see how they can

just come out of nowhere?

Too bad your camera's down there,

'cause it's a great scene.

Oh, it's a wonderful scene.

That's one of the shots

I've been trying to get

for the last five or six years.

I don't know

if I'll get another chance at it or not.

That was our first mother and cubs.

Ahh! Jeez! I can't believe it!

In this business,

things don't always go right.

But there's something you gotta get,

you gotta get that bit of behavior

that is absolutely vital for the film

and you just go through hell

sometimes to get it.

It's a very bitter cold, wind chills

of minus 100 Fahrenheit.

You can freeze your flesh

in five or six seconds.

It's so incredibly hot.

It's 115 Fahrenheit

and it's just muggy.

And, of course, days without having

proper showers and baths

and things like that.

You're often out on small boats.

Conditions are rough.

You occasionally get to reveal

what you had for breakfast,

which is pretty unpleasant.

Millions and billions of mosquitoes,

and black flies, and

and every little kind of bug you can

imagine would get in your eyes

and your nose and your ears

and your throat.

You're up to here in muck,

going through just

a disgusting stench of water.

Neil would turn back and look

at me and I said,

"Isn't this a glamorous business?"

We've had film assistants

that have come out to us

and that have paid us to let them go.

Problems just go on and on and on.

And it's amazing how many good films

get turned out every year.

When you really want to do

something bad,

it's amazing what you can put up with.

Not many people would want to get this

close to a deadly black widow spider.

One bite could kill you.

Yeah, she's getting a little close.

But it's all in a day's work

for George and Kathy Dodge.

You gettin' her? Where'd she go?

We come in close contact with

venomous animals of all kinds.

That doesn't necessarily concern us.

I mean, the point is getting the shot.

For the National Geographic film,

"Bite of the Black Widow,"

George and Kathy decided to get more

personally involved than usual.

All that they really asked us

to do was film

a black widow underneath a blanket.

We thought, Well, let's put the person

under there and add a little movement.

I better cut soon.

I don't want to risk her getting

too close. Good one!

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, now, get her out of here.

It was a nice idea as long as the black

widow didn't move too far too fast.

Get her!

Okay, I'm trying.

If we timed things just right,

we'd get the black widow out

from under the cover before

it actually reached his flesh.

While many filmmakers head out

into the bush

in search of nature's largest animals,

the Dodges specialize...

in filming the smallest

and many would say the creepiest.

You can only see elephants and lions

and zebras and wolves

and bears for so long, I mean,

there are only certain,

limited species of each one

of these animals.

But insects-beetles,

wasps, bees, flies,

I mean, they're countless,

they're countless.

We could never run out of subjects.

But if you think it's

hard figuring out what an elephant

or lion is about to do try insects.

Like a black widow spider

is going to lay eggs,

well she isn't going to tell us.

We don't speak Black Widow.

So she isn't going to tell us,

"Oh, I'm going to be laying these eggs

at exactly one o'clock tonight."

We had 12 black widow females

and they were all ready to lay eggs,

all in separate cages,

all ready to be put on the set.

One of us will go to bed

and the other one will stay up

and watch the black widow

for three hours

and then we shift back

and forth like that.

Oh, she's really doing it, huh?

The least bit of interference would

cause her to abandon the whole process

just a light going on,

or any sudden shock to the container

would throw off the whole scene.

Even when the black widows performed

on cue,

other problems invariably cropped up.

Okay, roll camera, she's starting.

Even though we had two cameras,

this animal's got eight legs.

Several times we'd get egg laying,

but not a good shot,

because one or two of

her darn eggs would get in the way.

And then the mating

of the male and the female

now you're dealing with 16 legs

in the way.

How do you get a clear decent shot

of the male mating with the female

where you can see what's happening?

It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all.

George and Kathy even managed

to get the black widow to bite on cue.

How did they do it?

That is one of our little

professional trade secrets, I'm afraid

We don't even tell our family.

Our family will ask us... you know

"Well, how did you do that shot?

How did you do this shot?"

We don't tell anybody.

Sometimes, the animals don't do

what the Dodges want them to.

For the National Geographic film,

"Ants from Hell,"

George and Kathy wanted to shoot

a timelapse sequence of

fire ants devouring a frog.

The frog needed to be taken down,

all the way down to a skeleton,

so there was literally nothing left.

It took a lot of studying

to see exactly how long does it take

a colony of ants to take down

that size of frog.

But apparently, the fire ants

hadn't read the script.

The very first colony

didn't eat the frog, they buried it.

So we dig up the frog,

put him back, start on another colony,

and they eat the frog half way

and abandon it.

It took quite a few attempts,

but we finally got it

and it came out very nicely.

George and I are challenged,

challenge ourselves

to go after those images

which haven't been captured before.

I mean, to whatever degree that

takes us, extreme macro or telephoto,

it's getting that image in a way

that it's never been captured before.

My particular favorite shot that

we've ever done is a close up of

the harvestman eating the aphids.

No one had ever seen a harvestman eat

an aphid before.

We not only saw it, we filmed it.

We're bringing this to the public

so the public can appreciate

this animal and its uniqueness.

This is what makes our job worthwhile.

This is what makes doing

wildlife photography so exciting.

I found the jumping spider to be

a very interesting subject,

because it has sort of a soft

cuddly look to it, which is appealing.

Soft and cuddly. Did you hear that?

Soft and cuddly.

This is what I love about this woman.

She loves all animals...

she calls a jumping spider cute

and cuddly.

It doesn't matter what we shoot

or what we photograph,

she empathizes with the animal,

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