Insect Fear Film Festival

[pannaking22]

Not completely sure where to post this, so mods please feel free to move it if there's a better place! Each year the University of Illinois hosts an event known as the Insect Fear Film Festival. It has been going on for 31 years. It all started when the head of the entomology department (Dr. May Berenbaum) came to the university and had an idea of an event that the entire community could take part in. After months of hard work, she was able to create the IFFF. What happens is that there are a couple B rated "horror" films shown and they are always insect themed. Last year we actually had the creator/writer/director of the X-Files come and give a little talk before the movies started (including the X-Files episode, Return of the Coprophages, featuring a character named after Dr. Berenbaum) There is a new theme every year as well, so things are never the same!

This year's theme is pesticides. As always, we have an insect petting zoo (though I will undoubtedly be the guy holding a tarantula ), along with a pesticide petting zoo (kid friendly), artwork, face-painting, lots of pinned exotic insects, and an SEM microscope station where people can see things up close. For those that are interested (either this year or in the future), it will be this Saturday, February 22nd. Admission is free, but you may want to buy a sweet T-shirt when you come

Here is this year's design.


Consider it to be an ento-arachno-horror-function.

More info can be found here:
http://www.life.illinois.edu/entomology/egsa/ifff.html

 

[litebritedeath]

Off topic sort of but I can't stand when documentaries go the whole horror route with Inverts.... I think it just keeps the fear level high on the inverts we all know and love. Instead of presenting information in an educational way they lean more towards horror and terror. I always love added sound effects like lions roaring when a spider lunges at it's prey with eerie music to go with it.

---------- Post added 02-19-2014 at 02:37 PM ----------

Also what exactly is a "pesticide petting zoo"? Petting dead inverts?

 

[pannaking22]

I agree with you on documentaries going that route. Sadly it seems to be getting more and more common. Education should be what comes first, but film makers can't nearly as much money off a documentary as they could off of a horror film. Thankfully the movies that we show every year don't even try to go the documentary route and just jump right into crazy bad unrealistic horror that everyone knows is fake

So the pesticide petting zoo is actually a collection of old pesticide containers and applicators that Dr. Berenbaum has been collecting for years. They've all been emptied and thoroughly cleaned and now people can pick them up and look at a piece of the past. It will work out well because we will have examples of modern pesticides that people can use as points of comparison, along with informational cards about when/why certain pesticides were removed from the market.

 

[Hanska]

I always love added sound effects like lions roaring when a spider lunges at it's prey with eerie music to go with it.

Ugh! Had to stop watching a documentary of invert hunters after a few minutes because of this. At that point they had shown an ogre faced spider and an assassin bug and every time they showed the spider a growling sound played and every time they showed the bug a sound of noisy straw sucking played.
Was annoying as heck!

 

[pannaking22]

But it's "terrifying" right? I wonder how many people believe that inverts make sounds like that?

 

[klawfran3]

the WORST sound effects are when a spider is attacking something, they play growling noises like the spider is growling, and pig squeals when the prey is being attacked. it is just so stupid.

 

[pannaking22]

the WORST sound effects are when a spider is attacking something, they play growling noises like the spider is growling, and pig squeals when the prey is being attacked. it is just so stupid.

For laughs, I always try to picture the film crew trying to get the microphone close enough to pick up these alleged sounds that the predator/prey make and I can't help but feel that in some cases the predator would just go at the sound crew instead of the prey item.

 

[The Snark]

Does anyone else have an idiocy intolerance threshold too low to allow one to gag that down?

 

[klawfran3]

Does anyone else have an idiocy intolerance threshold too low to allow one to gag that down?

oh trust me I do. If I see a documentary that either has cheesy sound effects, gives knowledge a kindergartener should know, or just starts the fear-mongering with false interviews and saying things like "these deadly spiders will attack people at any moment. They are truly scary horrifying beasts," I just turn it off and walk away. It's one thing to make a documentary. It's another to try and scare people for views. It's just humiliating.

 

[pannaking22]

Does anyone else have an idiocy intolerance threshold too low to allow one to gag that down?

I typically do pretty well with this sort of thing, but the line definitely gets crossed far too often. I couldn't ever make it through an episode of that Monster Bug Wars show (sound effects being on the mild end of all the inaccuracies there). Sounds effects are one thing, inaccuracies leading to fear-mongering are a whole different story. YouTube videos are typically the ones that really get me going. Some of them are just horrendously inaccurate. I want to comment some days, but it's YouTube, so I know the whole "kill it with fire" mentality is going to be the prevailing theme there.