Author Neil Gaiman drawn to role in 'creepy' film about giant cave spiders of Tasmania

Updated

Neil Gaiman, an award-winning British author known for his dark fiction, is lending his talents to a Tasmanian documentary about a creature that could easily be at home in one of his books.

Gaiman is in Hobart for the MONA FOMA festival but is also deeply involved in the filming of the documentary Sixteen Legs, which tells the story of the prehistoric Tasmanian cave spider.

The film, due for release next year, is a project of the Bookend Trust, which has run environmental educational programs in Tasmanian schools for several years.

Trust director Niall Doran said the film will help shed light on the dinner plate-sized spiders.

"It predates the splitting of the continents; it survived South America and Antarctica and Australia going their seperate ways and was left behind on this sliver of land which eventually became Tasmania," he said.

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Neil Gaiman shares penchant for Tasmanian cave spider (ABC News)

"It's a holdover from the first age of the dinosaurs, and it's an evolutionary stage where spiders globally went in two different directions, so it's got global significance.

"Sixteen legs is what happens when two eight-legged spiders love each other very much and come together in the darkness, and we thought we'd keep that as a very delicate way of saying it is all about spider love."

Tasmanians have been researching the cave spider for about 20 years but few people have heard of it.

"It lives for decades instead of one to three years; instead of young taking six to nine weeks to come out of the egg sac, it takes nine months and so it's a fascinating story now being told to broader audience than before," Dr Doran said.

As well as bringing the cave spider to international focus, the film is also shining a light on Tasmania's wilderness, with Gaiman promoting the documentary and Tasmania to his two million Twitter followers.

The documentary is billed as dark, creepy and cool... not unlike some of Gaiman's books.

A patron of the trust, Gaiman put aside his arachnophobia to narrate and appear in the film.

"Intellectually, I think they are absolutely wonderful, glorious, fascinating creatures and on some deep gut level; show me a spider up close and I turn into a shivering, screaming pile of jelly," said Gaiman.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if more spiders crawled, crept and scuttled their way back into my work from this. Neil Gaiman, author

"Niall Doran introduced me to an incredibly beautiful lady spider of the genus we are going to be working with and I found I was actually able to conquer any arachnophobia because she was so beautiful.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised if more spiders crawled, crept and scuttled their way back into my work from this."

Dr Doran said Gaiman was a natural fit.

"Because it involves giant prehistoric spiders hiding beneath the dark, it's one of those slightly creepy and unusual stories which is very much in keeping with the tone of Neil Gaiman's fiction and the worlds which he creates, so he's been a very integral part of the Sixteen Legs story," he said.

"He's a very strong guiding hand in the process given the scope of his work runs from written fiction, to graphic novels, to television to film, so he covers a broad media scope and that experience is invaluable."

Gaiman's books have been turned into films, including Coraline, which features a spider-like central character. He has also has written for television, including for the Doctor Who series (The Doctor's Wife, 2011).

Gaiman met some of the people behind the Bookend Trust on his first trip to Tasmania in 1998.

"Tasmania has always been inspiring, I came here first in 1998 with George R.R. Martin for a science fiction convention and Hobart was a very different place, and I fell in love with it then, kept insisting to my publishers when I did book signing tours to Australia I wanted Hobart included," he said.

He has returned over several years, now visiting with his wife, US performer Amanda Palmer, who is also part of the MONA FOMA line up.

But it is also the educational work of the Bookend Trust that brings Gaiman back to the state, which he is passionate about.

"I think it is so easy for people in Tasmania to take the amazing wonderful natural world you have here for granted because you live here, you experience it every day," he said.

"You have Tasmanian devils, you have echidnas, you have dead wallabies in the middle of the road, and you take them for granted so easily and not realise that you have something that is utterly and quintessentially, unique on this planet.

"I think kids have to learn that, kids have to see that, and it has to spread because it's worth preserving, worth saving, worth investigating and worth loving."

Film already winning accolades

With caves being the natural enemy of camera equipment, capturing the camera-shy ancient spider on film has presented some major challenges.

"What we've done to date is certain key sequences need to be filmed, because we are talking about an animal that doesn't like light and doesn't like heat, so as soon as cameras go anywhere near it, it doesn't do the things that you want to do," Dr Doran said.

"And of course it's in an environment that's very moist, very cold, very dusty, so cameras don't like being there either."

A behind-the-scenes version of the main production is already turning heads.

It was selected as a finalist at the recent Banff Film Festival and has won accolades from the Australian Society of Cinematographers for natural history cinematographer Joe Shemesh.

Shemsesh filmed for six months underground, including a straight 18-hour stint - and said it was one of the proudest moments of his life when he captured the key moments of the spider's life cycle.

"Joe won a rare double gold award for the quality of his work back in November, so it's showcasing how extreme the challenge was of getting the footage in the can," said Dr Doran.

Trust aiming to go national

Bookend Trust was started, and initially funded, by a group of Tasmanian biologists.

It aims to make young people more literate about the environment they live in and open up pathways to building careers in Tasmania.

The members are now working with the federal Department of Education and the Office of the Chief Scientist about going national.

"We've had such success with programs in Tasmania and they are getting such good student and teacher engagement that we now have a partnership with the Australian Government to take the program to schools around the nation in the next three years," Dr Doran said.

Under its banner, students have flown to Antarctica and Tasmania's south-west.

The group has also devised "expedition classes" for students to gain first-hand knowledge from researchers, one giving expeditioner Andrew Hughes an epic journey.

"There was a coastal management one which involved him sea kayaking from Hobart to the tip of Cape York which was a 5,000 kilometres kayaking trip, so we are talking big exciting expeditions," Dr Doran said.

It started with a scientific bent but is branching out to other disciplines and the documentary has had several spin offs for schools.

"One of the great things for the students is they see someone like Neil... who basically has a following from all corners of the globe yet has this strong interest in what's happening here," he said.

"Hats off to people like Neil who maintain that interest in local and regional development as opposed to just sitting at the top end of the celebrity tree and not looking back down."

Topics: documentary, tas

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