Edwin has a dark obsession with drawing spiders. His mother does her best to curb his increasingly odd behavior.
‘Itsy Bitsy Spiders’ is a curious but intriguing film with a profound set of production values, that place us in an intricate and mysterious setting. The title is evident that the film might not be for the phobics of the eight-legged creatures, but for everyone else it’s a true cinematographic delight, in a mystifying creepy way.
Quite simply, I wanted to make something reminiscent of Amazing Stories or Twilight Zone. I think those types of series really mapped out how to make a solid short film. We did the same thing, but sped up to an online friendly 12 minutes.
The film is based on a Japanese fairy tale, about a boy who draws cats that end up saving the village from the Rat King. Bertrand, rightfully, felt spiders were scarier. ‘Itsy Bitsy..’ is indeed very eerie, but holds a special attention to its story development and the way it’s told, Bertrand tells us it’s inspiration comes from the comic books.
I was looking at a lot of old 70’s Marvel Horror comics when I wrote it. I also wanted to pace it like an origin story almost. Those are always the best parts of super hero movies.
Although Bertrand briefly thought about making ‘Itsy Bitsy Spiders’ as an animated film, the lack of resources made him turn to live action where he wanted for the most part, the effects to be done in camera. They wanted the film to have a handmade quality which made sense since Edwin (Julian Feder) was obsessed with drawing, which is very tactile.
The thousands of spiders were all hand drawn by the cast and crew in between shots, where as Bertrand drew the main featured spiders.
