My son took on an ambitious project for his film class final this semester — an homage to Lumiere, one of the original silent film producers circa 1890’s. As Dan tells me, The Lumiere Brothers were some of the first directors to shoot outdoors and bring to life what many people in the cities had never seen before — like the beach or a train.  For Dan’s idea he wanted to capture a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis (cocoon).  I explained to my son that nature is not predictable and trying to capture such a spontainious event may not be possible — not in the way that he envisioned with the constraints he had for the assignment.

Dan agreed to have a backup plan that involved backyard birding … something we have an abundance of in our garden … and then got to work researching and story boarding how he was going to make the butterfly effect work.  Dan bought two science kits that contained live painted lady catipillars .  He placed the orders two days apart so that he could have a control group and a back up brood as to improve his chances of getting ONE on film.

For his money shot, Dan wanted to have the chrysalis hanging from a tree branch — because Lumiere simply wouldn’t have had a plastic cup or vivid commercial butterfly basket in the late 1880’s.  So we set up one of our tall potted ficus trees in Dan’s room and let the second batch of caterpillars climb up into the tree.  The first group — his control group — was reared exactly as directed by the science kit and were kept in the small plastic jar.

For a few days the fuzzy pillers ate and grew substantially in size.  Apparently The Very, Hungry Caterpillar, that I read to my children around the clock when they were little, was based on fact!  Eventually, the fully grown bugs attached themselves to a branch (or the lid of the plastic jar) and hung upside down to begin their transformation.  The science books will tell you that it takes 7-10 days for the painted ladies to emerge once the chrysalis has been formed.  So Dan put the final pieces of his plan in place.

The teacher had given several parameters for the project and Dan set out to meet each one.  He taped the tripod to the floor so that no camera movement would be possible, as he would need to speed up the final film to produce the time lapse effect.  Which apparently was allowed in 1880 as the theaters would often hire children to crank the film projector faster to speed up the picture.  Ah … the joys of Victorian child labor.

As the final days approached, Dan set his alarm clock at night to check on the living dead bundles that were all around his room.  We both thought that the control group inside the plastic lid of the science jar would emerge first as they were the first to arrive and subsequently created cocoons 1-2 days earlier than the specimins in the house plant.  These would be Dan’s canaries — early warning birds (or bugs I suppose.)

Everything was working as he had planned.  Silly Mom for worrying about nature’s wild side.  On newyear’s eve, Dan set up his webcam to live stream his prized chrysalis so that he would be able to watch it carefully from his laptop anywhere in the house.  Afterall, the internet said it takes a half hour once you see the first wiggle which would give him plenty of time to dash upstairs and turn on the digital high-def camera that he had already white balanced, manual focused and aimed at his star performer.

I remember I was sitting by the sun on my chaise near the window watching the back yard birds when Dan began to yell … TRUCK!  TRUCK!!! TRUCK!!!!  Okay, Dan didn’t yell truck … but that seemed far more appropriate for the purpose of this not-so-shaggy-dog-story.  I turned to my son who was hopelessly looking at the screen of his laptop where there was a fully emerged painted lady puffing up her wings with seemingly great delight at her clandestine escape trick.

“I just looked at the camera not more than a minute ago!”  Dan yelled.  “Truck!!!”  He took off running up the stairs and I followed — a bit slower — behind him.  Trying not to laugh too loud and not succeeding at all.

“Did any of the butterflies hatch from your control group?”  I asked.

“No!  And this one didn’t move at all, I was watching it the whole time.”  (So much for the insect-sentinels!)  “I don’t know what I am going to do now.  It was the only one I had in focus and I can’t move the camera.”

When you get your Mom-Handbook at the birth of your children there’s a chapter about picking up the pieces and making everything alright — so looking quickly around the room I started to formulate a contingency plan even as the words were coming out of my mouth.

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do.  Let’s carefully cut away the mesh that the bugs in the jar are attached to and hand sew the fabric onto the branch of the ficus where you have set up the camera.  We’ll get all of them in place one right next to each other so you are bound to get one of them on film.”

Dan agreed and then brought me the sewing needle, thread and my good scissors because it seems Dan is not a big fan of creepy crawlies and he balked at the idea of touching the bedbuggers.  I suppose we all have our talents — mine happens to include a prowess for letting anything slip, slime or scratch on my skin.  Must have started with those night crawlers Dad and I raised in the backyard when I was a kid.  Or those snails I once collected as a twelve year old during a summer trip to France when I thought I could make my own escargot at home.

Just as I was fastening the last tomb to the tree, the branch started to move violently back and forth.  At first I jumped away and wondered what I had done to cause such a disturbance.  But it wasn’t my hand at all, it was one of the new residents deciding to rock and roll.  Like lightening, Dan flashed a piece of paper in front of the video camera to re-establish the white-balance, he confirmed his manual focus and carefully pressed the RECORD button.

I called for my daughters to come see the birth of a butterfly and we all huddled on the bed and watched the show.  Shake, rattle and roll!  I was surprised the other cocoons didn’t fall off their makeshift branch with all of the locomotion.  At least 10 minutes went by and not a sign of the butterfly emerging.  It was like a Houdini trick gone terribly wrong.

The girls left to go back and finish the movie they were watching downstairs … decidedly more interesting than the not-so-live-action-Lumiere flick underway.  I kept watching the branch as it shook violently.  Then I noticed something seem to move — like a fine wire bobbing up and down on one of the cocoons just out of sight of the new camera focus.  Before I could even comprehend that it was an antena the second painted lady POPPED OUT and began flapping her wings in the artificial light.

“TRUCK!!!! TRUUUUUUUCK!!!!!”  Dan hollered.  Yes I realize there was probably a chapter in the Mom-Handbook on teaching your children not to curse, but at the time I skipped ahead to the cooking section which was decidedly more practical in my mind.

Sure enough, Dan had missed the second butterfly making her bedroom debut and by this time I simply couldn’t control my laughing out loud.  And as fate could have it, the branch stopped shaking and the little diversion-piller returned to a perfect state of suspended animation.

There was more near misses to come before Dan finally got ONE lady to show him her wings.  The moment every 17 year old boy is waiting for, no?

Dan’s RAW FOOTAGE IN COLOR

[flv image=”http://www.coolkarma.com/dharma/wp-content/uploads/video-still-full-8-minutes.jpg” width=”720″ height=”480″]http://coolkarma.com/video/butterfly-color-full-length-zoom.flv[/flv]

Same movie in 50 seconds …

[flv image=”http://www.coolkarma.com/dharma/wp-content/uploads/video-still-50-seconds.jpg” width=”720″ height=”480″]http://coolkarma.com/video/butterfly-color-fast-motion-50-seconds.flv[/flv]

He spent the next two weeks on the iMacs at his highschool editing his nature film and adding special effects to recreate the black and white grainy film quality of Lumiere’s period.  The resulting 30 seconds on fast foward was magnificent.  Dan’s teacher had said that only two students in the history of his film class had ever incorporated an original music score.  Fortunately one of the chapters I mastered in the Mom-Handbook was musical composition!  So Dan asked if I would write the sound track for his 30 seconds of fame.

I happen to have some high end music software that allows me to import video in order to precisely sync the score with the action on screen.  Dan knew exactly what he wanted in terms of sound, quality and tone.  It had to be something simple that a live pianist in the pit of the theater could play while watching the film.  I must say, having my equipment set up for me next to my bed and only a 30 second piece to write for was most definately my ideal gig.  And so wonderful to still be able to do something creative — all things considering.

Dan’s final film …

[flv image=”http://www.coolkarma.com/dharma/wp-content/uploads/video-still-homage-lumiere.jpg” width=”720″ height=”480″]http://coolkarma.com/video/DANIEL.flv[/flv]

In case you are wondering what ever happened to the young butterflies.  We were lucky in that a california winter warm spell was near and since these little ladies only live two weeks under the best of circumstances we were able to set them free in the backyard, where the cape honeysuckle was in full bloom.  Then quite unexpectedly, just the other day Dan found one stray butterfly in the corner of his room.  She must have stowed away, and despite the plethora of assorted teenage garbage in Dan’s bedroom she was in much need of fresh nectar.  Since it was night time, we popped up the butterfly habitat that had come with the kit and gave her a fresh slice of juicey orange which she readily sucked up for the better part of an hour.

My youngest asked if we could keep her.  But after a bit more discussion we all agreed she should have an opportunity to be free to live out whatever life she had left.  So the next day when the sun was high in the backyard, my youngest and I set out to let our little captive fly away to the next chapter of her amazing life.  Martha unzipped the lid and held it back with a heavy twig.  I had my digital still camera to capture the exciting moment on film.  Slowly at first, the little lady creeped up white mesh of the cage and stood on the top edge feeling the sun on her wings for the very first time.  With strong and somewhat awkward flaps her body became airborn and she wafted into the greenery of the tall bushes and up towards the top where the orange tubular flowers were in bloom.  She soared with the bees and the humming birds for only a minute or two before diving back to the habitat that she still considered home.

Martha and I smiled and I snapped off a few more pictures before she once again took to the air and explored her new wide open home.  She found a place in the mulch next to a brilliant red bush where she seemed to enjoy the warmth of the sun on her body.  She held her wings open much like a moth to let the sun reach all of her.

Just as I put down my camera she was off into the air again and landed this time in the middle of the yard in a patch of tall dark green grasses.  Before Martha and I could register what was happening, a black headed pheobe dashed in from the back of the yard and snapped up the little pioneer!

As I said — nature is not predictable! And don’t get me started about what I think of freedom … but that’s a not-so-shaggy-dog-story for another time. 😉