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Hollywood’s weirdest jobs: Bizarre sound effects, animals and “intimacy co-ordinators”

By Hugh Fort in US business news, posted January 1, 2024

The term Hollywood instantly conjures up images of famous actors and legendary directors who are able to create incredible movies which cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not a great deal of thought is given to the army of people involved in the creation of these blockbusters.

In fact, Hollywood is home to an array of some truly odd roles film lovers would never consider as they sit in the cinema, gripped by the final production.

Here are some of Hollywood's strangest jobs

Foley artists

Ever wondered how all the sound effects you hear in your favorite movies come about? That's down to a Foley artist.

Their job is to create effects that are difficult to capture during filming.

These include door creaks and footsteps.

The role sometimes requires a great deal of innovative thinking.

For example, Foley artist Marko Costanzo cracked pieces of celery to create the sound of bones breaking in The Big Lebowski and the famous laser sounds in the Star Wars movies? That's someone whacking a metal cable with a hammer.

Animal Wrangler

A lot of films feature animals.

For example, historical epics often have hundreds of horses to look after.

And the Harry Potter films used real, trained owls to deliver letters.

The film Snakes on a Plane also used 450 real snakes.

All these animals need looking after, so you'll often find teams of experts on movie sets to co-ordinate animal performances.

Tagline writers

"Who you gonna call?" "They were 7... and they fought like 700" and "You'll never go in the water again."

These are all classic taglines, Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Seven and Jaws respectively.

They were all written by tagline writers.

These are creative people whose sole job is to come up with short and snappy phrases that can sum up the whole premise of the movie in one sentence, which is quite a skill.

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Mechanics

On the subject of Jaws, Stephen Spielberg's underwater horror epic (that everyone still thinks of every time they go in the sea) was plagued by a highly troublesome mechanical shark called Bruce.

Bruce was state-of-the art back in 1975, when the movie terrified audiences around the world, but the combination of filming on the open sea and a 25-foot mechanical shark nearly ended the production for good.

Modern films use a range of vehicles and mechanical creatures, and so teams of mechanics are needed on-site to ensure everything is working when needed.