Snakes in film... How?

So I always wondered how they get a snake to go in a certain direction in movies/films. is it just endlessly re positioning the snake, or do they lay a scent trail or something?

I have done a bit of research into this. I am an actor and I could see myself becoming a handler.

For still shots the snakes may be cooled down to the point of sluggishness making them less likely to move. In Indiana Jones this became a problem when the snakes were supposed to be afraid of the fire yet gravitated to it for warmth. The shoot became a huge hassle trying to wrangle snakes back from the flames between takes ultimately leading to the director picking up one and exclaiming WHY DO YOU LIKE FIRE?! YOU ARE RUINING MY MOVIE!!

I can imagine that ultimately it comes down to camera and editing tricks and patience to get the shot.

I can't honestly think of too many movies in where a snake does anything more than lie there.

Once I was doing a film and we were outdoors. There were these woods behind us and somewhere some native bird was making a racket. Two hundred people stood around for an hour and a half trying to get a thirty second shot that didn't have bird shrieks in the background.

Once I worked a show with a dog handler. Cool guy. Wish id been able to pick his brain more. His dogs were amazing.

Ultimately on set you have to make it work. Sometimes a single shot takes all day and there's nothing you can do. Working with a reptile means you will have a handler just off camera making sure the animal is safe, two or three hands blocking ways you don't want the animal to go or prodding parts of it.

And even then you might have to zoom in on parts of the animal to show movement. Such as show the feet moving then show the head then the tail.

Perhaps in the film they didn't necessarily need to the snake to go in a certain direction but improvised the scene to accommodate what the snake was already doing. We used one of my female pythons in a photo shoot for my sister in law's husband. My snake played Satan (it was a post apocalyptic Adam and Eve) and while it was only still shots, we basically just had to let her do her thing and he took shots as he saw them.