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brandonjohnbarnard · 8 months ago

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Today I am going to go over my thoughts around my short ‘Doggy Style’.

Pre-Production

Early on in my investigation into chance as force for creation, I had thought about the use of animals. They are an element which are largely out of our hands. Sure, you can train them to do certain tricks, but they, like us, have minds of their own. The communication barrier in particular is what I find interesting.

Two creatures trying their best to communicate is fun. I often think that when/if our species interacts with aliens, it will be similar to talking to a pet (whether we or them are the pet, we shall see).

Skipping forward through time — my wife and I watched the Diary of Anne Frank (1959) on the 5th of May, 2024. It was an interesting film. It was odd seeing a young Richard Beymer (directly after we had watched Twin Peaks).

But what stuck with me was the acting done by Orangey the cat. Orangey was a famous cat in Hollywood at the time, also having had a major role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) 3 years later.

Well, in the Diary of Anne Frank (1959), there is a scene where Orangey makes some noise in the kitchen, stressing out everyone who is meant to be hiding away from the Nazis. To achieve this, they had to reverse the footage to get the shot they wanted.

I thought, in this very well-done and controlled film, that they were still unable to get a shot of this cat naturally getting them to do what they wanted, so they had to manipulate the footage for the results.

So, wanting to explore chance, and knowing how chaotic my pets are, I decided to work with them. Rather than try and eliminate the chaos created by having animals in films, I wanted to embrace it.

The idea that my dogs, which I love very much, would become part of my ‘film history’ was very exciting as well. I like that little parts of my life get woven into my work slowly over time.

Noodle is a very smart Chinese crested chihuahua mix. She is so clever, that she often ignores you to do whatever she wants. She absolutely loves new people though, always wanting to make new friends. Honestly, she loves and begs for attention from strangers more than any other dog I have met. She loves peas and cream.

Toffee is a softie, that is scared of any knock she hears, going into an absolute barking fit. Anyone at the door gets an earful. She is a Russian toy-terrier, that loves to please. She is very food motivated, and able to do lots of tricks. She always tries her best. Noodle likes to bully her.

On a side-note, I thought that this would be a great excuse to play with Sony Vegas. I had recently gotten back into using it, so I wanted to have a production where I could click on all of the effects to see what they did, and how they could be tweaked.

Production

My original vision was that Noodle would be the head of the film. In my mind, she always had more ‘star potential’. As such, you can see in my original planning notes that she was drawn in, with Toffee not even considered.

The original, basic idea was that Noodle would amble around on the blanket, with me slowly adding more Noodles. On top of this, they would shift into different elements like fire and water.

Then I went downstairs, set up a red blanket on the floor (so I had a colour to chromakey out), and started to record. I was expecting to film the dogs for 30 to 60 minutes, but they got bored after 12. Because of how the chromakey worked, if I were to move the setup at all, I would have made a lot of artefacts in the footage, so I decided that 12 minutes was all I was going to get.

Toffee taking the lead (nice pun) of this film was completely unexpected. She was so eager to please, that she would jump down in front of me (who was behind the camera) constantly. I know this is horrible for me to say as a dog dad, but before making this film I always saw Noodle as my favourite. Toffee was timid, and barked like all-hell. I loved Toffee lots sure, but Noodle always eked out ahead. From making this film onward, I have seen them as equals. Her personality has really grown over time.

Since Toffee became a major part of the piece, the jumping in and out of the frame did as well. I had not envisioned that at all when I was doing my initial planning and thinking about what would happen. This movement allowed for interesting transitions, which I feel made the film so fun and engaging. Entering and leaving the stage meant that clips could be moved around in fun ways, to make a constant feed of exciting movement to match the audio.

This film really pushed my ideas of how music can become a ‘second director’, dictating pace, energy, and forcing you to think about your footage in new ways.

Music acts like a chance prompt, with every track resulting in a completely different film with different takeaways. Also in terms of chance, I find it really fascinating that accidental matches to the music kept happening. For example, I would have a particular movement by Toffee match the music (on purpose), and then a few seconds later within the clip, it would match again (by accident). This kept happening. It makes me wonder whether there is some rhythm that dogs move in. An internal pacing. Or, it could just be coincidence.

I also want to explore more why ‘chance events’ make us (as a species) so excited. Ping-pong trick-shots, rare trading card pulls, a natural 20 in Dungeons & Dragons — there is something about these events which makes people so ecstatic that I feel is underexplored.

The song used was ‘Holiday Party’ by Infraction — it is such an earworm. My wife and I hum/belt the tune all the time. I like how all of these musicians are slowly being pulled into my body of work. It does lead to interesting thoughts about ownership, because I feel such warmth towards them. There is something there.

Post-Production

This has become one of my favourite things I have made. I can watch it all the time.

In retrospect, I wish I did not include the scene of me on the floor, the chromakey looks quite muddy in the shot, and its not the most flattering! Though, I wouldn’t re-edit it.

I find it really funny that screenings and galleries don’t accept this film. Maybe its due to the title — galleries do like to look professional at times. Maybe it comes across as low effort because of the dogs, like a Youtube meme video (there is something to be said about the arbitrariness of what is art and what is not, but another time!). We need to increase the dogs star-power so they end up in the Louvre.

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