In movies like “Marley & Me”, “Rescued by Ruby”, “Beethoven” etc, how do they get the animals to cooperate/act? Is it not confusing for the animals being called names on set that are not their real names in real life?
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The animals scenes are filmed with the trainers using their real names and just outside of the camera shot.
The movie you see with the animals coming to their screen names is voice over.
A lot of these animals are trained actors. There are animal trainers in Hollywood who select animals with certain abilities and then train these further to make acting animals. In addition to tricks that might be seen on film they train on things like ignoring distractions, including being spoken to by other actors, and memorizing sequences of tricks and cues. So the animal might not even pay attention to the actor talking to them but rather focus on their trainer off-screen. Or they might even have been taught to listen for a specific cue from the actor and then react to that with a specific trick. This specific training to follow the script could have taken place right before the scene was filmed as these animals are trained to pick up these things very fast.
just today i was reading the Trivia section of IMDB’s page for Pet Sematary (2019) -> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837563/trivia/?ref_=tt_ql_trv and it explains it pretty well.
tl;dr; multiple animals, lots of snacks (bribery) and dirty tricks movies make use of to fool us 😀
call your dog fat head or any playful insult for a day straight. playfight with it whilst calling it this same insult.
Your dog now has two names. in your head. not in their head. they don’t really understand names. they understand the tone and context in your voice.
One of my dogs is called Quinn. If I shout ‘smelly bin face’ she immediately comes under command because Quinn sounds like bin
Animals in films are super trained. its not hard to train an animal, but training an animal upto a standard required not to slow down a huge production would be an endeavour, so they need trained dogs with trained handlers
Watch a movie, and pay attention to every time the camera cuts. Not every scene, I’m talking about every single time the shot changes. It happens a lot.
Shot 1: Beethoven the dog has destroyed the kitchen. The table is turned over and the dog has spaghetti in his fur.
Shot 2: Change camera angle. Frustrated dad Charles Grodin walks in carrying a cake, and sees the mess. Shouts “Nooo! What did you do, Beethoven!?!”
Shot 3: Change angle again. Beethoven the dog hears his name and perks up his ears. Starts to stand up.
Shot 4: Back to dad. Charles Grodin’s face goes into a comical shocked expression. “No no no no nooooo!!!”
Shot 5: Back to dog. Dog has finished standing up, and now begins to run forward. This shot is in slow motion. As dog reaches edge of the screen, he starts to jump.
Shot 6: Back to dad. Giant dog goes into dad’s arms, knocking the cake backwards into dad’s face. Shot is still in slow motion.
Shot 7: New angle. Dad lands on ground. Cake lands in dad’s face. Beethoven’s body lands on cake.
Shot 8: New angle again. Camera is on dog. Dog runs out of dining room and we see dad laying on ground behind dog. Cake is everywhere.
Shot 9: Different angle again. Dog runs by mom and into living room. Mom says “Dad, what did you do to my cake???”
Shot 10: Focus on dad’s face. Dad makes comical outraged expression. He is covered in cake. Shouts “Beethoven!!!”
The whole scene takes 30 seconds on camera. Probably took 4 days of filming to get all those shots working properly. Just because it appears the dog reacted to the name being called out, that doesn’t mean it’s what actually happened. They might not have even filmed the dog’s reactions on the same day that they filmed Charles Grodin shouting out the “Beethoven” name.
It’s like when they film kids in horror movies. Most of the time, the kid doesn’t even know he’s making a horror movie. They film their scenes as separate as possible, the scary music hasn’t been added yet, and they’re very rarely on set with the people in monster makeup. And when they finish one shot, it might take them an hour to set up the next one.
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