Off topic – Viral Video featuring Dogs – Advice needed

[Mark Suszko]

A taxidermist?

[Nick Griffin]

Off topic?? Aw, c’mon Greg how is this off topic for a forum as wide ranging as Biz-Marketing? It’s not like the COW has a “fake dog paws” forum.

As to Mark’s suggestion that certainly seems like the best place to start. Another would be one of the big prop houses in LA (if any of them still exist). A third option might be to… no wait a minute… had to self-censor on this one.

[Mark Suszko]

The trick is to get the prop paw to match the breed, and with multiple pets in the shoot, you’re probably better off doing this with an animated CG composite built out of high rez photo samples of the actual animals, IMO. This also gives more anthropomorphic type articulation possibilities than a stiff taxidermy prop.

[Tom Sefton]

Wait around outside the vets?

[Greg Ball]

I’m glad to have given you all a laugh today. no answers, but at least I gave you all a smile.

I guess I’ll wait outside a vet’s office with an ax….

[Mark Suszko]

Seriously, you can do it using the puppeteering tools in AfterEffects, and some high def imaging of the paws and legs of the actual animals you’re going to use in the video. The leg /paw is assembled from multiple pieces shot at the angles you’re going to need, so pre-vis work is required to get the perspective right. The puppet tool then adds “bones” and joints where they normally go, and this adds the forward kinematics you need and the parent-child relationship of the parts, so when the paw extends, the rest of the leg extends and bends to follow, naturally. It may SOUND complicated, but It really isn’t.

[Tom Sefton]

You could try using the paws of well trained dogs?

What about suggesting that your client gives some free food to a local guide dogs association. It wouldn’t take too long to set up a shot from above with a keyboard and a dogs paw being guided along it. You could also get some hilarious footage for other productions!

edit – after re-reading this I can’t tell how serious I initially was….

[Greg Ball]

Thanks guys. This is a low budget viral video, so I don’t think compositing work will do the job. I was just looking for something like you often see on SNL.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Here’s where the guys with budgets seem to get them:

https://www.animalmakers.com/Catalog/dog_parts.php

How about you structure your shoot so that you’re in an extreme close up when the dog paw hits the keyboard? That way, you just use the real dog with the handler’s hand “operating” it.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Todd Terry]

AWESOME find, Joe… I can definitely see using that company in the future. They look to have great stuff.

I fight this “animal” battle here often. My business partner is not a dog person by any stretch (unlike me, who shares his home with three furry children). Yet he is always concepting these scenes that have complex animal action. He just doesn’t quite fully grasp the limitations of what animals will do… or at least do easily and repeatedly.

He tempers these concepts by his liberal use of the word ALL. As in, “All the dog has to do is jump down off the sofa, go bark twice at the front door, run out the dog door and come back with the ball in his mouth and drop it. That’s ALL he has to do.” Really? That’s all? Since he’ll already be on set, why don’t we have him assemble a jigsaw puzzle while we’re at it?

The last thing he concepted like that had to have a horse nod in agreement. That’s all. The trainer had the horse doing it in rehearsals on command, or at least so she said. Not so much on the shoot day… not once.

I avoid animal actors with a passion… even trained ones (same policy I have for child actors, even trained ones). However, the best actor I ever directed was a dachshund in the spot on this page from several years ago…

https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/portfolio01.html

His name was Barkley, and he was an absolute champ. Long shoot day and the little guy never flubbed a take. His only payment was Pupperoni treats.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com