Indie Film Spotlight by Barry Stone, Director
Sniff, The Dog Movie is really a development of my first film “Dog”, made in 1979, using short ends I had collected while working as a focus puller. We put voices over shots of various dogs playing, with the intention that the words would reflect what dogs might actually be thinking, rather than our anthropomorphic interpretation.
When I first set out to make “Sniff” (April 2006) I had the idea of using puppets to host the documentary portions of the film – to tell us about how dogs see, how acute their senses of smell and hearing are, and how they’ve evolved to serve mankind. But that changed when I saw a Guide Dog alert a blind man that he might bang his head on an overhanging branch, that was not, for the dog, any risk. With the co-operation of trainer Melissa Smith from Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, our focus became the complete Guide Dog story. We picked a beautiful golden lab, Mikey and followed him from the initial puppy raisers, through training at Guide Dogs, to his presentation to his final blind owner. My wife Kim and I both cried when the puppy raiser had to give Mikey away.
And then another wonderful story came our way. Parallel to filming Mikey's story, we began to follow a second dog from San Rafael, Gabby, whose excessive energy had disqualified her as a blind person's helper, but who had moved on to becoming trained as a search and rescue canine. And at the same time people kept telling us about their amazing dogs who rode skateboards, swam underwater, rounded up seagulls etc., etc., and it became clear that we needed some kind of container for all this "documentary" wealth.
So when I told my friend Neil Morrissey, (Men Behaving Badly, Bob the Builder) that he would have to come over here and dress up in a dog concierge costume, his ironic response was: “bummer!”. We asked him who he’d like to play his “partner”, and he immediately suggested his friend from drama school, Richard Huw. As the idea for the back story of the characters started to gel, I called up Amanda Plummer (The Fisher King, Pulp Fiction), who I had worked with on a Toronto film “Triggermen” (2002), also starring Neil Morrissey. Amanda was delighted to reunite with Neil and I to participate as the charming Juliette, owner of our fictitious dog hotel “The Infinite Paws” , where Neil and Richard do their day-job. And Maurice Godin, a friend from a shoot in the Czech republic where he played the composer Bizet, agreed to play Derek, Juliette’s husband. And the zany plot was hatched and cast!
Many months and several script drafts later, the foursome converged in Oakland. By this time, Kim and I had filmed all of the documentary segments and had edited them in sequence so that "editors" Neil and Richard could be seen on screen with the footage as the serendipitous “makers” of Sniff. Through their eyes, we see a mixture of fun and bizarre dog stories (surfing, hole-digging, bubble-blowing) as well as more informative segments about the training of two working dogs. Making this film was great fun. All the time. Following Mikey's training as he learned to keep his owner safe crossing the road. Watching him navigate an escalator for the first time. Watching Gabby find her trainer who had buried himself in a pile of scrap wood and rubble. Filming a dog ranch where the owner had trained all the dogs not to bark by putting the ones that wanted to bark by themselves in a nearby pen: (almost instant success). And just pure delight romping in the ocean with dogs that surfed. What a huge gift!
In gratitude for all the magic and help that we received, we planned to donate 10% of proceeds from DVD sales on our website to charitable canine organizations like Guide Dogs for the Blind, the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation and the American Humane Society. Sadly, DVD sales never took off, as the video world switched to streaming. So we are super excited to be up and available on Storietv and find a new audience.
From Kim's Diary
Barry's wife Kim documented the making of Sniff on their production blog. A few highlights:
On the rough cut screening with Grammy-winning musician Laurie Lewis:
"She came to our place on her bicycle and sat down with us to watch. Barry stopped the film to get her reaction to the spot where we'd used her song — and she immediately asked him to keep it running, and watched with enthusiasm right to the end. She told us she'd 'be thrilled to be part of the project' — a phrase which Barry repeats to me periodically like a mantra of affirmation."
On the 10-year anniversary screening at the Grand Lake Theatre:
"We bombed around on our bicycles handing out cards to everyone we saw walking a dog. As we cycled home and smiled at each other at the stop signs, I remembered how we had that same feeling of fun and benevolence during the whole year and a half of filming. Making Sniff has been one of the great highlights of our lives and it continues to bring us joy."
On total immersion in the project:
"Making a film becomes an obsession. Every passing canine is inadvertently auditioning for us. We were a bit alarmed when our house guest, thirsty in the middle of the night, was found sipping water out of a mixing bowl left on the counter. Perhaps we had a bit too much dog energy in our home."
About The Author:
Barry Stone, Director
Most of my life has been in the film biz as a DP (20 or so features) and Director, with time out to hang glide, study Japanese joinery and play golf.
Recommended Reading: The Short Film and the Shaman: Making Helicopter
