Update November 5, 2009

Flowers just arrived too! The excitement mounts....

Labels: diary

Update: October 16, 2009

I was never allowed to say the word “bum” when I was a child, and still consider the word unworthy in comparison to “bottom”, or perhaps “rear-end”, the continental-sounding “derriere” or even “tush” (never tushie, though.) But Barry, with ever-different sensibilities, has indeed used the word “bum” in our film, in the context of what dogs do when they greet each other. So now, I have produced a film with the questionable word featured! What a bummer… (did I say that?)

We’ve had an audio description of the film made for blind people to hear a description of the action in addition to the dialogue, so that they can imagine the visuals on-screen. One night this week I stayed up all night to (among other things) listen to the audio description and check for errors. Today I wrote the following to Jill Jacobson at CaptionMax who has been so helpful in guiding us through the process of getting the closed-captioning and audio description onto the DVD master:

"Hi Jill!

Now that all the technical insecurities have been assuaged, I wanted to take a moment to tell you how much of a kick I got in the middle of the night on Wednesday listening to the audio description delicately avoid using the word "bum"! Please thank your copy-writer ... I just played it for Barry and we both had a laugh! Kim"

(What was their choice, you may ask? I believe it was ... "rear end". Provincials unite!)

Labels: diary

Update: October 14, 2009

In another response to our e-mail announcement, I found out some news about Rogan – a statuesque Irish wolfhound who features prominently in Sniff:

From Ann Gould:
Oh ... Rogan had a litter this past year so he is a very proud papa. We kept 3 of the litter ... so that means I have 5 of the blondes running around my property. Thanks again ....

Labels: diary

Update: October 13, 2009

We sent out a big email last night and responses have been coming to us in an encouraging volume. Among these, I heard from (conservatively) septuagenarian Mili Rosenblatt who I haven’t seen in years. She wrote to tell me that she and her husband Bill are great friends of Laurie Lewis who will be playing at the Nov. 5th gala at the Grand Lake. So I wrote to Laurie to tell her Mili and Bill were coming to the show, and she asked me how I knew them. Taking a welcome break to think about something unrelated to the film, this is what I wrote to Laurie:

Hi Laurie:

I'm not sure that I've ever met Bill, but I met Mili through an artist neighbour when we first moved to California and became Mili’s "project" for a while, as she tried to get my glass work in to the New Leaf Gallery. It was quite the adventure, going there in our electric bus with Mili talking a mile a minute, and one of my glass sculptures (a giant pea pod) rolling around in the back.

I seem to remember that we ran out of electricity in the van and had to pull over at some stranger's house to plug in! Poor Mili - what I put her though!

It was somewhat mutual though: the New Leaf Gallery was completely uninterested in the work, and in Mili and me. But we had a nice lunch together, and I immortalized the experience by having one of my fairy characters sign a tiny glass flower with the moniker "Mili Pillywiggin". (I don't think I ever told her that!)

xo Kim

Labels: diary

Update October 12, 2009

We finished the sound mix with Dan Olmsted at Berkeley Sound Artists yesterday and Barry went golfing to celebrate! I stayed home looking at Oprah's site with Awele, a new friend who was full of ideas for marketing our film.

We were all set to send a finished master to CaptionMax for the addition of a descriptive audio track, when Barry serendipitously discovered a 2 second hole in the audio! So I raced off to the studio in Berkeley and Jim LeBrecht made us another audio file so we could meet still meet our captioning deadline. Phewff! As Barry says, those files are all just ones and zeroes ...

Credits to be added next... and there are loads of them!

Labels: diary

Counting Down!

Barry and I came up with a song this morning called "not enough hours in the moment" following a just-waking-up discussion of a new script for the trailer and wondering how we’re going to organize the massive number of credits.

Jim LeBrecht, our sound mixer, asked us to get some audio of a skateboard for our story of Oggie. Our neighbour Elijah Lajmer was happy to oblige. Here he is, flying through the air while Barry chats to Joe in the background:




We’ve hired Caption Max at work on doing a descriptive audio track so that blind audiences can enjoy their home DVDs. They’re also working on closed captioning. We want everyone to be able to enjoy Sniff!

Late last night Motion Graphics Designer Jeremy Martin delivered a great animation to accompany Dr. Ian Dunbar’s description of who chooses the mate, the male or the female?

Joe Lachoff is making great strides organizing our website affiliate marketing program and preparing for DVD and ticket sales through our site.

We’re having a “Community Gala” screening at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland on November 5 at 6:30 and 9:00 pm. We'll also have screenings at the Smith Rafael Film Center on November 7 and December 12 at 4:15 pm. Kitka might even perform at the gala!

Signature release copies of the DVD (with a few “extras”) will be available after each screening. Be there, or be square.

All Sniff systems are go!

P.S. This just in … Gus the Bird Herder, one of our star dogs, is featured in a new magazine Coastal Canine. He’s evidently multi-talented!

Labels: diary

Galloping

My friend Tara Gill (fellow gardener, fellow artist and stills photographer for Sniff) sent me a new word from Merriam Webster’s dictionary: “Tantivy” – a noun meaning “a rapid gallop” or “an impetuous rush”. Why, you might ask, did she think to send me this? Here goes…

In the last month, we have locked the picture and thanks to Berkeley Sound Artists Jim LeBrecht and his team, the sound elements are being smoothed-out. Composer

Jon Herbst is making wonderful transition music.

I’m clearing music rights for music by Laurie Lewis, Bobby McFerrin, Dick Dale, Sharon Shannon, Outback (with Martin Cradick now of Baka Beyond and Graham Wiggins now Dr. Didg), Kitka, Zydeco Flames, etc., etc. Our dog stories are delightful and the music rocks! But so much is involved in getting it all together, jeesh!

Barry is using the One-to One tutoring classes at Apple to create some wacky transitions between scenes using Final Cut Pro.

We met local musicians Andrew and Steve Edlen who are going to record a piece specially for our Search Dog story. They came to our place and over my home-made rhubarb crisp (starve a fever, feed a musician), we watched some of our out-takes, just for fun. The Edlens single-handedly rescued our surf dog montage set to Dick Dale’s “Night Rider” from the cutting room floor, with shouts of “Are you crazy? You can not cut this!”

So, having re-established our sanity, with a little help from our friends, the surfing dogs are back in, and we can tap our toes to “Night Rider” (if I can get the license finalized, of course).

Labels: diary

Midnight Madness

Making a film becomes an obsession. I’ve seen it in others, and now (mea culpa) I’ve noticed that even our most sociable conversations quickly turn to the topic of “Sniff”. It is really all Barry and I are capable of discussing at any great length; our immersion is that great. And with dogs as our subject, every passing canine is inadvertently auditioning for us. When we’re driving to the grocery store, or taking a few minutes to walk around the block, there they are: dogs of all sorts, looking cute, or smart or “breedy” and inevitably we stop to talk to the owner and tell them about our film. (We used to ask for names and phone numbers in case we needed participants, so I suppose just talking about the film is an indication that we’re on the road to obsession-recovery.)

Still, I was a bit alarmed last night when I woke at 4 a.m., jet-lagged from a trip to Toronto, to discover our house guest Robert Gardner, thirsty in the middle of the night, sipping his self-serve ice-water out of a mixing bowl I’d left on the counter. A bowl! As a glassblower, I can assure you there is a plethora of perfectly functional drinking glasses in our kitchen. But here was Robert, ice cubes a-tinkling, swilling his water from a bowl! Perhaps we have a bit too much dog energy in our home?

Despite my concern, I took child-like pleasure in finding that all three of us were wide awake in the wee hours, and Barry and I crept back to our bedroom to whisper sweet film-things to each other until eventually we turned our backs on sleep and fired up the computers for another day.

When Robert re-emerged at 9:30 am, we ate breakfast (I was sure to serve coffee in cups and juice in glasses), and then sat down to watch the “locked” picture together. Robert is a talented script writer and we have valued his encouragement and insights as our script was taking shape. He had never seen the documentary sections, so we wanted to have his fresh eyes see the fully integrated film and make comments.

At the end of the viewing, mimicking newscasters of old, Robert laughed and quipped in his basso profundo voice: “In a world gone crazy, Barry and Kim have dared to make a film about dogs”, and we were off on a new creative tangent: writing a script for a much-needed trailer for “Sniff”. By mid-afternoon, we had Robert posing in front of a video camera, Fedora on tête, doing a Walter Cronkite voice-over for our suddenly blossoming trailer. Barry and I then each took a turn with the script (being sure to don the Fedora), and finally all three of us could be found crowded in front of the camera singing an improvised and shockingly tuneless madrigal version of “In a world gone crazy…”

Our particular world has certainly gone crazy. But it's fun!

Tomorrow we meet with one of our composers Jon Herbst to “spot” the film. I think we’ll keep the madrigal under wraps…

Labels: diary

London Calling

We’ve just gotten back from London where we filmed our actors Neil Morrissey and Richard Huw in their real and fictional home town. As a result of our test screenings, we wrote a couple of extra scenes – to better set the stage for their collaboration on the documentary.

We decided to give Richard a “Mom” – played wonderfully by British stage actress Eileen Page (Eleanor of Aquitaine in Mother of the Pride, The Secret Garden) Eileen came to us through Sonya WIlliams a friend of Barry’s Mom, Sara Gregory, herself a soubrette of London’s West End in the 40’s and 50’s. Eileen, a vibrant octogenarian, is an intelligent, wiley force with dancing blue eyes and a spritely step. As we walked to Neil’s local for lunch, she told me of her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine and cited Eleanor’s history and speeches as though she was channeling the historic queen herself!

Neil was a brick as he returned home on the first night of our arrival to discover that Barry and I had completely switched the furniture in two of his guestrooms to transform one of the rooms into a set for Richard’s “bed-sitter.” He just glanced at the chaos and suggested we pop out to the pub. So we did, and enjoyed a delicious pint of bitter (or two) – all jet-lag aside!

Labels: diary

Prep and more Prep

Tickets are all purchased. We’ve hired Emily Pierceall to help manage the production details (a major treat!). We found a rental house in our neighbourhood for the actors to live in while they’re here, and the excitement mounts. Angela arrives in a week with the dog masks, so I’ve got to clear out my studio so she’ll have a place to work (and sleep).

Barry has been working day and night to get all the dog stories ready and in sequence so that Neil and Richard can be filmed watching them on screen. We used file cards with a documentary sequence itemized on each card, then brain-stormed with our Co-Producer and Search and Rescue story editor Eric Sullivan to decide on a running order. Now to fine-tune the script so each sequence is introduced properly….

Extras to organize, permits to obtain for filming in San Francisco and Oakland, shooting schedules to plan, locations to scout, and our annual Thanksgiving Turkey pageant to organize too. We’ll parade the feast to the actors’ place down the path because there’ll be too many friends and neighbours to fit around our little yellow table. Barry’s Mom arrives from England the day before, his sister comes in from Nepal the day of, Neil and Emma come up from Australia and Richard flies in from London. Must remember to order the turkey. Neil says he’ll cook it. I’m on the tofu version.

Labels: diary

Gathering Stories

We have 30 hours of high def video footage for the "documentary" part of the film. And we have come up with a pretty funny back story of the two "lads" making the film.

We have been following (right from his initial socialization and training) a sweet yellow lab called Mikey at Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael. He has been placed with a man named George Kerscher in Montana, so we went there last month to film the conclusion of that story. It was great to see Mikey again, and to know that he’s gone to live in a beautiful spot in the company of two other labs – Lily, the family pet, and Nesbit, Mikey’s guide dog predecessor who logged over 1 million miles on Delta airlines with George.

We've also been filming a black lab called Gabby who started out at Guide Dogs and had a "career change". Gabby is now training at Sundowners Ranch in Gilroy, California to be a Search and Rescue dog. It was a rough road for a while because although Gabby loved finding the “hidden trainer,” she wouldn't signal her discovery with a bark, an essential job requirement. She’s over that hurdle now and we have been filming her in various stages of training. Certification is on the way and we are currently waiting to find out where she gets posted so we can follow her life in the real world.

On the lighter side we've got dogs that lean out of windows, dogs that surf and a sweet story of Harley fetching a ball in the Klamath.

Labels: diary

Scouting Trip

Barry and I went to Los Angeles last weekend to explore some of the facilities we’ve read about and thought might provide juicy material for “Dog” (our working title).

First stop was Canyon View Ranch – a swank day-camp for dogs which also provides long-term boarding for more affluent hounds. It was a wonderful site – a panoramic view of Topanga Canyon, immaculate gardens, and tucked into the landscape were two huge playgrounds for dogs – the larger one included a bone-shaped wading pool and cascading waterfall for the playing pleasure of the larger dogs. The small dogs and elderly were grouped together in a smaller area, but the activities seemed equally gleeful – except for a few dogs who had probably seen it all, snoozing in the late morning sunshine. Each playground was overseen by a human supervisor charged with keeping the dogs amused and well-mannered.

We were met by owner Randy Neece who joined us where we stood on the hillside enjoying the view of about 50 dogs leaping in and out of the pools and frolicking with various toys and tunnels. It suddenly occurred to us that this bucolic scene was missing something. Despite the number and variety of dogs, there was not one sound – not one bark or growl. Apparently, the Canyon View trainers teach all dogs not to bark when they first come onto the premises – and they gently enforce the rule at all times!

It turns out that Randy and his partner Joe have just written a book on dog training and they are in serious negotiations about doing a television series on training dogs with methods that involve understanding how dogs think. Although we all agreed that our film would be quite different in approach and intention than their training series, they were reluctant to have us film there. But we left it open for discussion, depending on what happens to their t.v. series bid, etc.

Next Stop: a doggie day care center whose name shall remain undisclosed. This place was a serious disappointment. We had visions of brushed aluminum countertops and efficient lab-coated dog groomers attending well-coiffed pedigreed pups with attitude. Instead we entered off Hollywood’s famous Sunset Blvd. into a dingy, linoleum-floored reception area lined with dust-ridden racks of leopard-look doggy outfits and some sequined collars of yester-year, replete with the sounds of unhappy dogs penned in a darkened hall just off the entryway. The “Business Manager” was clearly unhappy with her bosses who phoned to stand us up, leaving her to tour us through the facilities and tell us up front that they’d want money for filming. It was a fortunately short tour punctuated by the Manager’s ineffective scolding of one particularly whiny dog. The “tour” didn’t do much to augment our first impression. We did come upon a grim “living room” with a torn, overstuffed couch intended to make the doggies feel right at home. The fresh dog turd in the corner certainly gave us the feeling of que sera sera. We left wondering exactly which famous stars and restaurateurs actually left their best friends in a place like this. Personally, I wouldn’t have left my imaginary goldfish there for the day.

We drove off to visit another “camping” facility for dogs, this one recommended to us by the folks at Canyon View Ranch. This was apparently an urban, multi-coloured concrete knock-off of Canyon View – with a bone-shaped viewing hole in the board fence, a pond and fountain for the dogs to enjoy, and staff to mind the play areas (one with a jungle theme indoors, and a Tex-Mex theme for out-of-doors). We toured past a Mexican Hairless boarded in a dark, isolated kennel who would happily have chewed our heads off … I guess he wasn’t sociable enough to join the other dogs outside in his pseudo native land. Except for this, the place seemed to be well-enough run – with a goodly emphasis on its retail section and an ego-stroking speaker system to announce when a dog’s owner had arrived to take “Harley” home.

The facility’s collagen-lipped owner was practiced in Burbank Brusk – so we didn’t feel a great need to pursue the possibility of filming at this particular location. We went to a local dog park and saw the same sort of dog interactions, and Barry communed with a baying beagle to the bewildered amusement of the people in the park.

The next day we struck gold. Drummond Ranch and its founder Janna Duncan had the kind of authenticity and stories-in-the-making that we were looking for. We arrived at the beginning of a Tuesday morning beginners’ sheep-herding class. Janna used one of her experienced Border Collies to efficiently move a few sheep from the pasture into a small training corral and then the fun began. First up was a young couple with a dog they had gotten from a Rescue. Janna identified Mattie’s probable breeding as part Border Collie and part Australian Cattle Dog. The owners brought Mattie into the corral for an instinct test. Janna asked the owners to step outside the pen and not make eye-contact with their dog. Mattie took a moment to wean herself of her owners’ attention and then she turned toward the sheep. Without ever having seen a sheep, she immediately rounded them up and brought them toward Janna in the centre of the ring. Then, as Janna walked and talked, Mattie tirelessly kept the sheep circling her. The owners gleefully saw that this was their dog’s calling and could hardly wait to sign up for lessons. As Barry ascertained later, Mattie had been discontent at home – chewing and nervous with pent-up energy. She was obviously a great dog – but she had yet to find her niche.

Next, a novice Pembroke Welsh Corgi was brought in to work with Janna. This dog wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about sheep-herding as his owner, so Janna thought she’d try something. She brought in a Border Collie puppy who was smaller than the Corgi to help inspire him and build his confidence. The puppy kept the sheep bunched together and the Corgi took slightly more interest, but he wasn’t fit or keen enough to work for long. (Corgies, by the way, were bred to herd cattle more than sheep. Their short stature helps them avoid getting kicked.)

After working with different members of the class all morning, Janna brought out a 13 year old former U.S. Champion Border Collie to work in the large pasture. This was a story that would break your heart. The dog couldn’t hear well any more and has had a hip replacement, but he still loves to work. So they let him – just for a little while every week – and he remains spirited and as agile as his aging hips will allow.

We met with Janna after the students left to discuss filming at her ranch. To our delight she is as enthusiastic about working with us as we are with her, and she loves the premise of the film we want to make. She told us that she also works at a ranch in Malibu with a more affluent clientele, and that she’ll be judging a sheep-herding contest in Santa Barbara in early June – so there are lots of possibilities for some pre-production filming. She is going to keep an eye out for stories-in-the-making and will let us know next time she gets a call from those folks with an unruly rescued sheep-dog …

Hooray, hooray! We’re on our way!

P.S. – This just in … Barry and I found Gus at Asilomar Beach in Monterey yesterday. He’s a Border Collie/McNab Stock Dog cross and we couldn’t take our eyes off him. In the absence of pasture and sheep, he was racing around barking up at the sky, herding seagulls. After at least15 minutes of circling the beach at break-neck speed, when there were no more birds to be seen, he headed straight out into the surf and rolled, clambered up and went at it again, and again. Gus’s owner Cindy is delighted to have us film him – they come to the beach every day. We never actually got a chance to meet him – Gus was constantly on the alert for more birds. Socializing was not on his agenda. (The McNab Stock Dog is an unrecognized Northern California breed known best to ranchers and farmers in the state. A Scotsman named Alexander McNab was the original breeder about 150 years ago. These dogs are short-haired, love water and can cope with the California heat.)

Labels: diary

Next: Meet The Team…

Labels: diary