In this SD classic column, Cecil discusses how film directors can create the illusion of animals fighting each other.
I’m surprised Cecil didn’t mention the favorite technique of low-budget B-film directors: simply film two dogs (for example) being frisky and frolicking with each other but dub in loud snarling and yelping sounds.
Editing such sequences into short, fast, action shots, it’s almost believable that one is seeing a real dog fight.
Almost.
But that doesn’t seem to stop B-film directors from using the technique. They must learn it in B-Film School.
I recently saw a program on the Discovery Channel (I think) that asked the question, “If a lion and a tiger fought, which would win?”. There were elaborate simulations of the anatomy of the animals, constructions of mechanical lion’s-paws and testing of them against animal carcasses, etc… but there were also very detailed animated renderings of the animals without skin, showing all the muscles and bones moving. Later they added skin and fur and the animals looked and moved very realistically.
It looks like the state of the rendering art is now such that rather realistic animals can be completely synthesised from computer model without actually involving any real animals at all!
The series is called Animal Face-Off. Tonight at 9:00pm, it’s Lion vs. Croc. They’ve also got Anaconda vs. Jaguar and Gorilla vs. Leopard. I guess this is the part where you say check your own local listings. Wish I had cable (sigh).
I actually came to this thread to say basically the same thing. If you watch the Disney version of White Fang, this technique is used in the dogfight scenes, and you can tell. The dogs that are “fighting” are wagging their tails, and appear pretty much the way it looks when my dogs are play-fighting, except for the growling sounds that are added. Also, there is a scene in the same movie where Fang is fighting a bear, and it’s pretty obvious that bear and dog are never actually on the set at the same time.
I’ve read an article a while back on the computer animation effects in Return of the King, and it mentions that Weta’s software included new models of riders and horses so realistic they could be freely mixed with real actors in foreground, mid-ground, and back. That did come as an enlightening relief because I too was wondering if a horse could even be trained to take the kind of up-close spills in that movie.
Which is all a roundabout way to say… yeah, CG can be used nowadays. It’d surely have to be a relatively large-budget film to use the method and have it done convincingly, though.
I’m looking for a relatively comprehensive website dedicated to animal actors and stunt animals. All I’ve been able to find so far are websites for companies that hire out animals for film and television work.
(It really annoys me when animals in films don’t get listed in the credits. While I understand that it may be a chore to list, for example, all the horses used in a film like The Last Samurai, there’s no reason an animal in a “starring” role - like the title character in Hidalgo - shouldn’t be given a proper credit. IMO, T.J. (Hidalgo) should have had his name on the movie poster, right next to Viggo Mortensen’s name.)
It was real; they actually shot those horses with a gatling gun.
If only they would have spared the horses and shot Tom Cruise instead.
In Hidalgo, I’d be impressed if they used CG for the horses; most of the horse shots looked pretty good if I recall. Whereas the CG cats in that movie looked amazingly fake. Though they might have used different effects houses for the various different animations.
So…Discovery used technology that was used in The Running Man, which was used to frame the epic battle between Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwartzenegger?
I remember seeing a “behind-the-scenes” spots about this movie on the Disney Channel, and they confirmed that this was the method used. They even said that had the scene not been overdubbed, you could have heard the crew laughing at how cute and funny the dogs looked playing together.
As I read/write during a good bit of my workday - I tend to scan and pick out the important parts - - as do many of my collegues in the company and our customers: I highly doubt any one person will read the 7 pound document I sent out today!
That being said, after scanning this thread and not yet having enjoyed the film under discussion - I have to ask: are you saying the horses were shot (and killed?) with a real gatling gun?