Little Dogs, Children, and construction sites

The importance of back up plans on no budget films

3 min readMar 13, 2019

A few years ago, I got to make a short film with a couple of good friends, two talented actors, and a Pomeranian. One thing you always hear is the old adage about working with animals and children when you’re making a film. As a filmmaker, your luck can always run out, so it’s important to have contingency plans.

One week before filming Little Dog, Robert Robbins, my DP, and I went to scope out the location for the film and a couple of potential back up spots in the neighborhood. We would be filming out doors, so we had to deal with the sound of traffic, pedestrians, and anything else that might come up. There was a really nice outdoor cafe seating area where we planned to film. A half a mile away, we checked out a couple spots at a local park we could use as a backup location.

Everything looked good for filming at the out door cafe.

This was my first time working with a dog in a short film.

On the day of filming, my crew arrived at the outdoor cafe early, followed by one of the actors. We were going to film a phone conversation. The plan was to film her part of the conversation in the morning and film the other half in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, a construction site next door to our location started working by the time we were ready to film.

My lead actress, Lisa Hunter had to manage a Pomeranian, while delivering her lines on a phone, and with a nail gun going off next door.

At first, I was really concerned about the background noise. Every few minutes we could hear the bang of the nail gun.

During the first couple of takes, Teddy, the Pomeranian would bark at people walking by, and at one point, the dog barked at a little girl on a tricycle.

Lisa powered through the script.

We were probably halfway through the shoot, when a light rain started to fall. Luckily, Robert and I brought umbrellas to the shoot and they were large enough to make a canopy over our actress, the dog, and the camera.

We rolled a few more takes on a close up and we were done with Lisa’s coverage. After that, we filmed a couple minutes of Teddy just sitting relaxing, and I also asked Robert to film some shots of them walking back and forth just in case we needed it later.

After that we broke for lunch. Lisa and Teddy we released for the day. Robert and I went to lunch waiting for a pick up from our Production Assistant for the day.

When you are making films on a low or no budget, it is important to always have a level of flexibility or to find creative solutions for the problems that inevitably arise on set. By filming additional takes, I was able to ensure we had clean audio of Lisa’s dialogue. And after being on set for a few hours, Teddy was too tuckered out to bark at everyone who walked by.

I try to plan on what to do if a location falls through, or if someone is running late, or if a crew member doesn’t show. You never know what will happen when you’re on set. That is part of the reason why it’s great to work with people you’ve worked with before. You already know what it’s like to be on set with them.