Bonnie Judd and Canine Costars have been providing invaluable service on the production of GOOD BOY!, which stars several dogs in leading roles. Our film could not succeed without these dogs being absolutely wonderful.
I would give Bonnie the highest recommendation and hope to work with her again in the future. When we began this project we were told to expect a very difficult shoot, because our film stars primarily dogs and children. We never expected that our canine stars would be as prepared and easy to work with on-set as they are, thanks to Bonnie and her team. Bonnie was involved from the earliest stages of pre-production. She sourced all the dogs, and worked with our director to cast the most appropriate dogs as well as their doubles. She put together a great team of trainers. She has always given us an accurate view of what would be easy and difficult for the dogs to do, as well as how much rehearsal time would be needed to accomplish the more difficult pieces.
The story of the film GOOD BOY! involves dogs that talk. We accomplished this without the use of animatronics, because the dogs were so well trained that they remain stationary, kept their mouths closed, and they were able to look at specific eye lines. This was no small achievement. In addition we originally planned to use dozens of split screens for “trainer removal”, but these special effects have proven to be almost unnecessary because Bonnie’s dogs were able to work well together, with their trainers off camera.
I hope that you have the opportunity to work with Bonnie Judd and her team. They have done a terrific job for us, and I wish her well in all future movie opportunities.
Sincerely,
Lisa Henson