brendafilm | Brenda Hilbig

Leo

Shortfilm 16:52 Min.
by Brenda Hilbig
Germany, 2011

Text

The story is told from the perspective of the dog Leo. We can hear his thoughts but don't understand the human language.

Leo lives happily with his mistress in a small house in a small village. He likes eating, sleeping and walking. One day he looses his mistress in an unknown forrest. He is in panic. He then has to o through a journey that leads him back to his mistress.

Project Info

My dog Leo just loves people. He sits, rolls and crawls around to get their attention - a natural show talent! So the idea was born to bring this natural talent on film. Then a friend told me a real story that happend to her and her dog. That was the basis of my script. I then wrote the script with all the day to day scenes my dog experience every day. It was an ambitious project since in every scene Leo has to do certain moves. So it was very difficult to find a camera man who would take up this challenge. Dogs cannot concentrate for very long. So we usually only shot for a couple of hours, except for the scenes at the veterinary clinic. That was about half a day and you can see that Leo is a bit tired. Anyway, we met 10 times and shot about 10 hours of footage. I was mainly focussing on Leo, that he still had some fun and would do the stuff we'd like him to do. That's when I realized that it just pays off to do an actual casting and select the right actors for the jobs. The actors not only basically run by themselves but also were flexible enough to go along when Leo spontaniously changed the scenes.:)

The crew on the set were just Peter and me. So we also were very flexible. On the other hand we had to compromise on quality. But in the end the film turned out like I envisioned: To get a feeling for the viewpoint of the dog and how he sees the world with a litle dash of action. And I still like the idea that we cannot understand the humans. Dogs don't understand us either. Of course there are some very intelligent dogs that seem to understand quite a bit, but basically dogs live in a world of aliens.

Since I got so much positive feedback there might be a sequel.

Persons

Leo - Leo
Andrea, Leo's mistress - Silvia Hoffmann
Mrs Meyer, older lady - Erika Solbrig
Sabine, Leo's Finder - Katja Kessler
Veterinarian Dr. Sommer - Sabine Maria Schöneich
Lisa, veterinery assistant - Michelle Ling
Two girls in the waiting room - Jeva Gerulat and Inga von der Ohe

Writer, Producer, Director - Brenda Hilbig

Director of photography - Peter Gerulat

Editor - Justin Djamtorki

Music, Foley, Sound mix - finesoundstudio, Frank Machel

Über Brenda|Projekte|Kontakt|Impressum|Datenschutz

Tweet an tell your friends: