Sunshadows Tell was employed in the making of the pilot episode of this series made for television.
He had to first threaten Andrea (a police officer) as she approached the home of a suspect. He ran around the corner of the house as she came up the walkway, barking at her.
Later in the episode, he is lying in the yard with his toy and he has to ignore her - simply watching as she approaches the home for the second time.
Above: Director, Cameraman, Cathy, Barry and Tell
The director, Tom Hale, was very impressed, needing only a few takes for each scene, and particularly impressed because they had spent the entire previous day trying to get a different dog to do what Tell did in only 2 hours of shooting.
In a later episode filmed in July, '07 near Duck Lake, SK, Sunshadows Sinder (black) and Sunshadows Jag (sable) were cast as abandoned dogs on Dog Island where they were to begin devouring a dead man who washed up on shore. Here's a shot showing the actor being prepared. He was very brave, wearing a hidden sleeve on both arms and able to act perfectly dead as Jag almost pulled his shirt off during the take.
The actor is soaking wet, and we are just letting Jag know it's OK to pull on the non-fleshy part of his arm.
The director and producer discuss camera angles for the take. They decide that the two dogs will run up to the 'floater' and begin to tear away at him - hopefully on the hidden sleeve part of the arm. Earlier we tried smearing the shirt sleeve with peanut butter, and then tried sticking ham into the folds, but neither dog thought that was worth chewing on.
After this practice the dogs required only 2 takes to get the perfect shot. Nearly unheard of!
Some of the cast and crew of this episode of Rabbit Fall, airing on the APTN channel.
