For this juice commercial we were asked to provide a big, hairy, kid-friendly dog. As usual we submitted a number of breeds and mixes for the part and this time, Briard, Ruckus got the nod from the producers. As the commercial had no set action – basically they wanted the director to be able to ask for a vast range of behaviors on the day – Ruckus’s level of training and set experience made him the leading choice.
This day long shoot consisted of a lot of different vignettes where Ruckus got to hang out with a bunch of kids playing in a backyard. Of course these kids were playing with a pretty impressive rocket ship and other cool props.
Ruckus did a lot of go to’s, go with’s, stays, looks etc as the kids played in various scenarios. It will be interesting to see which shots get used (this may have been a commercial for the European market so we might not actually see it on television here.)
I can’t stress enough how much getting your dog out and around a lot of activity makes a difference for coping with the film-industry craziness that can happen on set. Even Ruckus was a bit non-pulsed when the rocket started making loud take off noises and spewing smoke.