There is an extended and storied history of non-human actors. from Lukethe dog of silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, to the collies that play the role of Lassie in movies and tv. Beard the bear revamped 20 film and tv appearances within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, while countless horses have supported historical dramas which might be now flooding streaming services.
But business was not pretty much as good because it was once the animal trainers who focus on the rental of all types of creatures for film and tv productions.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, It's a trend that's happening Building for at the very least 25 years ago, and that's largely as a result of a mixture of activism and technological advancements that I've observed in my studies of Animals on the screen.
Fewer roles
The introduction of visual effects – also generally known as computer-generated imagery or CGI – to Hollywood has been instrumental in putting many animal actors out of labor. Ever since “Jurassic Park” (1993) dared to combine CGI dinosaurs with human actors, increasingly more digital animals have appeared on screen alongside humans.
Other aspects have accelerated the trend.
The COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood actors and writers are on strike in 2023 and a recent decline within the Number of latest TV series greenlit have led to fewer productions and fewer roles, whether written for humans or animals.
But even before these recent events, there have been calls for Hollywood to radically reduce its reliance on animal actors.
In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter – the identical trade publication that recently bemoaned a decline in pet rentals – reported published an exposé cataloging the incidents wherein animals died, were injured or were exposed to great danger on set. Nevertheless, these productions continued to hold the famous “No animals were harmed” recognition awarded by the American Humane Association despite the fact that, well, animals were harmed. American Humane claims that the incidents were tragic but weren’t the results of negligence.
In 2016, PETA published the outcomes of undercover investigations Documenting substandard living conditions and untreated illnesses at Birds & Animals Unlimited, which operates animal training facilities for film and tv. In 2024, the organization detailed the neglect of animals in its care Atlanta Film Animals. Both firms denied the allegations.
Of course, there are many ways to reduce or avoid using real animals in film and tv.
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and its sequels I used motion capturewith humans performing the movements of characters later depicted as chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.
For Ang Lee's 2012 production “Life of Pi“Visual effects artists created 1000’s of virtual animals, while director Darren Aronofsky opted for fully digital animals, complemented by some practical propsin 2014 “Noah.”
The horror film of 2025 defies high-tech trends “primate” went old-school without counting on real animals, using a movement artist in costume and prosthetics to play a murderously rabid chimpanzee.
Can CGI numb viewers to animal violence?
What do digital animals, these bestial avatars, make possible?
Undoubtedly, there are trainers who care deeply about their charges and cling to the very best practices in animal husbandry. But it's obvious that the less animals kept in captivity, the higher, and up to date advances in AI have given rise to visual effects and CGI much more realistic and easier to model.
However, animals fabricated from flesh and blood are replaced by animals fabricated from pixels seems to have created a canvas for unmitigated abuse. Consider the brutal violence of The “Planet of the Apes” is restartingwhich include hand-to-hand combat, branding and a torturous crucifixion scene.
In the past, the indisputable fact that the animals on set were real sometimes curbed filmmakers' wildest impulses; Violence was implied in family life or took place off-screen, e.g. B. “The yearling(1946) and “Old Yeller” (1957). At the identical time, many movies used camera tricks and props to create scenes of animal cruelty, from “American Psycho“ (2000) to “John Wick(2014).
While the results of violent media on viewers are notoriously difficult to review, Some evidence suggests so that some viewers can develop into desensitized to the real-world consequences of unhealthy and violent content. It's easy to see how this desensitization could impact watching animal cruelty on screen.
The viewer can still sniff out the virtual
A hybrid approach to portraying animals on screen seems to have taken hold, using what one scholar has called in relation to dogs on screen: “composite dog performances.”
The team behind the 2025 version of Superman, for instance, desired to create a practical dog, right all the way down to every shaggy patch of fur. But they needed it to defy gravity and other laws of physics. So they included barely enough live animals in pre-production to animate a predominantly CGI creature. with director James Gunn's own dog serves as “Model“or “reference” for the super dog Krypto.
This technique is harking back to the methods utilized by Disney animators, who were faced with the challenge of making the characters for “Bambi” (1942). So they studied the anatomy of animals, photographed deer within the wild, and drew animals brought into the studio to raised capture their movements on paper.
But on the subject of live-action movies with on a regular basis relevance, there remains to be work for real animals on set. On the one hand, it remains to be generally cheaper to make use of the actual thing. Furthermore, most virtual animals on screen simply don't look realistic enough to permit for the entire suspension of disbelief that’s the magic of cinema.
That's why the 2025 adaptation of Helen MacDonald's memoir says: “H is for Hawk“, filmmaker He reportedly employed five hawks to portray Mabel, the bird adopted by Helen (Claire Foy). And that's why Oscar nominee “Marty Supreme” showed an entire menagerie of live animalsincluding a horse, a camel, an armadillo, a dog, a rabbit and even a sea lion playing table tennis. Yes, the ocean lion within the scene was real, however the ball was not.
Future opportunities for coaches and their charges appear to rely upon how good visual effects may be. For some animal rights activists — not to say the animals who don’t have any say of their work — that day can't come soon enough.
Meanwhile, moviegoers and animal rights activists could also be hoping for a middle ground: a future wherein only ethically treated animals proceed to seem on screen.
