Bumblebee (2018)

Throughout the film, the main character has a pet dog, who is seen performing such mild action as sitting/standing/lying, being held or petted, and walking/running on or off leash. For all of these scenes, trainers used hand signals and verbal commands to cue the mild action, which the trained dog was accustomed to performing. The barking/growling was also a trained behavior.

In the scene where the actress eats breakfast and her dog jumps up on the table and begs for food, the trainer brought the dog to the set and placed an apple box out of frame, which was the dog’s starting place. On action, the dog walked across the kitchen and placed his paws on the table. The cereal bowl was lined with baby food.

In the scene where the girl gets in the abandoned car and is driven away by a beehive, a professional bee wrangler was hired to navigate bee usage on set. Wranglers used bees that were safe to be released into the wild. Beehive was plastic. Magnets were attached to the top of fake hive which allowed hive to be attached to wheel. Prior to shooting, the wrangler placed a handful of bees on the dashboard of car. The actress was filmed separately from the bees, she was never near real bees.

In the scene where the actress drives the car with the dog in a carrying case in the backseat, and the dog barks out the window, the dog was walked to the stage by the trainer. Prior to shooting the scene, the trainer placed the dog into a crate and placed it in the back window of the car. Wedges were placed to stabilize the crate so it wouldn’t tip over. The trainer stood off-camera with a bait stick to get the dog to look towards camera. The trainer also cued the dog to bark out the window.

In the scene where the dog is lying down in the garage watching television, when Bumblebee comes to life and the dog escapes through the doggy door, the set was an enclosed garage built on a sound stage. When the dog reacts, he was placed on his mark. The trainer used a bait stick to elicit the dog’s reactions. On the next take, the trainer called the dog and he ran through the doggy door. The same technique with the bait stick was used in the rest of the scene where the dog jumps off the couch in the living room and runs around.