Annie (2014)

Throughout the film, Annie 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 dog runs across a city street and is then cornered in an alley, the working street is closed all day by the police. A trainer is on one side of the street and calls the dog. The dog runs from point A to point B. When the dog is cornered in the alley with two boys throwing stuff at him, the teenage actors who were chasing the dog stand in foreground to the cornered dog, throwing prop objects that are very soft. The trainer is off-camera and cues the dog to circle to make it look as if he’s in distress.

In the scene where the actress places a bowl over a mouse, the trainer prepped the mouse to walk from point A to point B, using food to get him to make this transition. Once the mouse was on its mark with food, the actress placed a bowl over him. On cut, they immediately put the mouse back in its cage.

In the scene where Annie and the mayor take pictures next to the horses, trainers were off-camera, and the horses were held by wranglers.

In the scene where Annie visits a dog kennel, the background dogs were chosen from trainers’ agility groups, so they mostly all knew each other and were familiar with being loose around other dogs.

In the scene where the dog is in the backseat of a car with Annie as they’re being chased, the trainer placed the dog into the backseat and sat in a hidden place to keep the dog still.