sensationalist news + out of context incident = outrage culture fodder

topic of the day 007

out of context and out of rage

from imgur

What?

A snippet of a behind the scene look of an upcoming movie, a Dog's Purpose, highlighting a dog being lowered by its trainer into raging water for a particular scene in the movie and how its reaction resulted in the online community to react accordingly in line with the current outrage culture.

Who?

We could see how distressed the dog was when being lowered unwillingly into the water by its trainer but in its full context (as seen below), the video released by TMZ definitely only chose to focus on the one negative aspect of the shooting instead while how they treated the animals in other situations throughout the shooting has been understandably professional.

How?

Both sides are at fault here with the site using its power to influence its visitors by focusing on a particular angle (usually more negative than positive since the former sells more than the latter) and then cropping away any other information that would contradict it while the animal team's way of handling the shoot could have been better and not inflict any unneeded stress on the trained dog and it's unfortunate that the media wanted to focus on this one time out of character reaction of the dog.

Why?

An upcoming movie is a perfect target for any press especially if you have an angle to work with to keep the visitors coming to their site while the production team behind the movie should have been paying more attention to how they treat their animals especially if the movie is about a certain animal and what their roles are in people's lives as it might be emotionally scarred if not physically.

I found the video we’ve all seen to be shocking because when I was on set, the ethic of everyone was the safety and comfort of the dogs.
If the people who shot and edited the video thought something was wrong, why did they wait fifteen months to do anything about it, instead of immediately going to the authorities?
I have since viewed footage taken of the day in question, when I wasn’t there, and it paints an entirely different picture.
The written commentary accompanying the edited video mischaracterizes what happened.  The dog was not terrified and not thrown in the water—I’ve seen footage of Hercules earlier that day joyfully jumping in the pool.  When he was asked to perform the stunt from the other side of the pool, which was not how he had been doing it all day, he balked.  The mistake was trying to dip the dog in the water to show him it was okay—the water wasn’t his issue, it was the location that was the issue, and the dog happily did the stunt when he was allowed to return to his original spot.
I also didn’t like it when Hercules’s head briefly went under water, but there was a scuba diver and a trainer in the pool to protect him.  He loves the water, wasn’t in danger, and wasn’t upset.
On a movie where the mantra was the safety and comfort of the dogs, mistakes were made, and everything needs to be done to make sure those errors are not repeated.  But the reason American Humane certifies that no animals were harmed during the making of the film is that no animals were harmed during the making of the film.
I celebrate animal rescue and am proud of the values that show up in A Dog’s Purpose.  
 ~ the author of the book and co-screenwriter W. Bruce Cameron ~

Then?

Here's my conclusive take on this matter: it is always wrong to mistreat any animal and in this instance forcing it to do something that it doesn't want to but after hearing from a point of view from a person on the ground at the scene of the shooting (taken with a grain of salt that it was from one of their own) and an educated guess from an experienced dog trainer, it was probably taken out of context and that's shameful really to focus on the negative instead of on the movie's good natured intention.

So?
Making a movie is a complicated process and it involves a lot of people and sometimes animals. Being outraged over one instance over days of shooting production while it was safely done in the end while there are more animal abuse incidents out there that need to be highlighted in the news.

Lesson Learned:

"Uneducated outrage culture triggered by sensationalist news taken out of context."