The House With A Clock In Its Walls (2018)

Throughout the film, one of the supporting characters has a dog, 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 when the actress walks across the street with the dog on the leash, encounters other actors, and picks up the dog as they talk, the trainer placed the dog in the actress’ hands prior to shooting the scene. The actress and the dog had already been acquainted with each other prior to filming the movie.

In the scene where the rat crawls out of a hole and walks along a pipe, a trainer placed the rat on mark, using food to keep him in place, then and cued him to stay. The camera was close up on rat. They got the shot and wrapped the rat for the day.

In the scene where the boy sees a furry cat in a cage, places a blanket over the cage, then pulls up the blanket a minute later revealing a hairless cat, the trainer placed the cat inside the cage and secured the door. Then props covered the cage with a blanket. On action, the actor revealed the cat, then placed the blanket over the cage and they cut. Between takes the trainer replaced the hairy cat with a hairless cat. Same action as last time. The cats were given food and water the whole time.

In the scene where the actress is raking her yard, her dog bars and runs off, the trainers placed the dog on his mark prior to shooting the scene. On action, the trainer off camera cued the dog to bark, then run to him.

When the actress holds the rat in her arms, trainers simply placed the rat in the actress’ arms. She was shown how to hold the rat prior to shooting the scene.

In the scene where the dog reacts and turns into a rat, the dog is given to the actor in the beginning. The actors enter the house and he hands the dog to the trainer. They cut. On cut, they place a rat in the boy’s arms. The rest was accomplished in post with CGI.

Most of the rat sequences were done by CGI