“Her eyes are officially in the back of her head,” someone says of a pooch that has reached nirvana while having her ears rubbed in “The School of Canine Massage,” Emma D. Miller’s warm and effervescent trip to the Ojai Valley Woman’s Club where the director finds people who have come to learn how to properly relieve any tension for dogs, pulling at their legs and kneading their sides.
“I wanted to make something experiential because for me that was what was drawing me into wanting to document the program in the first place,” says Miller, who is making her directorial debut after being part of the producing teams on such films as “What We Leave Behind” and “Unrest.” “It was five or six days where they’re learning about TTouch, Swedish massage, acupressure and anatomy and a lot of that is incredibly, you know, beneficial and educational for the students in the class, but that isn’t necessarily an interesting thing to [document]. I really wanted to just have this feel of the dynamic of relationship building between people and the dogs and having to be present in terms of touch.”
Filmed with considerable sensitivity and tenderness in every respect, the 11-minute short feels just as much a gentle reprieve from our fast-paced world as the clinic does and in the frenzy at SXSW where “The School of Canine Massage” is making its world premiere, it is bound to stand out. Shortly before heading to Austin, Miller spoke about capturing the spirit of the place, witnessing rejuvenation in even the limited time she spent there and being able to make the most of the moment in front of her aesthetically.
How did this come about?
I have some friends who are a couple and we were out to dinner with them one night and they were talking about how their little dog Mochi had been dealing with some joint pain. They’d been talking to an acupuncturist who could help her out, and I was like, “Wait, dogs can get acupuncture?” And [they said] “We’ve been talking to a couple of people who’ve trained at the Ojai School of Canine Massage,” and immediately, my head just went to all of these visuals of what would that look like. I didn’t even know like animals could get massages like that. So I was intrigued and thought that there could be something interesting to drop into as part of that program. And to be honest, skepticism maybe too strong of a word, but this seemed [to be] for the really extreme dog lovers [because] who has the disposable income to be spending money on getting their dog massaged? I don’t even get massaged for myself, but I went in with an open mind, curious [about] who would decide to participate in this kind of program.
What often draws me to projects is there’s some sort of connection or healing, a mutual exchange that’s happening that maybe isn’t something that can be clearly articulated, [and here there was] a reciprocity that’s happening both between people and animals, so even though there’s definitely a silliness and a quirkiness to it, but I did ultimately come away feeling there’s genuinely something moving and somewhat profound happening both for the participants and for the dogs getting this experience.
The narrative of this really forms around this transfer of energy that’s going on. What was it like to try and capture?
I did interviews with a lot of the different students in the program, curious about why each of them was there and I noticed there were different reasons. Some were coming in for very practical reasons like they wanted this additional skill that they can use if they work in animal rescue or maybe they’re vet techs. They love animals and they can start a business doing this or there’s a tangible way to help heal the animal, and it’s a hard skill. But then there’s others where they were there to participate, and yes, they wanted to help animals, but also very much acknowledge, “I’m getting something out of being here [too]. This is a big departure for me to go to Ojai, California and spend a week away from my daily life, just immersed in dogs, and I’m learning something new and maybe I can take it back for my pet, but maybe I can take back what this experience did for me.”
There’s this woman who runs the program, who talks about how she’d just gone through this experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the film, and for her, it was very much about the energetic symbiosis that’s happening in that space, so in terms of the framing of energy, it’s not to say that there isn’t real scientific/anatomical benefits for the dogs, but it’s a really profound thing for her, and she observes that in others and what I decided as a structure is if you were going to focus on a couple of different people and get to drop in on their experiences, there potentially could be this progression where you’re starting out very practically [with the idea] I’m helping the animals, and then end up in this place where it’s like, “I’m the one being helped here.”
In a literal way, what was it like filming in this space?
I worked with Ora DeKornfeld, a really brilliant director of photography who’s my friend, and we knew that it was going to be one controlled space the whole time, so we talked about two things. There was an opportunity to maybe be a little bit more varied and more deliberate with the types of shots and lenses that we had because they’re there for five days, learning different things, but there’s a lot of similar motions, so we could really get to experiment and figure out like what is the best framing or where can we really capture this dynamic without feeling like we’re interrupting it? Then one of the lenses that we worked with was a really long lens, so we were able to get these shots that felt very intimate without actually in some cases having to be up in the faces of the dogs, disturbing this very relaxed environment because what we learned pretty quickly on is if you’re picking up your tripod and moving it around the spaces, that is really disruptive. The dogs are then looking up and sniffing at you, so we were able to find ways to observe and then construct certain things, like the sequences at the end that we really wanted to give this kind of magical treatment because it’s what we were observing, so we lit a part of the space and then [had these] slow-mo sequences, getting people to demonstrate what they’d been learning and really do it in a more stylized way.
Was there anything that happened that changed your ideas of what this could be?
Yeah, we don’t get into this too specifically just by virtue of the limitations of this being an 11-minute film, but there’s one elderly dog that came in on the first day, sort of dragging his legs. He had really bad hip dysplasia and real hard time walking. Over the course of a couple of days of getting deep work on him, he was moving around so much more easily. Then there was also one dog who was really, really riled up and barking a lot on the first day, but by the end, there was just such a shift in his behavior, and I chose to focus the film more about the relationship between the people and the animals and less on the benefits for the animals, but if I went in a little bit of a skeptic, I came out [thinking], “Oh, I totally understand why this is a thing.”
It also has a wonderful score on it. What it was like to put music on this?
The music was a really fun and challenging process because finding the right tone for this was really complex. I wanted to give people permission to laugh and acknowledge the playfulness and the humor inherent in someone giving a massage to a giant stuffed dog [as a demonstration], but also that [recognition of], “Wow, there’s healing happening here,” [which] I wanted to sneak up on you in the music. So part of what Ben Young, the composer and I really tried to break down was, “If we’re going to start here, how do we keep some of these musical motifs, but end up in a place that feels like much more ethereal and effervescent?” That’s where there’s like an explosion of synth instruments so there’s some sort of catharsis happening here that we wanted the music to relay as well.
The premiere is still to come, but what’s it like getting to this point with it and share with the world?
It’s so exciting. I’m anticipating that it’s going be a pleasure to get to share with audiences. It was something very early on, I [thought], “This is one that I want to watch with people feeling things and getting to see on a big screen [with] some of these images of the totally blissed out dog faces.” So I’m thrilled and South By is the dream launch pad. It’s such a supportive, fun environment and there’s so many great, talented filmmakers that come out. I was there for a couple of years ago with a film I produced, “What We Leave Behind,” and it just was such an incredible experience and they do an incredible job of curating shorts programs, so I’m excited to be in company with films that I think will all feel really different, so I’m really looking forward to this, [and then] having hopefully a wide festival life where people can really get to experience this with one another.
“The School of Canine Massage” will screen at SXSW as part of Documentary Short Program 1 at Rollins Theatre at the Long Center on March 10th at 11 am and March 13th at 2:30 pm.