Absolutely. Trust the readers: we’ll get it!

Great example, as I believe it proves a few points.

Firstly, it is important to distinguish comedy from every other genre. The screenwriter is deliberately breaking the rule in order to “implant emotions into the brain of the audience”, or rather: the reader. You’ll agree that in no other genre you would be able to achieve the same result.

Plus: if you were to ask the audience what the dog’s emotions are in these shots without seeing what came before, they’d be lost. This is an excellent case of the Kuleshov effect: we project feelings on the subject because of what we saw on the screen just before.

I strongly disagree when you say this is an example of “expressing feelings (such as concern, humiliation and intrigue) through ‘performance’.” Are you serious? Do you really believe the director made efforts to have the dog PERFORM the emotion? The dog’s face is what it is, as it always is.

The only exception I can think of that contradicts my statement above is the chimpansee, who can be trained to pull certain faces.

Still a great example you brought up as it forced me to think harder about my – possibly rather simplistic – hypothesis. ;)

Thanks for your comment!

“Animals – no matter how well trained – will NOT express feelings through performance

… If you must give the audience the idea the animal is happy, have humans SAY so. In other words, don’t write in action “The dog is pleased with the treat, he happily trots off.” but put in dialogue something like: “Look how happy Fido is, he is wagging his tail!””

I’m not sure that is going to make a script better.

Let’s look at a very successful film with an animal who regularly had ’emotions’ – Legally Blonde.

Here are some excerpts from the script (Shooting Draft: Last update 18-Sep-2000, Pink Pages):

(The animal character is a chihuahua named ‘Underdog’)
1 – “Underdog stares at her, concerned”
2 – “Humiliated but dutiful, Underdog bounds off”
3 – “Underdog watches from her purse on the table, intrigued by her line of questioning.”

Clearly each of those are doing exactly what you are saying we should avoid – expressing feelings (such as concern, humiliation and intrigue) through ‘performance’. (Or at least choice of camera angle and pose .. this isn’t exactly Oscar worthy emoting here!)

Imagine how bad the film would have been if the writer had used dialogue to communicate that information “Look how humiliated but dutiful that chihuahua is!”

In each of those occasions, of course, the audience is projecting their own idea of what the rodent is really feeling – but the idea is that the chihuahua is meant to be communicating ‘I am intrigued’ with a pose and facial expression …

Mac