{"id":706023,"date":"2026-01-01T18:55:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T15:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/meet-the-man-who-thinks-dogs-should-be-directors\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T18:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T15:55:20","slug":"meet-the-man-who-thinks-dogs-should-be-directors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/meet-the-man-who-thinks-dogs-should-be-directors\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Man Who Thinks Dogs Should Be Directors\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIf you\u2019ve spent time this holiday season catching up on the season\u2019s movies<\/a> and TV shows, chances are you\u2019ve seen a couple of dogs. But it\u2019s less likely you saw something directed<\/em> by a dog.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat should change, argues Mikkel Holm. Holm serves as Chief AI & Innovation Officer of New York-based pet company BARK \u2014\u00a0 they deliver popular subscript<\/a>ion boxes of dog treats and toys and, oh yes, also run an airline<\/a>. So this season\u00a0executives commissioned a fun spot together with ad agency Tombras that was actually directed by a dog, an Australian Shepherd Pitbull mix named Mia.<\/p>\n

\n\tOK, maybe directed is a strong word. But it\u2019s not entirely inaccurate either, as we watch Mia and some of her compatriots from their perspective as they plow through a holiday gathering. (You can watch the ad, a tableau of a dog-human holiday gathering called \u201cMerry Chaos, Humans,\u201d here<\/a>; it has been running on Hulu, Peacock, HBO Max and other platforms.)<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what exactly does Holm have in mind, creativity-wise, for the quirky, forward-thinking brand? We decided to ask him.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo Mia the Australian Shepherd Pitbull mix is the world\u2019s first dog director, as far as we know.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWell I should point out she did have some good human collaborators. And editors. But yes, she directed our new holiday ad. Which is all centered around the idea that Christmas with dogs is better.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat did directing involve? I imagine not a lot of sitting in tall chairs. Maybe barking orders?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe strapped a GoPro\u00a0on Mia. So many dogs in these commercial settings are doing what humans want \u2014 a lot of \u2018sit,\u2019 \u2018stay,\u2019 that kind of thing. But that\u2019s not how most of us experience our dogs. This was about letting the dog dictate what she wanted.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat she wanted, judging by the ad, was for her and her co-stars to make mayhem at a holiday gathering \u2014 knocking over the tree, bulldozing some people, attacking the snack table.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYes, she was not doing what a human would do directing a movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019d be surprised. Anyway, it was pretty cool seeing something so gritty and, for lack of a better word, humanist.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThat was our idea from the beginning. We didn\u2019t want to do a Golden Retriever sitting in a field of flowers. I love Golden Retrievers. But everyone knows that\u2019s fake. We wanted something real.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo like a Sentimental Value<\/em> or Train Dreams<\/em> sort of vibe \u2014 a handmade indie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tExactly.\u00a0We just wanted something honest.\u00a0We didn\u2019t have a shot list or specific script.\u00a0Let dogs be dogs and see where it takes us. And really everything is from their perspective. You see the people the way Mia sees them.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that way I feel like maybe she\u2019s more of a DP, guiding the camera. A Cavalier King Charles Lang, you could say.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI guess you could say that.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019d probably be the only one though. So were there outtakes \u2014 stuff we didn\u2019t see?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThere was a fair bit of butt-sniffing that we didn\u2019t use. Especially when the dogs first met and were getting to know each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that different from how wary actors circle each other, tbh.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tNo not at all. But there is also something so pure about the dogs. They never make trouble for the sake of making trouble, unlike humans. Mia just wanted to go after what she wanted to go after. She wasn\u2019t trying to cause anyone any harm.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhere is Mia by the way? I\u2019m a little offended she couldn\u2019t be bothered to come to this interview.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI think she has a lot of Hollywood meetings to take right now.<\/p>\n

\n\tCome on, doesn\u2019t she know those general<\/a>s never yield anything?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBut she can\u2019t not go to them. Especially since she\u2019s considering getting more into producing.<\/p>\n

\n\tHas she talked at all about what the mood was like when the cameras weren\u2019t rolling \u2013 like, was their jealousy about who was getting more screen time, angry calls to agents from trailers, that sort of thing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s just say NDAs were signed.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn a serious note I do feel like your ad captures something that we\u2019re maybe losing in some of our creative these days \u2014 a genuine sincerity, where everything either isn\u2019t drenched in cynicism on one hand or schmaltz on the other. We\u2019re about to get a whole bunch of Super Bowl ads that do one of those things<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tTotally, that\u2019s what we felt we should do. Like we wanted to show something a little unhinged but also innocent. The dogs don\u2019t have bad intent. They just knock stuff off the coffee table because they\u2019re excited and don\u2019t know where their tails are wagging.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat vibe feels in contrast with another, very different holiday ad, the Coca-Cola <\/strong>\u201cHolidays are Coming\u201d AI reboot this year<\/strong>. Do you see what you\u2019re doing as a kind of counterpoint to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI generally like ads that have the \u201creal\u201d in them \u2014\u00a0real dogs, real people \u2014\u00a0instead of something overly polished and produced.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe AI does let them get in an incredibly wide range of animals though, from all over the world. As someone who serves as BARK\u2019s chief AI officer, do you feel like that\u2019s a good use case?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to compare because Coca-Cola is one of the strongest brands around and they\u2019ll be scrutinized in a different way than we are. But the challenge with \u201cThe Holidays Are Coming\u201d ad as I see it is that the tools become the story and you want the story to be the story. Also I feel like the standards are changing with the tools \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s like you can now get away with a different kind of storytelling so some brands are going to try that. And we should never let the tools be an excuse to lower our standards.<\/p>\n

\n\tI feel like you could train a model all day and still not get the joyful chaos the dogs are creating in this spot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tDefinitely not.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinally, Hollywood is all about sequels. Have you been thinking about concepts for other holidays?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWe have. We are thinking of one for Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

\n\tPuppy love feels like it would sell.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n\tWho doesn\u2019t love a dog romance?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve spent time this holiday season catching up on the season\u2019s movies and TV shows, chances are you\u2019ve seen a couple of dogs. But it\u2019s less likely you saw something directed by a dog. That should change, argues Mikkel Holm. Holm serves as Chief AI & Innovation Officer of New York-based pet company BARK…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":706024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-464075234.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[77337,70784],"class_list":["post-706023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-ai","tag-advertising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}