Cynthia Chris

Thank you, David.

Happy to be here.

Yeah, you know, animals have been part of cinema since cinema's history, since cinema's prehistory.

If you think about something like the photographer Edward Muybridge's images of horses, dogs, any animal that you can think of in motion to try to figure out, you know, what is their gait?

You know, there's a whole story about Muybridge and why he started that series.

But animals in motion, live animals on screen has been there since the beginning.

Well, compared to a decade that you're talking about, like the early 1990s or let's say the 1950s, whatever, there's so much more media being produced right now that I would hesitate to quantify.

But there is a big displacement of live animal actors with computer-generated ones, with ones that are created by super talented, amazing visual effects artists.

And

This has been true.

It's been a growing trend since about the mid-1990s.

Jurassic Park is a real breakthrough in that regard, where we start to see animals, whether they're very, very realistic or whether they're quite imaginary, appearing in a really realistic aesthetic in screens and opting for those animals, those digital animals, instead of

going to one of the Hollywood rental agencies and hiring a trained animal.

Well, I think that there's a number of reasons for this.

And one is that there has been a history of activism by groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals against the use of animals in film and TV.

So, you know, productions risk if accidents happen on the set, if anything bad happens.

you know, certainly risk garnering really, really unwelcome and negative, but deserve negative attention when that kind of stuff happens.

And it does happen.

You know, animals can be injured on set and animals can even die on set.

You know, I remember reading an anecdote once from somebody who wrangled insects for film and TV and she said, you know,