you were to dismiss Disney's family comedy Beverly
Hills Chihuahua as just another fi lm starring real ani-
mals with digital lip-synching, you would fall for the
con. Although it's true that most of the dogs in the fi lm are
real with digital muzzle replacements, two of the leading ani-
mal characters, Manuel the rat (Cheech Marin) and Chico the
iguana (Paul Rodriguez), are not.
Raja Gosnell of Scooby-Doo fame directed the fi lm; Michael
McAlister, who won an Oscar for Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom and received an Oscar nomination for Willow, super-
vised the visual eff ects. Two London-based studios handled
the muzzle replacements (Cinesite) and digital environments
(Svengali). Tippett Studio in Berkeley, California, created the
digital characters: the stunt dog Doubless, crowds of Chihua-
huas, and Manuel and Chico. e rat and the iguana are always
CG, con men who dupe Chloe, the lead Chihuahua (Drew
Barrymore), out of her jewelry. Manuel is the twitchy leader of
the two. Chico is the mellow one.
"We could never have gotten the personality and performance
with real animals," McAlister says of the rat and iguana. "You can
train dogs, but…."
On set, stuffi es gave the camera operators something to frame
October 2008 34
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Animal Modeling
