Video: Run Dig Swim – The Dog Days of Summer

It was a beautiful summer day, and I was taking our normal hike to the river with our dogs Jasper and Eddy. I was also experimenting with shooting slow motion video, which I haven’t done much of, hoping I’d get some fun shots of running dogs.

Eddy, still just five months old, was doing the bulk of swimming and ball chasing, with Jasper content to watch Eddy make a fool of himself, as five-month-old puppies are inclined to do. After about 15 minutes I accidentally threw the ball just a little farther out than normal, and Eddy leaped into the air and launched himself into water like I’d never seen him do before. Well that might look cool in slow motion. . . .

And thus began a new video project. I grabbed clips when I could over the course of a couple months, and slowly started putting a story together – a simple ode to the joys of a carefree life as a dog in the summer.

So what started as an outing to practice shooting slow motion video quickly gelled into another personal video project. I’d been wanting to do something that captured the joy of our dogs playing at the river, as they ran, dug, and swam, and slow motion seemed like a great way to try and capture that feeling.

As the shots came together, I noticed a similarity to many of the extreme sport adrenaline-junkie videos you see on YouTube: young people doing crazy things and having the time of their life, usually set to some heavy metal or dubstep soundtrack.

I thought it would be fun to use a similar soundtrack for this project, as a humorous juxtaposition. Sail by AWOLNATION is the classic choice, and the track I had always imagined as the project started to take shape in my head. So I was delighted to discover YouTube allowed its use via their Audio Library. Perfect!

While the video is mostly a montage of clips, grabbing a couple extra shots of Jasper and Eddy in the truck – before and after their outing – helped give it a bit more of a story.

Eddy seems to have found his niche, and now leaps into the water every chance he gets, regardless of how far out the ball is. Jasper? Still happy to watch Eddy make a fool of himself.