TRAVERSE CITY — When Sam Boase-Miller met the leading star of indie horror movie “Good Boy” in real life for the first time, he noticed something common to Hollywood celebrities.
“I was used to seeing him so big on screen,” Boase-Miller said of Indy, the canine hero of the feature-length film. “In person, he was smaller — just like a lot of our movie stars.”
Boase-Miller, 38, an audio/tech instructor at Northwestern Michigan College, will attend a special screening of “Good Boy” at 7 p.m. Thursday at AMC Cherry Blossom 14 Theater.
After the show, Boase-Miller will discuss his role in scoring his first feature film — and building an entirely new instrument to do it. He was inspired by Canadian luthier Fron Reilly after seeing online videos of his “Fron 2,” which prompted him to design and build the “celloscillator”— an eight-string spinning zither.
“I just knew in my guts I needed to use this instrument in the film,” Boase-Miller said, as the film’s director Ben Leonberg challenged him to find a “unique, handcrafted sound that couldn’t be found anywhere” and would keep people guessing: “Is it sound design or is it music?”
His stepdad, Conrad Kaufman, helped him build it, and TC Guitar Company helped source the guitar tuners, he said.
Boase-Miller also got help from Jeanmarie Riccobono, who gave an “amazing performance on the bass clarinet,” he said. Both Riccobono and Boase-Miller have ties to Interlochen Center for the Arts.
Boase-Miller spent his junior and senior years at Interlochen Arts Academy, before performing, teaching and studying at Ithaca College, DePaul University and Western Michigan University, and as a former cellist of the Manhattan Symphonie. While in New York, he founded Marsfall, LLC (now Status Report Productions) a sci-fi audiodrama with his three best friends. Riccobono is listed as a clarinet instructor of Interlochen Online.
The film itself was not shot in northern Michigan, rather in a country home outside of New York City, where Leonberg and Kari Fischer, his wife and the film’s producer, moved with Indy, their dog.
Filming from the dog’s view meant “inventing a new method of filmmaking: one that allowed us to capture a singular canine performance without the benefit of a hero who can speak,” said Leonberg in a statement. They built the entire story, physical production, set pieces, and all of the practical effects around Indy’s everyday behaviors, which made for a performance “grounded in reality,” he said.
“Despite the paranormal events and horrifying scares, ‘Good Boy’ looks real and feels relatable — what dog owner hasn’t wondered why their dog barks at ‘nothing’?” Leonberg said.
On the soundtrack side this also meant everything had to be added in the post-production, Boase-Miller said, as shooting from a dog’s perspective involved a lot of prompting from Indy’s parents.
“We were trying to capture a kind of inverse of when a family goes to a haunted house and the dog is sensing something with its sixth sense, but no one pays attention. A lot of the score is trying to capture how the dog would be perceiving the world aurally.”
Sounds moved into the “elemental and fundamental,” realms, “outside of the range of typical melody and harmony,” Boase-Miller said. “We thought very deeply about the B-minor chord.”
They were able to rotate the celloscillator with the eight cello strings, and Boase-Miller said he had his fiancee use chopsticks, cello bow, any number of ways to create the right creepy atmosphere.
Altogether, it was a “truly life-changing experience,” Boase-Miller said. The people — and canines — were the best part of it … which is the “most important part of the creative process,” he said.
Tickets for the film are $12.99 adult, $9.99 12 and under, and $11.49 ages 60-plus and can be purchased at https://www.amctheatres.com/showtimes/136814163/seats