Ma-Mha - Production

Production

Director Pantham Thongsang originally conceived of Ma-Mha as an animated film, but an experience with a trained dog during the making of his 2004 film, Ai-Fak, led him to believe he could make a live-action film with dogs. Further inspiration came from a call by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, himself a dog lover, for the police to adopt stray dogs and train them for police work.

The leading dog, a Thai Ridgeback, was found at a dog competition. Four other members of the starring stray dog pack were all found in dog shelters. A fifth dog, an aging, wounded stray mixed-breed, was spotted on the streets of Bangkok by Pantham and trained for the film.

Nearly one year was spent in pre-production, rehearsing with the dogs and training them for specific scenes, such as playing hide and seek, running makeshift agility courses, swimming and acting out emotional scenes.

Longer time was spent in actual shooting as well. The majority of Thai films are made in 30 days, but 100 days were spent making Ma-Mha.

The dogs speak, with the voiceover by human actors, but the animals' mouths do not move, as seen in Babe or Charlotte's Web. "We wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, which means we had to train the dogs harder and ask them to give us more," Pantham said in an interview.