demonstrate the emotion on cue and more than once. “If a horse does a certain behavior well but without emotion, the result is very boring. He looks like a little soldier rather than someone who is doing it for real. So we might teach a horse to act like he has, for example, bad behavior, but not really have bad behavior. If we need a horse to do something funny with his mouth or simulate something that horse people think is really rude, we teach that as a trick, so they only do it when they’re asked.” For this movie, several horses had to be large and
strong enough to pull ambulance and supply wagons and cannons. Others had to be good riding horses, particularly for the cavalry charges. Big-boned, tall Warmbloods were suited for most tasks. Topthorn was played by horses over 17 hands tall because he needed to be much larger than Joey. “A 17 hand horse can be intimidating. So the actors spent a lot of time with them,” Bobby explains. “They worked with us like grooms interacting with the horses. They took riding lessons. They needed to know how we trained and where we needed to get a certain behavior. It was such a team effort. We had some fantastic trainers from Spain that brought up their horses to England for filming. Often there were 250 people at the filming at one time.”
Te Trainer’s Role “While we didn’t want the scene to be boring, if it was
unsafe, I would say ‘no.’ When something wasn’t working my job on the set was to give them options of how we can do it from the horse’s point of view, like perhaps using a different camera angle to show the horse’s emotions or behavior. At times we had to do the scene later when the horse was fresher.” The trainers were on the set with their horses
throughout filming. Actors rarely direct the horses. “The actor has lines to do and emotions to think about. He can’t think about the horse as well. That’s my responsibility,” Bobby continues. In a sense, Bobby is like the director; only the horses
are his actors. One scene might be reshot several times to try different approaches with a trainer on different sides of the horse or crouched down or laying on the ground or standing behind the actor. “I have to envision what we want and then have the horse show that. I know the horses, and I may know them even better than the trainers themselves because they’re too close,” he explains.
Filming Factoids Most of the film was shot in rural England, about six
hours outside of London. Joey’s birth scene was filmed in Los Angeles and required considerable planning and creative horse selection.
18 January/February 2012
“In a sense, Bobby is like the director; only the horses are his actors.”
War Horse head horse trainer Bobby Lovgren with his horse Finder, who appears in the film. Photo courtesy of Bobby Lovgren
Here’s an interesting secret: Joey’s mother is played by
Bobby’s gelding Finder, an experienced movie star having played in several films including Seabiscuit and Legend of Zorro. Because he is a fine-boned Thoroughbred he often plays young horses. For scenes showing the foal Joey, Bobby couldn’t use
a foal with his real mom. At times the director needed the foal to come to the actor while the mom stayed in the background. Likely in real life a foal would not leave his real mom. “We used a foal that was bottle fed. I taught it to go
with my horse Finder. Then when we needed it, my horse stayed behind and the foal came up to me when I asked,” he explains. “On every film things change constantly, which is
hard for some horses. Finder is so good about that. I can make changes and it doesn’t bother him. Because of that I could give Steven many options.” The right horses with the right training were
particularly important for the war scenes. The days when horses were merely props in movies ended when their safety became a priority. Before 1940 and the active intervention of the American Humane Society of Hollywood, horses were often badly injured or killed on movie sets. In making a 1940 movie about Jessie James, for example, eight horses died when they were made to fall by tripping them with wire. Today these falling sequences are likely more comfortable and easier for horses than for stunt humans. For the war scenes in War Horse, the first step was
to select horses that did not fret about loud noises and frenzied activity. Next step was conditioning a horse
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