CUH Professor Creates Time-Traveling Dog Film
Posters were put around campus promoting the screening of the film.
Tom Galli, a Communications professor at Chaminade University, is showcasing his film “Snuffles, the Time-Traveling Match-Making Wonder Dog” on Nov. 16 at the Clarence T.C. Ching Conference Center. The film is 8 minutes in duration and will be played on a loop during the lunch hour from 12:30 p.m. to 1:20 p.m. on Wednesday. All students are welcome to join, and light refreshments will be provided.
The film is a lighthearted, family-friendly science fiction, romantic comedy about a young man who wants to propose to a young woman, and his time-traveling dog helps him.
During the summer, Galli wanted to undertake a project to occupy his time instead of playing Xbox and watching Netflix. When looking for inspiration, he recalled a conversation with former students three years ago.
“I distinctly remember us talking about pitching movie ideas to each other, and we came up with this idea about a time-traveling dog,” Galli said. “And it either had to do with a ring or a balloon. That’s all I could remember about it, but when I reached out to those students to ask them, you know, maybe they could fill in my memory, but none of them remembered the conversation at all. They had no clue what it was. So I just said, ‘All right, this is what I will do. I’m going to write a short script, and it’s going to have a time-traveling dog. It’s going to have romance, and it’s either going to be about a ring or a balloon.’ And about four hours later, I had the script.”
A team of 16 individuals was part of the creation process that began in April. The film’s on-screen talent stars Malia Aiello, Alex Dayuha, and Bond James Bond. The behind-the-scenes team worked on graphic design, sound design, and original music composition. The casting call went up in May, and the filming began on Chaminade’s campus in July. In total, Galli estimates 400 hours were spent on the project.
The film was showcased on Nov. 4 at the Hawaii Filmmakers Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports filmmakers and content creators in Hawaii. This screening was a requirement as part of a pitch session that the collective hosts three times a year that awards the pitch winners money towards their projects. Galli was an awardee who received $1,000 in funding for his film.
Galli previously worked in TV studios, helping to put together its productions which took time out of dedicating time to his own projects. However, his love for independent filmmaking was revived when he joined the Hawaii Filmmakers Collective five years ago and volunteered to help other filmmakers with their projects.
“I started volunteering and helping people who were doing their own independent films,” Galli said. “I remembered, ‘Oh yeah, this is fun, I like doing this.’ So this past summer, I finally said I’m going to do something just because I want to do it. Yeah. Not because somebody told me to do it. Not because somebody else wanted to do it. Just something that I want to do.”