Slow motion does wonders for letting us see the nuances of our dogs’ movements and expressions. This gorgeous slow-mo video — as it turns out, a commercial for Pedigree — has an interesting story behind it. Here are some tidbits from Creativity Online:

Director Bob Purman used a Phantom camera at 1,000 fps (frames per second) to capture these expressive canines in action.

The director was initially charged with shooting two spots, a “Catch” and a “Jump” execution. The director says: “The ‘Catch’ spot was to be a series of shots of dogs looking with anticipation as a piece of dog food is flying through the air towards them. We shot close-ups of the dogs at 1000 fps. The result was really wonderfully anthropomorphic. The super slow motion really captured this intense sense of desire in the dogs’ eyes. To me it was equal parts awe inspiring and hilarious to see so rich a palate of personality in a dog’s facial expressions.

A few days after the shoot I started to get emails…with the different iterations of the spots cut to different music selections, all of them interesting for different reasons. But then they put footage from the two spots together to form this new greater whole that really exploits the dynamics of the dogs’ athleticism and their emotive personality in slowed time.”

Thanks to great Dogster sniffer-outer Nancy Aingworth for calling our attention to this beautiful video.