West Seneca, N.Y. (WBEN) - The SPCA Serving Erie County in West Seneca is currently being used as a movie set for the upcoming holiday film, "A Christmas Tail."
Film director Fred Olen Ray says this isn't his first Christmas movie he's filmed in Buffalo, but each one has their own theme.
"You try not to make the same kind of film over and over again, although the royalty angle seems to have caught on. I don't know, maybe I do a good job of that. But this one is about rescue animals and they introduced me to the SPCA here, and it just seemed like the right kind of story," stated Ray.
Ray did not provide an exact date for when the movie will be released, but he did say it will be ready anywhere between Thanksgiving week and Christmas. Since the set is working with live animals, some scenes take longer than others, which could potentially cause delays in the overall production.
"I made a lot of animal movies, and I've made a lot of children's films, and you have to be patient. Even trained animals don't always do what you expect them to do. They'll do what they want to do, even the best of them," explained Ray.
Gina Lattuca with the SPCA Serving Erie County says she's incredibly excited that not only the facility will be in the movie, but so will some of the volunteers and animals.
"We kind of wrote our own script for movies for years. So when it finally happened, we thought, well, of course, we're responsible. We manifested this. But I actually thought it was a colossal joke. Come to find out that it's something very real. It's something that's happening here, and it happened to be with two actors that we love very much. So it was pretty exciting to think that some of our animals and some of our volunteers animals were going to be in it. That was the most exciting thing of all," Lattuca stated with WBEN.
Lattuca says there hasn't been any interruptions to the SPCA's operations, despite having a movie crew use a large portion of the facility.
"Every time a new change is made, the staff just embraces it. They've been just as excited. I thought, 'oh geez, how long is it going to take for the staff to kill me?' But the staff has really embraced it. Every time they hear that the cameras are rolling, it only took a few hours for everyone to just become silent, including me. It's interesting to watch how everybody adapted to those changes. It's the first time we've ever been exposed to anything like this, so to watch our staff embrace it this way, it's really been fun," shared Lattuca.
Co-founder of Casting Buffalo and actor Peter Johnson explains that he's excited not only to help get local talent involved but also to be a part of the film.
"My company was responsible for casting all of the day-player roles here, which is the smaller one-liner roles that they don't want to fly other actors in from other cities to do. We cast a significant amount of day-player roles here, as well as all the background. It's great because this community here, they love film. People love to get involved, so it's great when we can actually place them in front of the camera," said Johnson with WBEN.