In 2012, Ralph and Casey made up a film company called Cat cat Productions. After producing a teaser trailer for their feature film idea, Die-Ing Pan, in October 2012, they decided to make a fun horror special the following year for Halloween 2013. Fans of creating pun titled movies, and then thinking up a story, Ralph and Casey cooked up the idea of a house terrorized by a possessed hot dog. They decided to call the film “HOnTed DOG”, even though hauntings and possessions aren’t really the same thing. To go along with the possession theme, they decided to make it about a priest, Father Billiam, who would need to exercise said hot dog.

When their friends suggested to them the much-cleverer title “Haunt Dog”, filmmakers Ralph and Casey decided to stick with “Honted Dog” because it was “worse of a pun’ (and therefore funnier).

The film was originally intended to be a single-camera type film, but Ralph and Casey had not yet obtained Ralph’s fancy, HD camera at that point. Due to lack of equipment, it was decided that the film should be shot on a Casey’s digital photo-camera. Since motivation was needed for such a low quality video, the plot was changed so the story would now be a “found footage” movie, a la The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.

Casey would be the camera operator and Ralph would be the main actor. The main actress, Samantha Berley, was in a local writing group with Casey in Los Angeles at the time. She agreed to be in the film.

Production of the film would take place on four separate days, the first being September 25, 2013. Father Billiam’s phone-answering scene was filmed on October 9. The final scene, in which Father Billiam visits Sarah’s apartment for a second time, was filmed over the course of two days, October 18 and October 25, just six days before the film was to premiere for the world.

Despite the movie being a silly found footage film, it would require some clever special effects. The first big special effect features a microwave filled with smoke and demonic red lighting. During the scene, Father Billiam would open the microwave and smoke would spill out. Dry ice and smoke machines were looked into, but ultimately what did the trick was common homemade “fog juice” recipe including glycerin and distilled water. After unsuccessfully utilizing glycerin enemas (it was all Casey could find for a while), liquid glycerin was found. Before the scene started filming, glycerin and distilled water were placed in a suspended iron tin, with a small candle underneath, heating it. The candle was lit in the microwave right before the camera’s rolled. By the time Father Billiam opens the microwave a few minutes into the scene, the build-up smoke escapes. The red flashing light was provided by a simple bike light, which had also been turned on before filming. The microwave window had been blocked off as to not reveal the light and smoke inside.

Another impressive special effect is when a Bible moves across the floor of its own will in the final scene. This was done with simple pulling of a string (classic movie magic!) and made possible only by there being a hidden cut in the seemingly one-take shot. When Father Billiam is outside the apartment, he is holding his Bible. He is also holding it inside the apartment, but the camera doesn’t show the Bible again until he passes into the kitchen. This is because there was a hidden cut from outside-to-inside, and inside, the the stringed-up Bible was actually sitting on a counter-top in the kitchen. When Father Billiam reached the kitchen, he grabbed the Bible again (that he had always “been holding”) and the audience is none the wiser. Thus, could the special effect be achieved. Such simple, but effective, visual effects illustrate just how much can be done with planning and blocking. Carly Lujan helped both puppet the talking sausage and pulled on the Bible in the final scene.

The music featured in the beginning and during the credits is extremely slowed-down versions of Casey’s industrial metal music project’s music. Editing was done all on a laptop, and finished promptly. The fuzzy camera effects and time and date were added during post production to create a video-tape feel.

A teaser poster was put on Facebook two days before release, along with the main release poster. Honted Dog was finished up and released on YouTube October 31, 2020.