Bee Beard!

The Creatives at Timber partnered with Director Matthew Swanson at Epoch Films, M&C Saatchi and Greg Scruton at Arcade Edit on a series of hilarious commercials for the new Tiger Trail at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

Handling all visual effects, design and finishing to promote the exhibit which opened on May 24, 2014. Visitors get an up close and personal experience with these amazing creatures.

“Bee Beard” was the most ambitious of all. Timber worked with their partners at Epoch to film thousands of honey bees on blue screen to handle the bulk of the work. The shoot involved careful planning and coordination with two separate camera crews.

Afterwards, Timber’s visual effects team combined the live bees with the photography of our talented young principal to create the illusion that they were always together. Believe it or not, no kids and bees were ever in same place at the same time.To take the effect even further Timber developed a CG 3d bee swarm to be used in select shots. Using photo mapping the technical artists used the real world lighting to bring the animated bees to life.