Frozen Planet 2 - Lapland BumbleBee
Specialist
For this project I was asked to shoot the Lapland queen bumble bee as she thawed out from her long hibernation over Winter. These shots were achieved by using a custom XY motion control system, which gave very precise control of the camera, imperative when using the very high magnifications of macro lenses. The set was lit with a custom fibre optic lighting kit, which gave me a lot of control in creating smaller, harder pools of light for such a small set.
I was also asked to film inside the nest of the bumblebee, which would need to be very dark, as any light can cause the bees to behave erratically. For this I had to test 3 low light cameras - a RED Gemini, Sony FX6 and a Kinefinity Mavo LF with bees from Imperial College London. After the tests were graded at Films@59 we decided on the Mavo LF for the low light shooting for its amazing colour, LF look and low noise.
I lit the nest set with a tungsten balanced tube, through some unbleached muslin to keep a warm feel. The idea behind using a tungsten source was due to the extra red wavelengths in the tungsten colour spectrum, which bees are not sensitive too.
Dir: Jane Atkins
Prod Company: BBC NHU
Camera: Kinefinity Mavo LF
Lens: Laowa Probe 24mm, 25mm Ultra Macro, Nikon 70 - 180mm Micro Nikkor, Nikon 200mm Micro Nikkor