Animation

Bumblebee Conservation Trust: helping one queen find a home, in two languages

A Bee the Change campaign film, delivered as 34 finished cuts across 4K, square and vertical

Client

Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Services

Animation

Year

2023

Outcome

A bilingual campaign film for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, delivered in 34 finished cuts.

The numbers

Finished video cuts delivered

Languages, English and Welsh

Aspect ratios: 4K, square and vertical

Hero stills delivered with the films

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is the only UK charity devoted entirely to bumblebees. Its Bee the Change campaign asks people to do small things in their own outdoor space. We made the film about why a queen bumblebee needs somewhere to nest, and what anyone with a patch of grass can do about it.

The outcome

A film of one minute forty six, in English and in Welsh, cut down into three vertical and three square social pieces and delivered as thirty four finished versions. Thirteen hero stills, three character poses and five social graphics came with them.

The finished film.

The challenge

Most people think a bumblebee is a kind of honeybee. They are not, they do not live in hives, and almost nobody knows they nest in the ground, in old mouse holes and in bird boxes. The film had to fix that misunderstanding in about a sentence, explain why nesting sites are disappearing, and land three specific things to do, without turning into a lecture.

It also had to be right. The Trust has a science team, and they read every draft.

This is a beautiful bumblebee queen, and she's on a mission.

The opening line of the film. It was written as "a brand new bumblebee queen" until the Trust's science team pointed out that a queen out searching for a nest is already about six months old. The word changed the following day.

Our approach

Make the bee worth two minutes of attention. The whole film rests on one character, so she had to read as a bumblebee rather than a generic cartoon insect. The technique we pitched, and then built, lays real fuzz over flat vector artwork. She comes out round, heavy and faintly scruffy, which is what a bumblebee actually looks like, and it is the difference between an insect and somebody worth following.

Three fuzzy illustrated bumblebees of different species flying against a pale blue sky. — Different species, different nesting habits, all of them convincingly furry.

Set it where the audience already lives. The campaign asks for micro actions in ordinary outdoor space, so the film never leaves one. It opens on a queen flying down a street of terraced houses and back gardens. Nothing about it is a nature reserve, because the point is that the useful habitat is the patch behind your own house.

A fuzzy bumblebee flying above a street of terraced houses and back gardens. — Ordinary streets, ordinary gardens, which is where the habitat has to come from.

Draw the problem as an absence. Habitat loss is difficult to animate because it is a thing that is not there. So the colour drains out and she is left hovering over a close mown lawn with a single flower in it. Nothing dramatic happens, and that is exactly the problem.

The queen flying low over a striped, close mown lawn towards a single small flower. — No drama, no villain, just nowhere to nest and almost nothing to eat.

Then give people three things they can actually do. One action per nesting habit, each drawn as a place rather than written as an instruction. Long tangled grass for the species that nest at ground level, a bird box with nesting material for the ones that go high, and an undisturbed corner for the many that take over abandoned mouse holes underground.

A three panel split showing three bumblebee species arriving at three different nesting places. — Three species, three habits, three things to leave alone.

A bumblebee approaching dandelions in long uncut grass beside a compost heap. — The single most useful thing most people can do is simply mow less.

Pay it off with the same garden, changed. The film ends where it started and fills the place in: grass left long, dandelions, a bird box on the tree, bees working across the whole frame and people sitting out in it. Same garden, different decisions, and no suggestion that anyone had to give anything up.

A garden with long grass, wildflowers, a bird box and many bees, with people sitting at a table. — The payoff: the same space, left a little wilder.

Then make the whole thing again in Welsh. Not subtitles over the English, a genuine second version: new voiceover, new subtitles, every cut rebuilt and re-rendered. The Welsh master lands on exactly the same one minute forty six as the English, which takes real work, because a translation almost never runs to the same length as its source. One line had to be rewritten rather than translated, since the film's "just leave it bee" pun does not exist in Welsh.

A frame from the Welsh version showing a beehive and honeybees, with a Welsh subtitle across the bottom. — The Welsh cut, on the line explaining that bumblebees are not honeybees and do not live in hives.

Build it to outlive its own campaign. Every cut was delivered twice, once ending on the Bee the Change web address and once on the Trust's main one. That came from the Trust early on: if the campaign is ever wound up or renamed, the films keep working and nothing has to go back into production. It doubled the delivery list and it is the reason this work has a much longer shelf life than the campaign that paid for it.

What it does for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust

One piece of work that fits everywhere the campaign lives. 4K on the website, square in a feed, vertical in Reels, in English and in Welsh, with subtitles burned into some versions and separate subtitle files for the platforms that prefer them. When the Trust flagged that the closing web address was hard to read against pale blue for anyone with a visual impairment, we changed the colours. It explains a piece of ecology in under two minutes and finishes with three things somebody can do this weekend without spending anything.