One bee, one flower

One flower, one bee and nineteen seconds, filmed vertically because a flower stem is tall and a bee works its way up it.

Small things, big lens

To film something as small as a bee, you need a macro lens: a lens that can focus very close. Ours lets the camera sit about twenty centimetres from the flower. At that distance, the slightest wind moves the flower out of focus, so we waited for still moments and kept the shots short.

Bees do not wait

A bee spends only a few seconds on each flower. We watched one plant for half an hour and noticed that the bees came back to the same flowers in the same order. Once we knew which flower came next, we focused on it and waited. The bee arrived eleven times in the next hour. The fifth visit is the one in the film.

The edit

The film is one shot. The bee arrives at the top of the frame, works its way down the flower and leaves. We trimmed only the seconds before it arrived. It is the simplest kind of film, and the hardest to get.

Why vertical

A horizontal film of a flower is mostly background. Turned on its side, the camera frames the stem, the flowers and the bee, and the picture feels as tall as the plant. It also looks right on a phone, which is where most people will watch it.

The bee had a plan. We just had to learn it.

Lina Farouk