By Heather Jacobs

Joining a couple of human lovers on a Parisian walkway near the Seine River are a pair of leopards gazing at each other, a mother lion with her three cubs and a man with his dog nestled on his lap. Using the tagline, ‘There’s love on Animal Planet,’ the ad is one of three executions in a Discovery Channel magazine campaign that was used to promote the network nationally across the US.

In addition to the "Love" ad, a second execution is "Drama," which shows a New York street with the body of a giraffe outlined in chalk, crime-scene style, as a couple of emus look on and a harassed looking police officer tries to keep the crowd of animal and humans back. The third execution, "Sport," has a kangaroo triumphantly winning the long jump competition at an athletic stadium.

Mark D’Arcy, the freelance creative director on the campaign, who was commissioned by Discovery Channel, says he knew the job was going to be incredibly complicated so he needed a collaborator who could help flesh out the idea from a few sketches. He turned to New Zealand-based photographer Mat Blamires, whom he has known for the past years, and someone he considers to be a world-class photographer with great technical expertise.

“Mat’s all the things you would want as far as talent goes, but he is the nicest person in the craft area I have ever worked with. He’s an absolute gentleman and the epitome of humility, hard work and collaboration and I think he’s about to launch to the next level,” says D’Arcy.

With the exception of the background plates for "Love" – which required a flight to Paris for authenticity – everything was photographed in New Zealand. The background scenes were shot first so that each animal could be lit and shot at the correct perspective to fit seamlessly into the scene.

As Blamires explains, the tamer animals were shot on location with the assistance of animal wranglers, Animals on Q, but the more dangerous ones had to be shot in their enclosures at a number of different zoos and locations around New Zealand including the Christchurch Zoo and a Crocodile Farm in Northland.

Each element was then layered in via the retouching house The Lounge in Auckland.
The ads contain plenty of visual gags, for example, the stadium used in ‘Sport’ is called the Squirrel Savings Bank Stadium and there’s an advert for The Daily Gazelliette.

For D’Arcy, the biggest challenge was ensuring it didn’t come across all ‘hokey’.
“We wanted to make sure the animals always looked natural, we didn’t want it to be a tea-party or animals juggling or animals dressed up. If you go through the various executions every animal is doing something an animal would do,”says D’Arcy.