The Timbavati Wildlife Park Peng-Win Countdown

Greetings friends and welcome to this week’s blog post! Timbavati Wildlife Park has had the fortunate pleasure of having two of our very own starring in a Wisconsin State Lottery Commercial called "Peng-Win Countdown!" Here’s a toast to Mama and Papa. They are our South African penguin couple that inhabit the Waterfalls Area of Timbavati Wildlife Park.

Their debut on television and made me want to break down the commercial. Let's look at what it actually took to pull this feat off. The promotion that the Wisconsin State Lottery is running is called the Peng-Win Countdown. It’s basically a winter special edition high value scratch-off ticket.

But Where's The Snow

Since the Peng-Win is a play on penguin, the wintry thing to do would be to have real penguins work on the piece. Ok so for starters, this piece was shot in Wisconsin last month. Well there isn’t any snow on the ground in Wisconsin at this point. Just like the ski slopes that are already open, one can make snow and convince everyone that it’s winter when it’s fall. That’s Hollywood magic for you there.

The commercial opens with a bunch of penguins in an enclosure at Timbavati Wildlife Park. That’s actually our park and our enclosure. The Hollywood magic begins when you see six penguins in the enclosure just kind of hanging out. If you keep the camera really still and shoot two penguins 3 times and then overlay all 3 shots in one frame, abracadabra, you now have six penguins. The effect looks really cool too.

Next one of our penguins walks out of the enclosure and then out of the front gate of Timbavati Wildlife Park. Once it gets out of there, it goes to the nearest gas station via residential street and buys a Peng-Win ticket. It then returns to the enclosure where the ticket sits prominently with Mama and Papa with a big beautiful Christmas bow on it.

I talked with our General Manager about the shoot and it was filmed over the course of three days (with breaks of course).  Post production took two weeks before it was finished. This is a great look at how these commercials get made and it’s rewarding to see two of our very own grab the spotlight for our park.

Helping The South African Peng-Win

To celebrate the launch of Mama and Papa’s starring roles in this commercial we are making a donation to the Dyer Island Conservation Trust. They’re an organization that’s heavily involved in African penguin conservation. We encourage you to visit their website www.dict.org.za to learn more about this worthy cause.

Here is a look at the commercial and a toast to our local Wisconsin Dells celebrities, Mama and Papa! Don’t forget we’re open all winter long as well. Till next week!