4 Surprising Facts About How These "Big Game" Commercials Were Made

Learn about the visual effects used in some of your favorite commercials.

1. The bear used in this commercial was REAL.

A hungry but discerning bear explores a local market for food made with only natural ingredients for Chobani’s first ever Super Bowl spot. The Mill worked with Technicolor to complete the VFX work.

2. "Caleb the Camel" was photographed on a blue screen and never was on a football field

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He's back! Geico's camel Caleb happily agreed to come back to work for Fox Sports pre-game show for the Super Bowl. His triumphant shout of "guess what day it is" has a whole new meaning on game day.

Caleb had to be photographed on a blue screen before knowing the exact background would be; which was finished only until the Super Bowl teams were determined. The team rushed to insert the Seahawks and Broncos logos into the backgrounds.

3. Audi had to create a fully CG "monster pup" for this commercial

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Producer Dan Roberts at the Mill tells us how the team developed the fully CG monster pup; "the research that went into the development of our Doberhuahua was extensive; we visited dog trainers and asked everyone in the studio to bring in their own dogs. This meant that we could capture the real life dog action we had designed in the previz and our animation was as lifelike as possible. We had a lot of fun with all the hounds but nobody in the company, or the world, owns a Doberhuahua. First we looked at medium build dogs, thinking along the lines of a compromise between the two breeds. It then became clear that since the dog worked best small we should use the chihuahua's body and body movements and the doberman's head and character."

4. All of these puppies are exactly as cute as they look

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...okay, not really an unknown fact but still worth noting.

Here's some of the visual effects software used to make these commercials.