The Tree TV commercial is a short financial fable about the risk of outliving your retirement savings and how Challenger annuities can provide a guaranteed income for life. Retirement is different to when you’re working and earning a regular, predictable income. In retirement, you’re living off a finite income source, which could be exposed to financial forces outside your control. As portrayed by our origami couple, the apple orchard represents their retirement savings. Time passes, the trees tire and the apples wither; and they fear that their savings will not be enough to sustain them. As they leave their barren orchard behind, they stumble across a flourishing apple tree which replenishes after each pluck, epitomising the guaranteed lifetime income offered by annuities.

The Challenger spots were executed in the style of stop motion animated origami. Due to the need to constantly revise the visuals and storytelling during the schedule, a 100% CGI approach was decided upon early in production.

To ensure that the visuals remained authentic, much of the design process was carried out with pencil sketches and real origami props. Great care was taken to duplicate the minute tears and creases that appeared on the real paper props when they were recreated in the computer and all character animation was done on doubles (12fps) to mimic stop motion technique.

This approach also held true with the lighting and cinematography. The lens properties were crafted to emulate a 1970s anamorphic lens while the lighting fixtures duplicated real world equivalents such as Redheads and Kinos. The lighting style was stripped down and contrasty to add drama and help guide the viewers eye to the action. Great care was taken to try and make one single spotlight do as much of the work as possible in each shot, with supporting lights added strictly as necessary.