Real farmers, real farms, and only natural light were all important factors for me to keep this spot as authentic as possible. The commercial’s audience and purpose are real farmers that want to ensure and protect their farms. With this in mind, it was paramount that the farmers believe what they saw and therefore know that Achmea truly understands them and their business as someone they can trust to protect them and lend a hand when needed.

We sourced a real working farm as our location and cast only real farmers to ensure the way they look, how they work, the way they move, and the rough working hands come across on screen. The final recce gave us the perfect opportunity to get a better insight into the farmer’s life and daily activities to help build our scenes. It was also a great chance to select our vehicles, machinery and props. To find the wire fencing roll that gets loaded into the back of the ute, I went around picking up stuff until I found something that was just about possible to pick up and load on your own, but was a struggle and would want two people to do it.

Whilst authenticity was key, we still wanted to engage farmers both emotionally and visually. This was done with multiple farmers in different scenes, many of which were shot at dusk and dawn to reflect many farmers working very early, and it gives us beautiful colour, shape and tone to our image. We also shot off speed to add an element of heightened reality, shot on wider focal lengths in order move closer to our talent being more intimate and to show the vast landscapes in the background, used glimmer glass to add blooming and soften certain frames, and kept the camera predominately handheld to create a natural movement observing the action.