best scriptwriting development department in the world. Stuart believes creativity flourishes in“ a loose environment where writers, concept artists, and game developers are in a space together and come up with ideas for stories.” Movie profits will be poured into script development. Triggerfish already hires the cream of South African writers, but they’ re hungry to learn more from the big international writers who have succeeded especially in animation.“ I have a network of people who would love to spend a few weeks with us in Cape Town sharing what they’ ve learned as writers. And despite our successes, we know we have a lot to learn!” said Stuart.
JS:“ If writers have an animation script can they send it to you?”
SF:“ Unfortunately not.” Triggerfish’ s edge comes from a very powerful creative team of writers, all with different strengths. The team works together producing new ideas all the time and we’ ve got projects planned for the next 8 years. But the company does work closely with the NFVF who has supported them immensely in their rise to success.
Stuart spoke of them warmly and said writers should submit scripts to the NFVF, who will pass it on if it meets Triggerfish’ s standards.
As for games, initially they will be purely to promote and monetize movies. But once Triggerfish begins on independent games, Stuart says“ We want our games to have stories in them as well.
“ We’ ll get people in to help us with game playing mechanics. But I would like to apply what we’ ve learned with writing scripts into games. You start in a world that you understand. Something happens and everything goes wrong. Somehow you have to achieve this goal but the odds are stacked against you. If you’ re really good you win. It closes off with an epilogue. I think it can work for games just as well as for movies.” He wants to create games that are a couple of hours of immersive, interactive entertainment – and cost the same as a movie.
How does Stuart plan to become a rival to the big studios? Currently the major studios get 80-90 % of revenue from primary markets, ignoring emerging ones.
“ That’ s left a gap for us. It’ s why in places like Russia, Eastern Europe and Ukraine we’ ve been able to succeed against big studio movies with up to 30 times our budget.”
Triggerfish will monetize its movies with games, and as mobile technology takes off in emerging markets they will start to gather a loyal audience there.“ Africa is the fastest growing sector in the world so it makes sense to begin to capture that audience now. The average child per woman in Africa is 4.6. In Europe it’ s something like 1.6.
Projecting a generation ahead, emerging market people will move into the older markets dominated by an aging population.“ We want them to take our brand with them.”
And the name Triggerfish?“ The Triggerfish is a real fish. They’ re small, they’ re beautiful, they pack a punch. We’ re small, we like to think our work is beautiful and we’ re fiercely ambitious. We’ re not arrogant about it. We know we can get where we want to if we stay focused and lean and disciplined and take it step by step.”
Triggerfish: small, beautiful, creative. Good at survival. Can swim with sharks.
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