Huawei Spark: Scantist

The Huawei Spark programme aims to assist start-ups across Asia in scaling up. We were tasked with creating short documentaries exploring the stories of three start-ups, with the goal of elevating Spark's visibility to consumers, entrepreneurs, and policy-makers.

Our goal with this film series was not just to appeal to a narrow B2B audience, but instead to tell a story that would generate genuine interest amongst a diverse audience. With this in mind, we chose to craft stories which focused on the human stories behind these start-ups - exploring the personal stories of the founders and their journeys. In the case of our first film about Scantist, a Singapore-based cyber-security start-up, we were aware that it would be all too easy to produce a dry and corporate film given the subject-matter - a B2B SaaS business providing a specialised service. We wanted to show not just a human story, but also a story of challenge and change. We thus began the film in Prof Liu Yang's university environment - establishing Scantist's roots - and drew on Scantist's ongoing relationship with the Spark team to present a story of progress and growth. Emphasising the emotional journey of the founders was vital. To do this, we chose to use hand-drawn animation to contrast with the documentary-style of the rest of the film, and to elevate the key moments of conflict and resolution.