Amsterdam Focus: Postpanic

The first thing to know about PostPanic Amsterdam is that it’s not a post house, it’s a design-and-animation-studio-cum-film-production company staffed by a highly-talented team of multitasking “misfits” and “control freaks”. Nice.

Approximately one mile north of Amsterdam’s three main canals, a team of self-proclaimed “misfits” work at an open-plan office space that feels like a futuristic spaceship. Their skills are varied and they have talent aplenty, but it wasn’t any flash storm that ignited the group’s abilities (like the E4 series Misfits), it’s down to the fact that they’ve all come from different disciplines and now bounce off each other as PostPanic Amsterdam.

The company’s services are often misconstrued, as executive producer Ania Markham will tell you: “We’re not a post production house. We’re control freaks who want to be able to control the ideas we come up with,” she proclaims, referring to the 12-strong roster of artists, designers, directors and producers who work at the hybrid film production company. “The thing that unites us is that we’re a bit of a bunch of misfits. Everybody multitasks and we’ve all come from different backgrounds with the majority from graphic design or animation.”

Cruising through the crisis

Founded in 1997 by Dutch director/creative director Mischa Rozema, managing director/executive producer Jules Tervoort, and Mark Visser (who left in 2007), the company prides itself on having as much input into the creative process as it does at the production stages.

It all began on the back of their successful graduate film, A Time for Panic, which led to several commissions and inspired the company’s misleading name. “We’re still staying true to that; crafting and making stuff to be proud of and somehow we’ve survived through the crisis,” Markham explains, while seated at a table in the curious pod-like boardroom – just one of the eye-poppingly funky spaces in the PostPanic office’s retro-cum-futuristic interior.

As well as being deeply cool, the company has core values that especially appealed to Markham when she joined five years ago. “We’re not a big company, we never wanted to get big and we keep our overheads low which means we have creative choice on projects. Because we have all the resources in-house – from a post view, too – we can do a lot more with the money that’s given to us.”

A brief that didn’t involve much of a budget was when MTV approached PostPanic to create a series of idents to launch its new channel, MTV Rocks. A psychedelic rock theme was suggested, but the team had other ideas and thought it would be better to propose a continuing storyline in a short film, broadcast in segments, that viewers could drop in and out of at commercial breaks. “Mischa went off for the weekend and came back with a completely different proposal,” Markham reveals. “We said rather than competing with the channel [MTV], why don’t we create the complete opposite? And that’s one of the projects I’m most proud of as it’s a great solution to the brief and looks good creatively.”

Another job Markham particularly enjoyed was making a personalised promo film for Google to give thanks to all its Adwords advertisers, in celebration of the flagship product’s tenth anniversary last year. A mix of live action and VFX, the four-minute web film was directed by Rozema and created with AKQA San Francisco and Rehab London. “They (Google) wanted to push it as far as it could go, to make something unusual and those are the kind of pitches we rise to. It was a healthy budget, but more importantly really good for us with the way we work.”

As well as housing experienced talents like director and VFX specialist Chris Staves (co-founder at Method LA, MassMarket New York and Psyop partner), PostPanic actively encourages the development of its “next generation”. Walking around the upper level of its offices, there’s a clear enthusiasm about the younger members, who benefit from a very special education at the company. “You’ve got people who’ve started here as interns,” considers Markham, “we teach them the way that we work so their use of 3D, for example, could be specific to PostPanic.”

Welcome to The Panic Room

Despite the company’s Dutch origins, its adopted English heritage is ever present but surprisingly, Markham – herself a British expat – reveals that they do no business with the UK. It’s something they’d love to address: “It’s maybe that we’ve just never had time to focus on how we make ourselves known over there,” ponders the producer.

She’s probably over critical in that sense, though, considering that the company holds a twice annual event called The Panic Room, at which industry professionals and people they admire are invited to come and talk through their inspirations with an audience comprising Amsterdam’s top creatives.

Recently, PostPanic created the opening credits for the OFFF Festival in Barcelona with a menacing spot, helmed by Rozema, that portrayed the end of the world. While the outfit’s latest project was made by the entire collective and is a series of product films made directly for Philips, which is unusual considering they normally relish working with local and international agencies.

Misfits or not, it’s clear that the folk at PostPanic Amsterdam are doing something right in their creative incubator.