Polynoid in the PanicRoom

With the sun beating down on the banks of Amsterdam yesterday in a hotel room on the city's Westerdoksdijk, just east of central station, German design studio Polynoid are applying the finishing touches to a presentation on their influences and inspirations.

Fast forward a few hours and three of the five members of the collective who made the trip over from Berlin are pumped and ready to present to the Dutch creative community at Post Panic HQ.

Hosting its PanicRoom inspiration nights twice a year, the aim is to move away from the all too common hard sell preferring instead to concentrate on what makes the speakers tick and their inspirations behind their creative efforts. Polynoid are the first of three speakers at the event's ninth edition, handpicked by PostPanic to deliver their thoughts.

Founded in 2007 as a creative platform and playground for their films and experiments, Polynoid operates as a dynamic production studio working across several disciplines. Having met at the prestigious Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, the group remain true to their roots and still attend the film school to teach on a regular basis.

The group have completing top work for clients including Nike, the Halo game franchise and Greenpeace and below, in their PanicRoom presentation, they take us through some of the things that have shaped the way they work today and their thoughts behind it.

“Usually we hide behind our work or cry about agencies and clients so when we were asked to come up with something else and talk about what inspires us, it was something different. It made us think about where we get this stuff.

Last year we locked ourselves in a cabin in the woods to try and come up with an idea for a short film and we came back with a couple of sticks and a hangover. There was no short film or movie idea but we refreshed ourselves.

The point is that you can’t force good creativity and that you just need to let the ideas come to you, whether that be in the shower, on the way to work or wherever and whenever iit is in everyday life.

But our inspiration and influences have to come from somewhere and we have various iconic childhood memories that have shaped the way our artistic vision functions today. Some of the references include Game boy, Tetris, watercolour paints, Lego, bow and arrow toys, war craft figures and so on.

Probably the most notable though, was the chemistry kits we used to play with, conducting experiments not necessarily to gain any scientific results but simply for the visual outcome with colours and substance reactions simply for the fun of it – chemistry on the visual side!

As well as the toys we did have though, there is the stuff we couldn’t afford and weren’t allowed to have; thanks to wanting what you cant have, you resort to your imagination and become more inventive. That’s the most amazing thing about kids, they can pick up a stick and say ‘this is a sword’. They can play in any environment and believe what they are creating is real and that kind of imagination is really important for us to try and keep a hold of and it’s a very difficult task.

We also grew up in a time of technological change and saw the emergence of the digital age. Today our inspiration is nature and the Internet. Ha ha. But technology is constantly emerging and it continues to bring out our inner child.

There’s stuff like holographic displays, we can enhance people who have lost limbs with robotics, there’s augmented reality and that’s very interesting if you work in 3D imaging and we’re really glad that this sort of stuff is happening as it keeps us going. It’s interesting times for filmmaking as you can put out your story in so many different ways.

Here’s an example of some work we did for Greenpeace:

 When you get asked to do a presentation like this you think to yourself ‘what do we have to say?’ It’s not like we’re inventing the wheel. But it’s about reminding yourself of your roots and why you do whatever it is that you do and to keep on exploring.

When you’re in the commercial world and trying to get your head around a brief, it’s important to remind yourself where you come from and why you’re doing this.

Next week we’ll have more from last night’s PanicRoom event featuring insight from Irish creative duo The Stone Twins and South African directing talent Terence Neale.