Face to Face with... Shynola

British directing collective, Shynola, formed when Gideon Baws, Jason Groves, Chris Harding, and Richard “Kenny” Kenworthy began collaborating on creative projects at college over a decade ago.

Since then, they’ve moved to London and directed videos for the likes of Beck, Blur and Coldplay, created commercials for clients including Honda, Nike and Orange, as well as creating countless animation works.

Tonight, they turn their attention to Amsterdam’s creative community (with other speakers Lucy McRae and Lukas Boysen) for the fourth edition of PostPanic’s PanicRoom. The hybrid production company set up the event to showcase its favourite work and talent from all over the world and here we talk to the collective on their flying visit.

Where did the name Shynola come from?

The name comes from an American saying “You don’t know shit from Shinola” - Shinola was a brand of brown shoe polish. We, in our arrogant youth, thought of ourselves as not shit, but Shinola. We changed the spelling.

You all studied together and have been collaborating for a long time. Has this helped your creativity?

The way we work together is second nature to us, but very hard to put into words. I guess it helps because we’re always testing and questioning each others’ ideas so they have to be good to stand up.

What’s your talk going to be on tonight at The PanicRoom?

We’ll be showing a couple of our music videos and then talking about things that inspire us.

How long are you in Amsterdam for and what else are you up to?

Twenty four hours. We’ll do some coffee drinking and sightseeing if we get time.

Tonight’s event is called PanicRoom. What makes you panic?

We never panic. Everything is fine. It’s all fine.

Tell us about your feature film project and when can we look forward to seeing it?

The film is based on the sci-fi novel The Red Men by Matthew Di Abaitua, which is a near future thriller, set in Hackney, equal parts Frankenstein and Fatal Attraction. We’ve just signed up with Warp to develop it - so before you know it you’ll be buying little plastic Red Men figures for your niece and nephew.

You have a shared love of comics, art, books and films. What have you seen/read/watched recently that’s relevant to shots readers?

Comics: Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kuperman.

Films: Animal Kingdom, Meek’s Cutoff, Submarine, Family Guy.

Books: Black Mass.