OFFF 2015: Ramin Bahari interviews creative companies Onesize and PostPanic

Meeting my idols at OFFF 2015

At OFFF, companies like PostPanic (who were interviewed in the past here about their project ‘Sundays’) and Onesize have become regulars. The two basically represent Dutch Motion Design outside of the Netherlands and were two of my biggest examples when I first started playing around with motion graphics. I found a quiet corner during OFFF for a few quick questions on what they are doing this year and their plans for the near future.

First I met with the two founders of Onesize, Rogier Hendriks and Kasper Verwij.

Interview with Onesize at OFFF

So how long have you guys been coming to OFFF?

We’ve been a part of the festival since 2006. And this year we were asked to do the main titles! They are traditionally shown at the end of the festival and are the cherry on the cake. We’re actually still working on them at the hotel. We just quickly stopped by to see Filipe Carvalho (both laugh).

So in the last 9 years, how did the motion design world evolve?

Actually, a lot of typical motion design work has already been done. So what you see is that people are getting harder to impress. You really need to step off the beaten path to impress a crowd like this.

Commercially, it’s a different story. A lot of brands and agencies want work that looks like what we’ve done before. We always try to take it a step further of course. But people feel comfortable buying something they have already seen before. Some clients leave it up to us and that’s when we get the chance to make groundbreaking work.

Interview with PostPanic at OFFF

Soon after that, I spoke to Mischa Rozema, the creative director of PostPanic and director at his own PostPanic Pictures.

When was your first OFFF and what are you up to this year?

My first OFFF was back in 2011. We were invited to do the main titles – which is big deal – so we couldn’t say no. Since then, we’re basically part of the furniture. It’s always hard for us to fit in with other festivals because we’re not really a film production or an animated production company. And we’re not in advertising but something in-between and that’s exactly what OFFF is as well. It’s our home away from home.

What do you think about the motion graphics industry within the Netherlands?

There is a lot of amazing design talent there, but motion graphics are still quite small. Most of our clients – about 90% – are from abroad. There is not a lot of buzz around it for some reason. The weird thing? I’m not really sure why.

Tell me about PostPanic Pictures.

Last year we launched a Kickstarter project for our first film, ‘Sundays’. We managed to get a deal with Warner Bros and now we’re actually got some serious budget to turn it into a full-length feature film! And we’ve got 6 more projects in the pipeline. We’ve gathered a number of amazing directors over the last few years and we found out that almost every one of them has an idea for an amazing film – the only thing needed is funding.

So instead of sending around scripts – like everyone else is doing in Hollywood – we actually want to make short ‘proof of concept’ films to get funding and get noticed. That worked out great for ‘Sundays’, so we’re really disrupting the traditional system in Hollywood.

Great! Finally, which artist is your favorite one at OFFF? Who should people Google right now?

GMUNK. Right now. His brain is probably the size of an elephant’s. He is creativity to the max.

About Ramin Bahari

Ramin Bahari (28) is an advertising art director based in Amsterdam and board member of the Dutch Young Creatives (a.k.a. JongeHonden).

Ramin is basically ‘will it blend’ in person: he calls himself Dutch while his roots are half Russian and half Afghan.

He has an Art School background with a Master’s Degree in Consumer Psychology.

His career path took him from being a motion graphics designer, to coder, to strategy planner to advertising creative.

At OFFF, he mainly followed the innovators like Joylabs and Jan de Koster to shine a light on the ‘makers’ in the creative industry.