Panic Room #18 - Rebirth

Revered production boutique PostPanic is changing its name to The Panics after more than two decades of awards and successful viral projects. They launched their new incarnation in 2019 at “Panic Room #18”, with a party of epic proportions and an impressive title sequence to celebrate their new skin in style.

Aside from creating dazzling visuals, this Dutch gang of creators is known for organizing one of the most exciting soirées in the European creative industry. They started in 2009 what is known as Panic Room, an invitation-only event that gathers some of Amsterdam’s biggest names from the advertising, music, retail and design industries.  

The event is an intimate bi-annual gathering that attracts a crowd of just over 150. In each edition, the company has chosen a small selection of senior creatives from all over the world to give special lectures and share the secrets of their trade. 

We started Panic Room basically because we’re a very curious bunch…

“We found that it was really difficult to explain to people what PostPanic was about,” elaborates Ania Markham in an interview with Adobe blog, “so the easiest way was to share the things and people we were into. 

2019’s Panic Room was a particularly special one because it marked a rebirth of sorts for the company. After 21 years in the industry, they decided to rebrand to The Panics.

“In a production world that’s constantly re-inventing, it’s just as important for those creating to continuously adapt to stay on top,” commented co-founder Jules Tervoort to industry site Shots.

For the eighteenth edition of Panic Room, they entrusted house motion-design generalist Kim Taylor to create a striking title sequence to inaugurate the new era. The 76 second-long clip produced by Liene Berina depicts a high-tech underground laboratory where some very twisted experiments are being concocted.

Creativity is a wonderful thing,

but what if it has a dark side?

The piece serves as an analogy to The Panics’ own rebirth, a homage to the little monster they’ve finally become after years of depraved creative experimentation. 

Images of Petri dishes, microscopes, multiplying cells and deformed fetuses shock, give you the heebie-jeebies and impress for their singular beauty. It’s an ode to an unapologetic, — and probably unethical — need to experiment and push the existing boundaries. 

To monsters, to the unconventional, to the marvelous weirdness of their creations, we at Watch the Titles raise our glasses to The Panics and their new era.