Scope on the Creative City: SonicPicnic

SonicPicnic is best to be described as an allround sound company. Their mission: creating a substanial addition with music and sound to a wide array of work. Think films, commercials, leaders but also games, websites and even childrens toys. Yorick Goldewijk and Tuur Hendrikx, two of the four masterminds behind this succesful audio company gave me a peek into their dreams, future plans and tactics for making sound succesful.

How did the name come about?

Sonic stands for sound and the picnic, well we thought it would be an adequate imagery for our work: it’s varied and fun. It took us a lot of beer to come up with this name. We really wanted a Dutch name, because we figured an English one would be pretentious. But since we started working abroad, that English name came in handy after all.

When did the company start?
We lived together with seven students of the studies music technology and audio design in Utrecht. We all worked together during school assignments and our first professional ventures. Plans were actually to set up a company with all seven of our flatmates, but we ended up with four, which is already quite a lot when you’re just starting out. When we graduated in 2001, we got together and formed SonicPicnic.

SonicPicnic Gamereel from SonicPicnic on Vimeo.

A SonicPicnic gamereel for the game Swords & Soldiers. Now how cute is that?!

You expanded to two offices already. How did that come about?

To be completely truthful, we actually got three offices. Yorick works at home a lot, in Amsterdam. Initially we started working from our shared house. All the money we made was invested in proper equipment. Slowly but surely we were able to rent an office in Utrecht. Tuur had moved to Rotterdam by then. We first rented a place at Locus (another creative workspace in the centre of Rotterdam) and met Leo (director Creative City). He told us about the plans for this Factory and thus we became one of the first companies to rent an office there.

How would you describe the business climate in Rotterdam?

It still feels like there’s a lot of pioneering to be done in Rotterdam. The creative scene feels very fresh and vibrant. Compared to Amsterdam there may be less bussiness and project, making the Rotterdam scene a smaller, but also more comprehendable one.

Did the economic crisis hit you in any way?

Not much, to be honest. We noticed a stabilisation in our profits though. That’s a first for us. We got some project cancellations because the a few contractors couldn’t meet the financial picture. But it actually worked out well for us too; big brands that used to go to the bigger advertisement companies have started shopping around. They’re looking for smaller companies, with less overhead costs. That creates great opportunities for us too.

SonicPicnic TV/Film Reel from SonicPicnic on Vimeo.

A TV/Film reel by the SonicPicnic men. I'm especially fan of Barry the worm, appearing at the end of it

Tell me more about you working abroad?

Gaming has the most potential as to setting steps over the international threshold. Because it’s such a young field of work, made by guys our age, we find more connection there. Every year we go to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. America is still a long way to go though. We find that they’re mainly concentrated on the companies in the Bay-area over there. However, we notice that neigbouring countries in Europe are very much interested in our work, so we see that as the natural way of expanding.

The Airrebels named Rotterdam ‘Hollywood on the river Maas’. Would you concur? How does that ‘rub off’ on audio companies like yourself?

We have to disagree. Rotterdam is a good place to shoot film, because it has a wide scala of backgrounds. A lot of car commercials are shot here, because Rotterdam has some real fancy urban areas.
What happens now though is that companies from other cities come here to shoot their stuff. They pack up at night and leave, finishing their projects at home. Some audiovisual companies start up in Rotterdam, because it’s cheap and the city has a good climate for young businesses. When they’ve established themselves in their field of expertise, they move to Amsterdam. It’s the idea that all of it happens over there, that makes them move. We don’t feel like we’ve got to focus on one city in particular, be it Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht or somewhere else. We work globally, or at least nationally, not merely for one region.
Utrecht gets their young businesses to stay because they’ve profiled themselves with game designing. Rotterdam is trying to do that too, as they’re restructuring the Media funding, making it possible for audiovisuals to ask for funding for game development too.

How is the Creative City set up (open workspaces with five to seven companies on one floor) working for you?

We recently set up Koelstof: a collective of businesses (Airrebels, IS3D and The 1st Floor) that we regularly worked with over the last few years. All of us are complementary. We want to offer our customers a total package deal, minus the overhead costs. This is how we can actually go out and hunt down the real big assignments, instead of being brought in on a second note.
We’re in the middle of putting ourselves out their, so we can’t say much yet, but you can follow our advancements via our website.

SonicPicnic TV/Film Reel from SonicPicnic on Vimeo.

A commercial reel for Dutch television.

Who’d you say is a company in the Creative City that deserves some more attention?

We would love to hear more about Winandas’ company Blood Sweat and Tarts. She’s at every netwerk event, bright and dandy, yet she always seems to have a different businessplan each time we meet her. We know she does something with food concepting and marketing, but we would love to know for once and for all what she does.

So what’s in store for the future?

We don’t want to expand too much, we liking staying on the creating side ourselves.
We’re always seeking for the balance between the commercial and artistic assignments and will try to keep it a good mix in the future too. And of course we would love for Koelstof to become a big succes.

To see and hear more of SonicPicnic's work, navigate here: sonicpicnic.nl
And: www.koelstof.nl/

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Channels:

• Creative City Rotterdam
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