MiniVegas

Geeky funsters Minivegas are an unusual bunch who combine the nerdy know-how of mad professors with free-flowing creative juices – enabling them to pull of such wonders as interactive live TV idents using audio analysis. Descending into their curious underground lair in East London, Laura Swinton is put in mind of Gotham, the A-Team and a Waltons-style happy family

It’s a grungy alley in London’s Shoreditch. The odd weed peeping through the cobbles, dank, single-glazed industrial units and a strip club round the corner. Were it not for the presence of Mother London and Shoreditch House, it could be a scene straight out of Rorscharch’s journal. The seamier side of Gotham – albeit sprinkled with designer furniture boutiques and asymmetric haircuts.

And beneath the uneven cobbles lies London’s answer to the Batcave. Crammed with customised gadgets and cutting-edge technology, it’s the secret basement HQ of directing collective Minivegas.

Their cellar may be hidden from passers-by, but their efforts have not gone unnoticed by the industry – their nerdish penchant for technology and creative vision has reaped Cannes Lions, Clios and numerous other awards. From the scuffed Boba Fett helmet in the corner to the disused hardware, the studio is bursting with souvenirs accumulated over the years. Minivegas founders, Aoife McArdle, Luc Schurgers and Chris Wood, met when at university in Bournemouth in 2001. They were all in the same year but studying different subjects. McArdle was writing scripts for her documentary class, Schurgers was getting stuck into VFX while Wood was learning about animation. After graduation, they went their separate ways, but kept in touch. All three were working in different sectors of the industry, but becoming increasingly frustrated. Working for other people wasn’t giving them the chance to take the lead on projects, and they didn’t have the space or opportunity to get truly creative.

With a successful film for Live 8 and a Bloc Party promo bulking up their reel, the trio decided to turn Minivegas into a full-time enterprise. “I think that, weirdly, we were a bit too confident, too soon,” laughs McArdle. “We were like ‘yay, we’ve made it!’”

Holed up in a dismal office, with no heating and borrowed internet, it turned out that Minivegas had yet to hit the jackpot. But they persevered and eventually the collective shifted to East London and grew to become the six-person outfit they are today. Grant White came on board to help out with the CGI, followed by Dutch intern Jeroen Hooghoudt, who found himself becoming an integral member of the core team. And then computing whizz Dan Lewis joined to bring his powers of programming to the line-up.

On reflection, the Batcave idea isn’t quite right for Minivegas. Schurgers, McArdle and Wood are the three main directors, but the rest of the team are no mere operatives, and all six bring their ideas to the creative mix.

Moreover, their combined experience means that more often than not they can do their own post and animation. The collective has more in common with the X-Men or A-Team than Batman. It’s an incendiary idea that sparks off intense debate: excitable McArdle bagsies Hannibal, only to be shot down by the boys, who reckon she’s more of a BA Baracas. Schurgers takes the Hannibal mantle for himself, and they all agree that White is Murdock. The idea of a multi-talented directing collective isn’t exactly new – and the benefits of having lots of creative voices in the mix are obvious. But where Minivegas trumps more traditional teams is that they not only have a breadth of creative backgrounds but also a pretty impressive arsenal of technical skills too.

Where most creative types would run a mile, seeking refuge behind their Apple Macs, Minivegas are not afraid to get stuck into the nuts and bolts of things. VCRs, slide projector carousels, disused turntables and defunct TVs clutter up the surfaces in their studio. With their random collection of spare parts, you half expect the crew to be walking about in greasy blue overalls, like dodgy mechanics. Equally they could be a gang of wiry-haired physics professors, trying to rig up a home-made teleporter.

The physics teacher analogy might seem like a bit of an exaggeration – but then how many directors go about using Van de Graaff generators (electrostatic machines) on shoots? Last year, the gang shot an ident for the BBC Electric Proms. To convey the electricity and energy of the event, they outlined a gig where the audience’s hair started to stand on end. Instead of going down the CGI route, the gang decided that rigging up the cast’s feet to the old school generators would be much more fun. “I don’t know about you, but growing up in Ireland, we had a Van de Graaff generator in the classroom but we were never allowed to use it, even though it was the best thing in there,” muses McArdle, recalling the childlike curiosity that fuels their work.

But things really took a turn for the geeky when they brought computer programmer Lewis on board. He knew Schurgers from the days before Minivegas were up and running – they worked together at a software company. Tapping away in an eclectic broom cupboard, surrounded by beige, patterned wallpaper and pillars of black computer stacks, Lewis conjures up the coding that makes Minivegas’ interactive imaginings a reality. Despite dabbling with graphics and 3D imagery at university, Lewis had never imagined that his computing degree would lead to any kind of artistic work. “I worked in the heart of Silicon Valley for a company that made computer chips – no creative knowledge required for that. There I was, right in the heart of the boom. Then it crashed, so I came home.”

Since joining Minivegas, Lewis has helped develop the software for several ambitious interactive projects. It all started off with nightclub visuals – spontaneous, abstract shapes that react to the sounds of the music thanks to audio-analysis equipment. Where things really got innovative was when they were approached to make idents for Welsh TV channel S4C. The team decided to apply their technology to two areas which had thus far escaped the industry’s blind enthusiasm for all things interactive: live-action filmmaking and broadcasting.

Deceptively simple, the ten idents show different postcard scenes of Wales, from an empty wedding disco in a working men’s club to a cow standing in a field. But where the spots differ from your average ident, is that as the announcer introduces the next show – live on air, mind you – the films react to the pitch and rhythm of the voice – so disco lights flash, hundreds of lamps in a furniture shop flick on and off, electricity pylons in the field wobble and, in an empty, rural car park, road signs swerve across the tarmac.

According to Schurgers, the shoot itself was not the most challenging aspect of the job. “With that job we just treated it like a live-action shoot. The only difference is that it was totally boring,” he explains. “There were just so many different elements to film. Fortunately when we were in the furniture store they had massage chairs, the ones that do your neck, so we could just sit there going ‘yeah, yeah that looks good’.”

Where things started to get tricky was creating and installing specially built computers – and sweet talking the station’s engineers into embracing the new technology. Because the colour of the sky had to change according to the time of day and the animation was generated spontaneously in response to every different announcement, the team created machines that automatically telecined the spots each time they were broadcast. “It was social engineering more than anything else,” recalls Lewis. “We had to hold the hands of the poor guys who had to get used to it.”

This year, they’ll be pushing their interactive visuals even further – at the Ether Festival, in London, they’ll be putting on a show with electronica band Plaid inspired by Javanese shadow puppets. They’re also applying their brand of spontaneous animation to creepy-crawlies at the Natural History Museum. In fact the Minivegas hivemind is bubbling with so many ideas that it’s difficult to keep track of what they’re working on and what direction they’ll go in next. Chatting to the three main directors together, it is at times impossible to follow the interweaving, overlapping threads of conversation – particularly on a conference call. Try tuning into the soft tones of Geordie Wood (“I’m from Newcastle, famous for Paul Gascoigne,”) amid loquacious McArdle’s Irish inflections (“I’m from Omagh, famous for, err, bombs,”) and Schurgers’ laid-back Dutch burr (“I’m from Amsterdam – but I don’t smoke weed,” he explains, as McArdle subjects him to sisterly teasing).

Back in the Shoreditch offices though, where a palm-fringed beach scene decorates the main studio’s back wall, things are much calmer. Schurgers is off in Los Angeles, where he has been living since their US production company Anonymous Content sorted out visas for him, and McArdle is in South Africa on a shoot. So Wood is left with White, Hooghoudt and Lewis, who are all glued to computer screens. The boys sheepishly suggest that the calm is due to the absence of the group’s ‘more mercurial personalities’. But although we’ve caught them on a relatively chilled day, things can get harder when the team are all working on different projects to different deadlines. When Wood is pulling all-nighters to finish the post on one spot for example, White or Hooghoudt might be listening to the radio and enjoying the post-deadline haze with an online shoot-em-up.

So how do they all manage to work so hard, in such intimate surroundings, without completely destroying the friendships at the foundations of Minivegas? “We just swear at each other,” deadpans Schurgers. “And then ignore each other,” says Wood, finishing off the sentence. “We have fights, then forget about them the next day, like you do with your family,” explains McArdle. “Because we can say ‘no, I don’t like that,’ or ‘that’s not working’. I think when you don’t know the person you’re working with, well, you worry about offending them.” There’s no danger of that happening. When they’re not working, they’re happy to just hang out together. “It’s like an old pair of slippers,” McArdle sing-songs, before crashing back to reality. “Actually, I was just thinking the other day the only people I see are these guys. It’s a good job we get on alright.”

The setup in their studio is geared towards sociability. Before reaching the office, you pass through the bar. Painted oxblood red and hung with oil paintings and stuffed stag heads, depending on your weltanschauung, it’s a Scottish hunting lodge that’s seen better days or a fancy sixth-form common room. A pink neon ‘Minivegas’ sign glows behind the bar, reminiscent of the delapidated amusement arcade that gave them their name. In the next room, they’ve also set up a gallery, curated by Schurgers’ sister Suzanne.

“When you walk in, in the morning, and you’ve got all that interesting stuff to look at you feel a bit more creative generally,” muses McArdle. “Yeah, and it’s a great excuse to have a party every five weeks,” rejoins Schurgers. Working so closely and intensely together, it’s unsurprising that they’ve formed a second family. Screw the X-Men. Hell, screw the A-Team (but don’t tell Mr T we said that), more than anything, they’re the Waltons.

Good night Aoife. Good night Luke. Good night Grant. Good night Chris. Good night Jeroen. Good night Dan. Good night Minivegas.