Monday, January 31, 2011
We are delighted to introduce our first Mill Group Design and
Motion Graphics Reel for 2011!
It features some of the very best work that our Design teams from
both sides of the Atlantic have produced in collaboration with the
many talented directors, production companies and agencies that we
have been lucky enough to work with over the last year.
Our very own London Design Director Carl Addy created the
music.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
It seems like only yesterday that our Mill TV team were putting
the final touches to the Jabberwock and the Truth Room for Alice, a modern-day version of Lewis
Carroll's classic tale for the SyFy Channel in the US...
The wait is finally over for British audiences as they too can
enjoy the magic - and of course Mill TV's award winning VFX - as
the three part adventure has landed on UK shores, starting tomorrow
night at 8pm on SyFy!
VFX Supervisor Barney Curnow recently told SFX Magazine how he
and the team worked closely alongside director Nick Willing to
create the amazing Jabberwork.
Read his interview online here: http://www.sfx.co.uk/2011/01/24/alice-creating-the-jabberwock/
You can also check out the official SyFy site: http://www.syfy.co.uk/shows/alice
Alice, starts on Thursday
27th January at 8pm on SyFy (Sky channel 129, Virgin
Media channel 135)
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Life in a Day
2 days from now, live from Sundance on January 27th at 8pm EST,
Ridley Scott's new project will be premiered for all to see via
YouTube, live from Sundance Film Festival.
Back on July 24th, thousands of people took part in the Life in
a Day experiment, by documenting their day and uploading the
footage to YouTube. Culminating in 4,500 hours of film and over
80'000 clips to work with. Kevin Macdonald (Oscar winner for King
of Scotland) has since worked to cut a 90 minute documentary in the
hope that it will give a unique and inspiring look at the world we
live in as well as act as a time capsule of sorts for future
generations. Given the fact that both Ridley Scott and Kevin
Macdonald were so keen for distinctive and compelling footage, it
will be interesting to see how controversial - or not - the final
film is.
Check out the trailer below and follow the link to get to the
YouTube channel.
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday
Google's Motorola Xoom Tablet
This year at the 2011 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) the big
hit was the new tablet computer, rumoured to finally be labelled as
a genuine threat to Apples iPad. The 10.1 inch uber screened
beauty, is running Googles new Android Honeycomb OS, designed
specifically for tablet computers. If you have 6 mins spare, have a
watch of the demo below, but a few highlights include full 16x9
playback of HD video, widgets such as the new vector based Google
maps and a redesigned YouTube app, not to mention it has Flash on
it.... I'm in the market for a tablet and was saving all my
now defunct smoking cash for an iPad 2, but i may have to grab one
of these and have a play.
Battlefield LA
On March 11th this year, Battle: Los Angeles is released, a film
aimed squarely at the nerdier of us, but none the less, is building
some positive buzz, mostly thanks to its most recent trailer (see
below) which I think looks awesome. There's a bunch of cool online
support which I thought was worth a closer look.
First up is http://www.reportthreats.org/
- a site dedicated to the endless rumours about visitors from Mars
etc. Apart from various filler including faux newspaper articles,
its mostly to introduce you to W.A.T.C.H or the Worldwide
Assessment of Threats Concerning Humankind - convenient
title.
Secondly http://battlela.com/interactivemap/
which is a nice interactive site which lets you to look at old
& current invasion sites across the globe if you're interested,
and by entering the secret code (FYI its the release date, 031111),
you will be given access to the final site which is http://unidentifiedenemy.com/
which allows you to take a sneak peak at some of the characters and
designs of the UFO's and their kit, geek cool.
Beyond Black Mesa
Continuing the alien theme, have you ever played Half Life 2?
No? Well, frankly I'm disappointed, but if you haven't it's one of
the most successful FPS (First Person Shooter) games ever released.
It's essentially a sci-fi adventure against alien adversity where
you take part in a good old human uprising. It's commonly
referenced for its amazing design and general futuristic style,
most recently in Karl Erik Rinsh's short film for the Phillips
Parallel Lines project; 'The Gift'. Now some plucky fellow called
Brian Curtin has taken it to the next step by making a short film
based in and around the world of HL2. Filmed on a tiny budget of
$1200 and shot on a Canon HV20 Mini DV. The 12 minute short
took Brian and his 7 friends 2 years to complete and no doubt a
shed load of After Effects filters I expect. It's a fantastic
achievement and I for one am intrigued to see what he can produce
with a decent camera and twice the budget. Canon should send him a
5D.
PS... If you didn't know already, Apple have
sold 10 billion apps worldwide, that's A LOT of Angry Birds....
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
We are pleased to announce the launch of The Mill Group
Showreel 2011!
We had a great year last year, working with some extraordinarily
talented directors, agencies and production companies, with
collaborations on the Emmy award winning Old Spice 'The Man your
Man Could Smell Like' and the epic Nike 'Write the Future'
alongside a hugely successful year for our TV team with Sherlock
and Doctor Who, to name but a few.
So we've created our Group Showreel 2011 with some stand out
moments and creative highlights from across our London, New York
and LA studios. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed working
on it, check it out now...
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Our Mill TV team have been lucky enough to be involved in the BBC's Doctor Who since its
regeneration in 2005, going on to scoop a clutch of awards for
their visual effects work.
With Matt Smith as the latest incarnation of the travelling Time
Lord and Karen Gillan as his sidekick Amy Pond, series 5 has been
the biggest and best yet and really put the talents of our TV team
to the test.
Find out how they brought Hollywood-style VFX to the small screen
in this behind the scenes video featuring the show's VFX Supervisor
Dave Houghton and some never-before-seen footage.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
We're thrilled to be at the front of the pack with this week's
announcement of VES nominees! The industry benchmark picked three
distinctive but similarly captivating spots from The Mill as
contenders to win the top honour for Outstanding VFX in a
Commercial: Barclaycard's "Rollercoaster"
from The Mill NY, and Wrigley's 5 Gum's
"React" and Verizon's "Towers", both from The Mill
LA.
This year's noms for the 9th Annual VES Awards follow
in the formidable footsteps of last year's Mill LA winner, "Caterpillar", honoured for Outstanding
Animated Character in a Commercial. The VES winners will be
announced Feb. 1 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Big congrats to our talented and hardworking Mill team!
Check out the full list of nominees here:
www.visualeffectssociety.com/date/9th-annual-ves-awards
Friday, January 07, 2011
We've asked Aubrey Woodiwiss, one of The
Mill London's team of Colourists who has worked on everything from
music promos for the likes of Jay-Z and Lily Allen, to commercials
for Guinness and Tetley with some of the industries' leading
directors, to share his top tips for those wannabe graders looking
to get in to the industry.
Check out his video below...
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Happy New Year everyone! What better way to kick off 2011 than
to see Shots magazine has revealed their picks of the best videos
from 2010 and we're pleased as punch to see that our work features
in six out of the ten chosen!
Taking the number one spot, and rounding out a fantastically
successful year, is Old Spice's 'The
Man You Could Smell Like', from W+K Portland, directed by Tom
Kuntz through MJZ LA, with VFX by The Mill LA.
In second place, is The Mill NY's collaboration with OK Go
Partnership and director James Frost on OK Go's music promo, 'This Too Shall
Pass', which has so far racked up over 22 million hits on
YouTube alone.
Coming in at third place, is Puma's 'Hardchorus', created by Droga
5 and directed by Knucklehead's Ben Gregor. Also making Shot's top
ten, are the Nike epic, 'Write the
Future', the star-studded Adidas 'Cantina' and
Levi's 'Ready to
Work'.
Read the full list here:
http://www.shots.net/article_detail.asp?atype=1&id=10871
Shots also counted down their top ten interactive videos of the
year, and we're pleased to say that both the COI's Knife Crime
Campaign 'Choose A Different Ending' and Old Spice's 'The Man
You Could Smell Like' made the cut, in an increasingly competitive
field.
Check out their other picks here:
http://www.shots.net/article_detail.asp?atype=1&id=10874#anch_top
Meanwhile, ITV counted down their top 20 ads of the year as
voted for by the British public in an hour long programme broadcast
over Christmas, and we were delighted to see that Barclaycard
'Rollercoaster', created by our good friends BBH London,
directed by Nicolai Fuglsgig with VFX by The Mill NY swept in to
second place!
If you missed the programme, watch it again here:
http://player.stv.tv/programmes/ad-of-the-year/2010-12-30-2100/
Do you agree with their choices? Let us know what your top
picks of 2010 were...
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