Here’s a shocker, Barclays Private Equity now owns a majority stake in The Mill, the Oscar-winning studio behind several of the biggest commercials and movies of recent years.
Barclays Private Equity bought a majority stake in visual effects company The Mill, attracted by its exposure to the advertising market and rapidly growing emerging markets.
The stake, bought from U.S private equity firm Carlyle Group [CYL.UL], values Oscar-winning The Mill at 119 million pounds ($193.1 million), Barclays PE, part of Barclays Plc (BARC.L), said on Tuesday.
The co-founders are expected to remain after the deal, and I can’t find any details on exactly how much cash they laid out for this. Anyone have the details?
I must confess, I’ve loved the recent seasons of Doctor Who. While David Tennant left some huge shoes to fill, Matt Smith has really stepped up and I found this most recent season just fantastic to watch. Culminating in the epic story of the Opening of Pandorica, the season was helped along with some expert VFX work done by “The Mill”. In a new video on It’s Art, they discuss how they created some of the iconic shots.
I couldn’t figure out how to embed the video, so click the link below to go check it out.
Escape Studios has opened the search for the CG Whiz 2010, the winner of which will get a 12-week VFX course at Escape Studios, and a 4-week placement at The Mill.
“We’re very excited about this year’s competition that will find some of the industry’s brightest talent and give aspiring artists the chance to break into the VFX industry,” said Dominic Davenport, founder of Escape Studios. “Last year, the quality of entries we received was a testament to the hidden talent that exists in CG. We see it as our job to help anyone with a creative streak and a passion for computer graphics develop their skills and get them started on successful CG careers. We’re looking forward to checking out this year’s entries!”
It’s a huge prize that nearly guarantees a job if you can win it, booking a month of work with the Mill is a huge win on any resume. Entry rules are on their site, and the closing date is less than a month away! (November 12th)
To celebrate the creation of Escape Studio’s new mentored learning courses targeted at distance learning and one-on-one tutorials, The Mill and Escape Studios are launching a CG Video contest. To enter, simply submit a video to Escape Studio’s Youtube Channel with some details, and two lucky winners (one in the UK and one in the US) will be selected for a year-long mentored course and an online “CV clinic” with top recruiters for The Mill.
A new commercial for the City Harvest Food Rescue Organization shows a subway train full of delicious green apples spill out onto the ground as the doors open to some unsuspected passengers. Of course, the whole thing is a great special effects shot done by The Mill using some impressive motion tracking work to comp the entire thing into video shot on an iPhone.
See the commercial and The Mill’s “Behind the Scenes” breakdown after the break.
The new commercial for the Madden NFL10 was created by The Mill and showcases some interesting use of Massive, the large agent modeling and simulation tool.
What were the challenges of creating the Massive agents for this spot?
The main challenge of the Massive work was trying to get the crowd to work as a diverse crowd and then work as for one team or another team. In the wide shot there are about 17,000 agents. It was tricky to get them all to do what we wanted. We had to make the agents a little random, to act like a huge crowd, but also consistent because the whole point of the spot is to make the players and fans of the opposing teams push against each other.
The Mill recently made a new commercial for Dell’s new Inspiron laptops named “Treats”, which you’ve probably already seen on TV. Now, some behind-the-scenes footage has cropped up on YouTube, thanks to Dell, showing the greenscreen work, the CG effects work, and the set design of the whole commercial.
The Mill has posted a great podcast showing the work that went into the amazing Caterpillar commercial. It shows the original storyboards, previs, reference photography, and various stages of the rendering and compositing work.
An entertaining commercial for Barclay’s Investment bank from the folks at The Mill. Not much in the way of details, but you can see some clever CG overlay work in some of the reveals later in the commercial.
The Mill has a fantastic new commercial for swedish pension company AMF that shows collections of 3D photorealistic rendered insects.
The Mill LA’s team of 3D artists relished the opportunity of working on the latest commercial for Swedish pension company AMF. Filip Engstrom directed the spot which features a host of fully CG photo real insects. The star of the ad is a caterpillar who becomes forlorn after a series of trials and tribulations until he transforms into a beautiful butterfly.
Simply amazing quality. See the commercial at their site.
I must confess, I’ve loved the recent seasons of Doctor Who. While David Tennant left some huge shoes to fill, Matt Smith has really stepped up and I found this most recent season just fantastic to watch. Culminating in the epic story of the Opening of Pandorica, the season was helped along with some expert VFX work done by “The Mill”. In a new video on It’s Art, they discuss how they created some of the iconic shots.
Escape Studios has opened the search for the CG Whiz 2010, the winner of which will get a 12-week VFX course at Escape Studios, and a 4-week placement at The Mill.
To celebrate the creation of Escape Studio’s new mentored learning courses targeted at distance learning and one-on-one tutorials, The Mill and Escape Studios are launching a CG Video contest. To enter, simply submit a video to Escape Studio’s Youtube Channel with some details, and two lucky winners (one in the UK and one in the US) will be selected for a year-long mentored course and an online “CV clinic” with top recruiters for The Mill.
A new commercial for the City Harvest Food Rescue Organization shows a subway train full of delicious green apples spill out onto the ground as the doors open to some unsuspected passengers. Of course, the whole thing is a great special effects shot done by The Mill using some impressive motion tracking work to comp the entire thing into video shot on an iPhone.
The new commercial for the Madden NFL10 was created by The Mill and showcases some interesting use of Massive, the large agent modeling and simulation tool.
The Mill recently made a new commercial for Dell’s new Inspiron laptops named “Treats”, which you’ve probably already seen on TV. Now, some behind-the-scenes footage has cropped up on YouTube, thanks to Dell, showing the greenscreen work, the CG effects work, and the set design of the whole commercial.
The Mill has posted a great podcast showing the work that went into the amazing 
VizWorld.com 
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