The Mill Los Angeles has promoted executive creative director Phil Crowe to chief creative officer and Chris Knight and Robert Sethi to executive creative directors. The move elevates a working partnership among the three that has already driven great success and positions The Mill’s L.A. studio for further growth.
Crowe and Knight, co-founders of The Mill’s LA studio, relocated from The Mill’s London base in 2007. They have each been with the company for over 20 years. Sethi came on board in 2009 to jointly head up the CG department. The trio has been involved in some of the studio’s most successful work over the past few years, with 2017 marking the studio’s most awarded year in its history.
In announcing the promotions, The Mill’s co-founder and CEO Robin Shenfield commented: “We have an immensely strong creative team in LA that, in their previous roles, Phil, Chris and Robert helped create. It is now time to elevate their responsibilities to ensure we are able to provide our clients with the increasingly diverse range of content they require.”
Crowe has led on groundbreaking visual effects campaigns such as Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” and P&G’s “Thank You, Mom.”
Knight recently led on commercials that ranked number one in the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter for two consecutive years with Kia’s “Hero’s Journey” and Amazon’s “Alexa Loses Her Voice.”
Sethi has consistently blurred the lines between computer generated imagery and reality for leading brands such as Xbox, Kia, Marvel and Energizer. He has been recognized multiple times by industry leaders including the VES Awards, D&AD and Cannes Lions for his creative solutions.
Rani Melendez, managing director of The Mill Los Angeles, added: “Phil, Chris and Robert share a passion for creating powerful and effective story-telling for our clients. These much-deserved promotions will strengthen our offering.”
The leadership team heralds a new era for creative at The Mill Los Angeles studio that will drive future thinking in an evolving landscape. Melendez concluded, “This newly formed creative powerhouse will focus on what is most important to us, which is contributing to world-class creative content across any format.”
Yorick Le Saux Connects With Writer-Director Steve McQueen On “Blitz”
When opportunity knocked, cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, AFC couldn’t answer in the affirmative--though he desperately wanted to. Scheduling conflicts forced him to turn down overtures from director Steve McQueen on a couple of occasions--the first being for a commercial, followed several years later by a query as to the DP’s availability for what turned out to be the acclaimed Small Axe anthology. Thankfully, though, the third time proved to be the charm as McQueen once again reached out to Le Saux and the two wound up collaborating together on Blitz (Apple Original Films). McQueen, a Best Picture Oscar winner for 12 Years a Slave, wrote and directed Blitz, which makes its streaming debut today (11/22) on Apple TV+ after a wide theatrical release. Blitz, short for the Germans’ blitzkrieg bombing of London during World War II, is told largely through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, George (portrayed by Elliott Heffernan), whose single mom, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), had made the heartaching decision to send him to the countryside with thousands of other schoolchildren to flee the devastating aerial attacks. The prospect of being separated from his mother and grandfather is traumatic for George who at his young age has also felt the sting of prejudice, having been ridiculed about his mixed-race heritage. Le Saux shared that going into Blitz, his only connection to World War II was what he heard about it from his parents and grandparents. But he was eager to work with McQueen and found that upon delving deeper into the subject matter he felt a profound bond to the story, which carries relevance to today. Le Saux said this gave him a sense of purpose to help realize the writer-director’s vision for the... Read More