Oscar winning VFX studio MILK expands as it celebrates 5th birthday!

Member News  |  10 June 2018

Milk VFX completes production on new feature film Adrift, and Kat Mann joins the team as Head of Production.

Milk_Logo

Milk Visual Effects – the Academy, Emmy and BAFTA Award winning visual effects studio, known for Annihilation, Altered Carbon and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, has significantly increased its capacity to work with the world’s leading feature film, television and digital content producers; taking an additional floor at its London premises in Clipstone Street, Fitzrovia as it celebrates five years in business this June.

Milk’s expansion increases its artist capacity to 250 and includes two 4K Baselight screening rooms and a dedicated client area. The studio has upgraded its pipeline; with all its rendering requirements – along with additional storage and workstation capacity – now executed entirely in the cloud, allowing full scalability for its roster of film and TV projects.

Milk - Altered Carbon
Above: ‘Altered Carbon’

Milk VFX has just completed production as the main vendor on STXfilms’ new feature film Adrift, the Baltasar Kormákur-directed true story of survival at sea, starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin. The Milk team created all the major water and storm sequences for the feature, which were rendered entirely in the cloud.

The Milk team has just begun work on new projects including Four Kids And It – Dan Films/Kindle Entertainment’s upcoming feature film – based on Jacqueline Wilson’s modern-day variation on the 1902 E Nesbit classic novel Five Children And It – for which the Milk team will create the protagonist CG sand fairy character.

Milk is also in production as sole VFX vendor on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s six-part TV adaptation of Good Omens for Amazon/BBC.

Milk - Adrift
Above: ‘Adrift’

Milk has appointed a new Head of Production; experienced VFX producer Kat Mann (née Horton) who will oversee all aspects of the studio’s production at its premises in London and Cardiff. Kat has held senior production roles at ILM and Weta Digital with credits including Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Thor: The Dark World and Avatar. Milk’s former Head of Production Clare Norman has been promoted to Business Development Director.

“Our mission statement remains the same as it was when we opened for business five years ago: to create great work with passionate people. Our expanded capabilities and our strategy to migrate fully to the cloud will enable future growth and allow us to be the most agile VFX studio in the world.”

Will Cohen, Milk VFX CEO

Founded by a small team of VFX supervisors and producers in June 2013, Milk has created an impressive range of visual effects work for television and film winning multiple awards including three consecutive BAFTA Television Craft awards for Doctor Who (in 2014 and 2015) and critically acclaimed BBC drama Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (in 2016). Milk won an Emmy in 2016 for work on the BBC drama Sherlock, and in 2016 co-founder Sara Bennett won an Oscar for her work on the film Ex-Machina in the Best VFX Category.

Milk’s recent projects include Alex Garland’s Annihilation (DNA/Paramount); Altered Carbon (Skydance/Netflix); Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams (Left Bank/Sony/Channel 4/Amazon); The Alienist (TNT/Paramount) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (Lionsgate).

Other highlights include work on: Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (2016) for Warner Bros’; Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise and Free Fire; The Martian (20th Century Fox); The Divergent Series: Insurgent (Lionsgate/Summit); Poltergeist (Fox/MGM); Everest (Universal); Brett Ratner’s Hercules (Paramount MGM); Dracula Untold (Universal); Jason Bourne (Universal); 47 Ronin (Universal); Thunderbirds Are Go (ITV); and The Last Dragonslayer (Sky) for which Milk’s VFX work was nominated for a BAFTA Television Craft Award.

Milk was named one of the top 100 fastest growing British tech companies in the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 in September 2017. The studio’s work  includes UK special venue theatrical project ‘Dinosaurs In the Wild’ – now showing at London’s Greenwich Peninsula – which saw the studio create a ground-breaking rendering solution to process almost 80 million 6K stereoscopic frames using the cloud, in just 10 weeks.

In June 2017 Milk appointed Ivan Dunleavy as Chairman and received long-term investment from the Business Growth Fund to develop and expand the business.

Milk VFX has studios in London and Cardiff.

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