The Mill NY: 2010 OFFF Opening Titles

Posted by Jon Saunders

The Mill NY was commissioned to do the OFFF opening titles this year, and took the opportunity to debut their integrated design and animation team. The languid journey they take us on through the forty-five titles for this years OFFF conference displays the immense potential this new division of the Mill has, especially considering the production resources they have at their disposal.

Mill NY staff Jeff Stevens (Design Director), Boo Wong (Senior Design & Content Producer) and Colin Pearsall (Executive Producer/Content) were all kind enough to answer a few questions about this piece and the new division of the Mill.

Splicing up biological elements and reforming them to create brand new species to illustrate the beauty that results from the exchange of ideas at a conference like OFFF is splendid and must have been a joy to work with as a theme…or at least that’s my take on it. Regardless, what led you to your concept and how did you go about developing it?

Jeff Stevens: The original, over arching concept was strength vs beauty and the affinity that each has for the other. At the same time, I wanted to create something that was abstract yet ‘seemingly’ natural. So, creating an environment that was underwater mixed with air began to take shape. Texture was important to me, so when Kim began illustrating, the contours and rawness of materials started to create a landscape and pattern for all of our characters. The best part was that nothing needed to be real. We could have suggested more reality but I think the blend of species, environment, and biomechanics perfectly summed up that affinity I was looking for.

More of the interview here

OFFF (International Festival for the Post-Digital Creative Culture) Opening Titles
Premiere: June 26
www.offf.ws/

The Mill NY
www.themill.com
Alistair Thompson – Managing Director
Angus Kneale – ECD
Colin Pearsall – EP/Content
Jeff Stevens – Design Director
Kim Dulaney – Designer
Rob Petrie – CG Lead
Boo Wong – Senior Producer
Moss Levenson – Editor
Fall on Your Sword – Music
Henryboy – Sound Design
Weston Fonger – Sound Mix
3D
Tom Bardwell
Ian Brauner
Jeffrey Dates
Tony Jung
Christopher Kujawa
Michael Panov
Joshua Merck
Ruben Vanderbroek
James Williams
Stanislav Ilin
2D
Emmett Dzieza
Marco Giampolo
Melissa Graff
Bashir Hamid
Lu Lin
Gigi Ng
Doug Purver
Jeff Robins
Gap Yossanun
Tim Haldeen
Brian Sensebe

About the author

Jon Saunders

/ www.jonsaunders.tv
internet surfer/designer extraordinaire
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14 Comments

_james

ridiculously beautiful. stupid good.

Ryan DeCarlo

The link doesn’t seem to work so I downloaded. Looks and sounds great! Nice job guys!

Sean

stunning, the resolve to the logo at the end along with the music is so powerful

fava

I recently witnessed these titles in the Paris Offf Conference. The titles were projected onto 3 screens accompanied by a great sound set up; that said, the titles are infinitely well produced but are far from the inventiveness of the DVEIN Fellows in Spain. Hats off to production value on these titles.

cherie

I think they tried way too hard making it cool, fresh and experimental like other Offf titles have been before. You see, that they’ve been working on it for months with great efforts and probably this is what makes them so uncool and heavy. On their way they lost innovativeness and passion and it feels like I’ve seen something similar many times before…

I’ve been visiting Offf for more than 6 years now, and for me it stands for young upcoming artists like renascent, The Ronin, DStrukt, Nanika, Dvein, all artist that have their own artistic language and don’t need a 30-man production studio behind them to realize their ideas. That was the spirit of Offf. Experimenting, art, outside the box.

This year we have this high end production with tons of money and not really a visually creative, innovative result. Time to rethink.

I love Kim’s first styleframes for the titles though! That’s great work!

anonymouse

well that was boring….

randomthoughtpattern

yeah, this has no soul…
now the sponsor titles… really great stuff!

mesutoesil

I saw the style frames at offf. They are great!
I’m missing a clear animation direction in this piece.

judonerd

Yeah, looks like it was hard to make, but there is no narrative or story, it’s 100% production value. At one end, a good story can be written on toilet paper and still be captivating. A the other end, a thin concept can’t be saved by any amount of visuals. This piece really seems to lean towards the latter.

neil

There is some beautiful animation within the piece but in parts in looks more like an animation showcase, I believe someone mentioned before about it lacking an overall direction. The type there’s a lot of it and it looks like an ill considered that’s just been stuck on at the end, so flat compared to the rest of the piece. The end title transition, come on you can do so much better. The Mill are great, do and are capable of some amazing work, sadly this isn’t apart of that. The concept allows for so much creative freedom but that coupled with the resources at the Mills disposal as run away with them this time.

dshaw

I feel like some of these comments are slightly harsh… maybe a little retaliation to one of the big boys taking an opportunity that smaller shops usually (and probably should) get. I agree that this isn’t in the ballpark of what Dvein did, but few things are. The Mill clearly took a different path and there are some fantastic moments in here. I was engaged.

I do agree about the type though. Feels a bit like an after thought and difficult to read at times.

Ritron

i think the concept its not clear. that´s in my opinion the main problem in this piece.

why the way, some body knows where can i get the quicktime of title sequence done by Prologue last year?

Concept is the most important!!

Skube

I thought it looked fantastic but it just dragged on a bit for me, was bored by the end. Beautiful cg though.

nizamm

Couldn’t agree more with Cherie. This seems just too Harry Potter to me. Not something that would surprise me unlike the one Prologue did. When the scale goes upon on production value the focus just goes technical and begins to lack taste. That’s just IMHO.

Again, this is not a bash on The Mill. They’ve done their bit, but I’ve seen them do similar stuff before so this doesn’t really break the mould..

Go Danny Yount!1 :P

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