Mill TIME –
Cannes Lions Installation
Creative Director & Technical Director, The Mill
Aulenti’s 1993 Tour table for Fontana Arte
For the 2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, we set out to create an unexpected, immersive experience that demonstrated The Mill’s interdisciplinary strength across motion design, VFX, and digital technology. The result was Mill Time — a large-scale, four-screen installation exploring the concept of time through an evolving series of animated clocks.
Installed at the entrance of the Palais, the piece ran continuously throughout the festival. Each of the four panels represented a different scale of time — days, hours, minutes, and seconds — with animations designed to interlock and trigger each other across the grid. The visual language ranged from the mechanical to the abstract, using familiar and unfamiliar forms of timekeeping to engage and surprise viewers.
We developed over 45 uniquely animated “clock-types,” with many more in development, each functioning as both visual artwork and conceptual timepiece. As Creative and Technical Director, I worked closely with our design, VFX, and digital teams to shape the structure, flow, and interaction of the installation — including on-site supervision and system integration.
The installation was a bold showcase of The Mill’s cross-platform creativity — equal parts playful, intricate, and hypnotic.
Creative Team
Post-Production / VFX Company: The Mill
Mill Office: London
Executive Producer: Luke Colson
VFX Producer: Carl Phillips
Creative Director: Nils Kloth
2D Lead Artists: Nils Kloth, Bob Wolf
Motion Graphics: Bob Wolf, Nils Kloth, Henry Foreman, Dominic Burgess, Ollie Harris, Adam Brandon, Ross Urien, Simon Landrein, Adriano Cirulli, Shaun Leong-Williams, Sam Southward
Creative Technologist: Tony Volpe
Technical Director: Tony Volpe, Nils Kloth
Lead Installer: John Quesnell
Production Assists: Hugo Vaughan-Hughes, Oliver Briginshaw
Installed at the entrance of the Palais, the piece ran continuously throughout the festival. Each of the four panels represented a different scale of time — days, hours, minutes, and seconds — with animations designed to interlock and trigger each other across the grid. The visual language ranged from the mechanical to the abstract, using familiar and unfamiliar forms of timekeeping to engage and surprise viewers.
We developed over 45 uniquely animated “clock-types,” with many more in development, each functioning as both visual artwork and conceptual timepiece. As Creative and Technical Director, I worked closely with our design, VFX, and digital teams to shape the structure, flow, and interaction of the installation — including on-site supervision and system integration.
The installation was a bold showcase of The Mill’s cross-platform creativity — equal parts playful, intricate, and hypnotic.
Creative Team
Post-Production / VFX Company: The Mill
Mill Office: London
Executive Producer: Luke Colson
VFX Producer: Carl Phillips
Creative Director: Nils Kloth
2D Lead Artists: Nils Kloth, Bob Wolf
Motion Graphics: Bob Wolf, Nils Kloth, Henry Foreman, Dominic Burgess, Ollie Harris, Adam Brandon, Ross Urien, Simon Landrein, Adriano Cirulli, Shaun Leong-Williams, Sam Southward
Creative Technologist: Tony Volpe
Technical Director: Tony Volpe, Nils Kloth
Lead Installer: John Quesnell
Production Assists: Hugo Vaughan-Hughes, Oliver Briginshaw