The Mill Relied on Two Clustered BlueArc Mercurys

BlueArc Corporation announced that The Mill, a world-leading visual effects (VFX) studio headquartered in London, relied on two clustered BlueArc Mercurys in creating the VFX for the three minute Write the Future football-themed advertisement for Nike that has captured the world’s attention during the World Cup.

The feature length advertisement has set a new precedent in commercial production, with film worthy computer graphics (CG). The Mill produced 236 VFX shots – equivalent to that of several two hour movies – in a span of just five weeks. In addition to the three minute commercial, The Mill delivered 14 worldwide global adaptations directly to international broadcasters, as well as delivering bespoke material for localised adaptation to six countries and generic HD and SD digital assets to 31 countries.

"This was one of the biggest commercial VFX projects we’ve ever undertaken at The Mill. We’ve been working with BlueArc for nearly ten years now and we knew we could rely on them to provide the unfailing storage performance that this project required," said Stephen Venning, 3D executive producer, The Mill.

During the development of Write the Future, The Mill had artists from each office, London, New York and LA working around the clock. Two BlueArc Mercurys stored 20 terabytes, and ran numerous applications, including Autodesk Maya, XSI, mental ray, and Massive for simulation, rendering, compositing and CG crowds. BlueArc handled these applications with ease, and even under constant demands – with disks running at 90 percent capacity or greater – delivered consistent performance to keep the project on track.

"BlueArc was the silent warrior behind this project, enabling us to deliver quality, creativity and believability, without the burden of downtime or aborted jobs delaying the project," said Roy Trosh, group technical director, The Mill. "We’re continuing to invest in BlueArc to build a state-of-the-art storage infrastructure that scales with our work – including recent investments with our sister company Beam."