Take a quick look at how The Mill Blackbird, a fully adjustable car rig introduced last summer, allowed the Mill+ team to use a 100% CGI vehicle in the reveal spot for the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox and avoid early exposure of the actual vehicle.

Mill+ Director Bowe King: “When the project began, the Equinox car was under strict embargo and couldn’t be brought into any public spaces for filming.

“Usually, this would mean filming everything in a closed course track environment. Using The Mill Blackbird® opened up a lot of creative opportunities for us. We could go out on to the open road and film in any location we wanted, with no fear of any eyes seeing the new vehicle before they should.”

Alistair Thompson, EVP International at The Mill: “It was fantastic to be able to solve a real life and long standing problem. 100% secrecy could be retained until the big reveal but with no impact to the creativity we were able to add to the final film.”

Here’s the full story on the Blackbird:

Agency: Commonwealth/ McCann
Creative Director: Erika Kayuk
Sr Art Director: David Cilibraise
Art Director: Maks Sokolov
Executive Producer: Noah Schusterbauer
Producer: Ryan Wallace

Production: Mill+
Director: Bowe King
DP: Stefan Burbly
Executive Producer: Ian Bearce & Andrew Sommerville
VFX & Design
Technical Director: Ryan Quinlan
VFX Supervisor: Gawain Liddiard
3D Lead: Adam Carroll, Tom Bardwell
2D Lead: Jay Bandlish
2D Artists: Udesh Chetty, Andrew Pellicer, Dan Frantz, Paul Downes, Randy McEntee
3D Artists: Jordan Carroll, Steven Olson, Nate Hatton, Samantha Pedregon, Michael Lori, Nathaniel Morgan, Jenna Kind, Riyad Hasan, Emeric Meissirel-Marquot
Animators- Hillary McCarthy, Josh Merck, Matthew Kavanagh, Jason Jansky, Katie Yancey
Design: Patrick Arrington, Josh Van Praag, Anzie Lee, Joe Lawrence
Color: Colorist: Matt Osborne

Editorial
Editorial: Hudson Edit
Producer: Zack Whitely
Editor: Zach DuFresne