Clare Norman

Business Development Director

Clare Norman is Business Development Director at Academy and BAFTA award winning independent VFX company Milk.

Clare was promoted to the role in June 2018, having been Milk’s Head of Production for three years – overseeing all aspects of Milk’s production for the company’s London and Cardiff studios, with a roster of feature film and high-end TV projects including Alex Garland’s Annihilation; Kingsman: The Golden Circle; Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (Warner Bros.); Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise and Free Fire; Sherlock (BBC/Hartswood); Channel 4/Amazon/Sony’s Phillip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams; Altered Carbon (Skydance/Netflix) and The Alienist (TNT/Paramount).

Clare is a veteran London-based VFX producer who has worked on a wide range of feature film and high-end TV projects over her twenty year career; with extensive experience managing VFX production both on set and in the VFX studio.

Clare joined the Milk team in 2015 from Vine FX where she was VFX Producer and Head of Production, overseeing the production team and designing pipeline and production tools and forging relationships with new clients. Clare’s credits at Vine FX include BAFTA-nominated work on Atlantis series one and two (BBC). Prior to this, Clare was a VFX Producer at Blue Bolt where she ensured the smooth running of numerous feature film projects including Snow White and the Huntsman (Universal); Skyfall (MGM); Cloud Atlas; Long Walk to Freedom and Belle as well as BBC TV series Peaky Blinders (series one) and Great Expectations (BBC) which received a BAFTA Craft nomination for special and visual effects.

Clare began her career at Cinesite where she progressed to VFX Producer, eventually becoming a member of Cinesite’s management team. Clare was VFX Producer on three of the Harry Potter films as well as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Disney/Bruckheimer); X-Men: The Last Stand (Fox); Batman: The Dark Knight (Warner Bros.) and Bedtime Stories (Disney). Clare’s additional credits at Cinesite include Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Disney); Band Of Brothers (HBO) and The World Is Not Enough (Eon/MGM).

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Kat Mann

Head of Production

Kat Mann is Head of Production & Executive Producer at Milk, an Academy, Emmy and BAFTA award-winning visual effects company with studios in London and Cardiff.

Kat is an experienced VFX producer who has worked on a range of feature film, TV and commercial projects all over the world during her 16-year career; with extensive experience managing VFX production.

Kat oversees all aspects of Milk’s production at its London and Cardiff studios. Milk’s roster of feature film and high-end TV projects currently includes feature film Four Kids And It and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s six-part TV adaptation of Good Omens for Amazon/BBC.

 Kat joined the Milk team in June 2018 from ILM London, where she was VFX Producer on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Prior to this Kat held senior production roles at MPC, Image Engine, The Third Floor and Weta Digital.

 Kat began her VFX career at Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand on the Lord Of The Rings films, following a start in the film industry as an editorial assistant and animation cell painter.

Sharleen Kelly

Chief Financial Officer

Sharleen Kelly is Chief Financial Officer at award-winning independent visual effects studio Milk. Sharleen oversees all aspects of Milk’s financial affairs and is part of the senior leadership team, working closely with Will Cohen, Milk’s CEO. Sharleen’s strong background in forecasting, analysis and system implementation within creative and media companies both large and boutique, brings the experience required for Milk’s continued growth.

Sharleen joined the Milk team in September 2016 from boutique marketing agency Cream where she was Finance Director with responsibility for all financial, legal and HR affairs. Prior to this, Sharleen spent nine years at Viacom’s MTV in senior finance roles; she was Head of Finance at MTV for the UK and Ireland with responsibility for its twelve channels and also served as Director of Finance for MTV Australia and New Zealand.

Dave Goodbourn

Head of Systems

Dave Goodbourn is Head of Systems at Milk, an Academy and BAFTA Award-winning independent visual effects facility with studios in London and Cardiff. Milk creates innovative and complex sequences for high-end television and feature films including Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (BBC), Doctor Who (BBC), Sherlock (Hartswood Films), Alex Garland/DNA Film’s Ex-Machina, Hercules (Paramount/MGM) and The Divergent Series: Insurgent (Lionsgate).

Dave joined Milk as part of the launch team in June 2013 and set up all technical aspects of Milk’s studio facility from scratch; from studio design and planning, hardware and software supply and sourcing to setup and configuration, in order to accommodate an initial 100 artist seat capacity and provide ongoing technical support. Milk opened a second studio in Cardiff in June 2015 adding the capacity for another 20 artist seats.

Dave joined Milk from London based uFX (a division of uMedia) where he was IT Manager for 3 years. During this time, he designed and implemented the technology, infrastructure and budget for the creation of a new VFX facility in Brussels and the upgrade of uFX’s existing London VFX facility.

Prior to this Dave was Media Technologies Manager at creative agency Maverick Media where he oversaw all technical aspects of post production and made recommendations for the future of the technology at Maverick to align with the company’s five year business plan.

Dave has worked in a variety of roles as senior technical consultant providing IT support to media and post production companies including Arias UK Ltd. where he was Technical Manager for a busy digital post production department. Dave began his career in gaming as a Level Artist, before moving into DVD authoring with roles at Deluxe Digital and The Pavement.

Benoit Leveau

Head of Pipeline

Benoit is Head of Pipeline at Milk, an independent Academy and BAFTA award-winning visual effects company with studios in London and Cardiff. Milk creates highly innovative and complex sequences for the high end TV and feature film markets, with credits including Doctor Who (BBC), Sherlock (Hartswood Films), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (BBC), Alex Garland/DNA Film’s Ex-Machina, Hercules (Paramount/MGM) and The Divergent Series: Insurgent (Lionsgate).

Benoit joined team Milk in August 2013 shortly after the company’s launch and has been instrumental in designing Milk’s pipelines. His work was recently recognised at Autodesk’s Shotgun Pipeline Awards 2015 for the creation of a ‘Smart publishing tool’ for Shotgun.

Before joining Milk, Benoit was 3D Pipeline Lead Developer at Prime Focus for three years. Benoit worked on the launch of Prime Focus Film London, helping to design and build the VFX pipeline from scratch as well as the 3D tools and libraries required by productions including Dredd 3D, Mirror, Mirror, Total Recall, The Great Gatsby, and White House Down. During his time at Prime Focus Benoit also set up the company’s VFX pipelines in both Vancouver, Canada and Mumbai, India.

Prior to this Benoit spent a year as Software Engineer at MPC, London where he coordinated the migration of the entire MPC software stack (300+ projects) to a new linux architecture/Maya version/Python version. Following an internship at Sony’s R&D facility in Tokyo, Benoit began his visual effects career as a C++ Developer at Paris-based software company e-on software, where he spent five years overseeing their Vue xStream product – an integration plugin for 3ds Max, Cinema4D, LightWave, Maya and XSI.

Benoit hails from the Champagne region of France and is a graduate of Télécom ParisTech, one of France’s leading engineering schools, where he specialised in Image Synthesis, Digital Television and Image Processing.

Çiğdem Worthington

HR Director

Cigdem Worthington is HR Director at Milk, an Academy and BAFTA award-winning independent visual effects company with studios in London and Cardiff. Milk aims to create highly innovative and complex sequences for the high end TV and feature film markets.

Cigdem combines her role at Milk, in which she oversees human resources, with a career as a successful freelance writer. Just before joining Milk, Cigdem’s very popular blog ‘Kitty Tells It As It Is’ was optioned and is being produced as a film by Debra Hayward (Les Miserables).

Before her most recent prolific writing stint, Cigdem was Business Affairs Manager at Rainmaker/CIS UK for three years, where she worked on visual effects projects for feature films including Slumdog Millionaire, Golden Compass, Inkheart, 28 Weeks Later and The Da Vinci Code.

Cigdem began her career at Working Title Films as Business Affairs Executive where she worked for seven years, providing legal services for a variety of feature films including Notting Hill, Billy Elliot, Elizabeth and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

Jenny Burbage

PR & Marketing

Jenny has been working with Milk since its inception in 2013 to handle its launch publicity and is responsible for the studio’s PR and Marketing.

Drop her a line if you’d like a chat with Will Cohen and the team about what Milk is up to and the fabulous projects we’ve been involved with. Or if you have a project, festival or an industry event you’d like to tell us about or get us involved with.

Jenny has over fifteen years experience driving communications for broadcast, post production and entertainment media brands and content creators across Europe and internationally. She has provided communications consultancy to brands such as The Walt Disney Company, Viacom International Media Networks, Nickelodeon Consumer Products, youth consumer products brand The Extreme Sports Company, the MOJO music awards and Norwegian children’s entertainment brand City of Friends. Jenny lead the corporate communications team at Disney owned pan-European TV network Jetix Europe for five years.

She began her PR career at the Jim Henson Company where she eventually headed up the UK PR team, with responsibility for special effects studio Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and brands such as pre-school hit Bear in the Big Blue House and The Muppets.

Rory Jones

Resources Manager