At Bristol Creative Industries, we’re committed to informing young people about the diverse range of job roles within the creative sector.

Over the coming months, we’ll be catching up with some of the inspiring people within the BCI network to learn about their career journeys and hear their top tips for anyone starting out in the industry.

This month, we spoke to Adam Millbank, Founder and Executive Producer at Blanket, a Bristol-based film production company, film studio, and kit rental house.

Why do you love working in the creative industries?

I love the unpredictability of it, although that’s probably also the thing I find most challenging. Creative people are often a bit restless and never fully satisfied, which means you’re constantly pushing for something better.

There’s a great idea (often attributed to John Cleese) about the difference between creative and non-creative people. When most people face a problem, they feel a kind of discomfort and want to solve it quickly to get rid of that feeling. Creative people tend to sit with that discomfort for longer, which is what leads to more interesting solutions.

That’s what I’ve always loved – working with people who approach problems in that way. At the end of the day, what we do is solve problems, just in ways that hopefully engage people more or make them think differently. The variety that comes with that is huge – different challenges, different outputs, different ideas – and that’s what keeps it interesting. It’s also a real privilege to get to do this kind of work every day.

You’re a Executive Producer now but tell us about your career so far.

My career started at a bit of a crossroads. At sixth form I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and the only path that was really presented was university. I ended up with a deferred place to study marketing and HR, but it didn’t feel quite right.

I went travelling, and when I came back a friend mentioned they were going to study documentary film. That was a bit of a lightbulb moment – all the things I’d enjoyed before, like filming and storytelling, suddenly made sense as a career.

I met a lecturer on that course who was essentially just looking for storytellers, and that set everything in motion. At university I met my co-founder, and we started a wedding videography business as a way to make some money. That grew quickly – we built it up, won awards, and ended up filming a huge number of weddings each year.

From there, we were asked to film a corporate event, which led to more opportunities – working with different clients, travelling, and gradually moving into commercial and branded content. It was quite a natural, knock-on progression.

There was a moment where I considered going down a more traditional route into natural history filmmaking, but when that didn’t quite work out, I decided instead to build something myself. Since then, we’ve grown the business into a production company working with global clients, alongside building our own studio space.

In simple terms, what does Blanket do?

Blanket is a branded content production company. We create everything from TV commercials and social campaigns to internal communications and educational content, working across a range of sectors.

We also have our studio space. We use it for our own productions, but it’s also available for others to hire. It gives us the ability to experiment more creatively, and also creates a space for other filmmakers and creatives to make their own work.

What sort of skills do you need to work at Blanket?

The biggest thing is curiosity. The people we work with tend to be driven, interested in how things work, and always looking to push ideas further.

A lot of what we do comes down to understanding people and behaviour, and then using that understanding to create something meaningful. Beyond that, the skills vary depending on the role – production, editing, camera work, creative, marketing, studio management. It’s a broad mix.

We also think a lot about team balance and how different people and skillsets fit together to create a strong culture.

How do you recruit people to work at Blanket?

For the last 15 years, we’ve mainly recruited through the Bristol Creative Industries jobs board. It’s important to us to bring in local talent, both to support the creative community in the region and to build a team that can be present and involved in the studio environment.

If you could give a student any advice today, what would it be?

You probably understand where the industry is heading more than you think. The pace of change is so fast, and people coming into it now have a real advantage.

The most important thing is to make things, experiment, and put yourself in situations where you can meet people and learn. Being in the room matters – opportunities come from that. If you’re not there, they won’t.

Where can people find out more about you and your work?

You can find Blanket’s Bristol Creative Industries profile here.

You can learn more about me on LinkedIn here and more about Blanket here.

About Bristol Creative Industries

Bristol Creative Industries is the membership network that supports the region's creative sector to learn, grow and connect, driven by the common belief that we can achieve more collectively than alone.