Interview: Gavin Miller, chief executive of Centre for the Moving Image

Published on Tuesday 7 September 2010 20:29

As the new head of the Centre for the Moving Image, Gavin Miller has his work cut out, with budget limitations and the loss of key staff throwing him back on his greatest resource: a passion for film, finds Lee Randall

• Gavin Miller says the first film he saw at Loretto school featured Clint Eastwood Picture: Neil Hanna

SOMEONE rearranged Edinburgh's streets while Gavin Miller's back was turned. OK, not really, but that's how it felt at first, after 25 years spent working in London. He fulfilled a long-standing, but sidelined, ambition to return to Scotland this July, when he took up the reins as chief executive officer of the new Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), which encompasses Filmhouse, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Edinburgh Film Guild.

So who is he and where does he come from? The 44-year-old says: "My father's Scottish, from Edinburgh, and I view myself as a Scot."

His father, now retired, was an army man, so Miller spent his early years in Hong Kong and Germany. He's the middle child, with a brother and a sister on either side, and because the family moved bienially, he was sent home to be educated. "I was at prep school in Moffat and then went to Loretto and university at St Andrews. Going away at eight wasn't that great, though to a degree it helped that my brother and I were at the same school in Moffat. But it was tough. It's not a good age to be sent away."

On the plus side, he reckons it's made him more independent, especially because at Loretto students were "sort of treated as adults – until you went against the grain, and then you were treated accordingly. The premise was: you're grown up, so there's a more liberal environment."

He has fond memories of some tutors, and of time spent on the playing fields. "I remember sessions where you'd go round to a teacher's or master's house and talk about life. And the sport was very good. I was a big hockey player, and rugby and cricket. I loved team sports, but as you get older you go to more individual sports when you're in control of your own destiny. Now I love skiing, scuba diving, stuff like that."

Pestered to draw from his memory banks – Miller is extremely private and despite his geniality, would rather not be talking about anything remotely personal – he thinks he probably made his first visit to the cinema in Germany as a youngster.

"I'm not sure what it was, but what I do remember about that time was that they always showed a B movie beforehand. I feel the loss of having that before the film proper began."

At Loretto he paid 2 a term to belong to the Film Club. "At the time (that] was really windswept and interesting. I think the first film I saw there would have been a Clint Eastwood movie. I was a big film fan even then, but I never thought that I'd end up with a career in media and entertainment. When we had to fill in those forms about career interests, I'd write things like journalist or lawyer, and they would go, 'Yes, you could be a journalist or a lawyer,' but they would never tell you how!"

At St Andrews he studied history and politics – he remains keenly interested in politics with a "small p" – and fostered friendships that endure to this day. Then he went south and "fell into the world of media and entertainment. I joined an advertising agency, cutting my teeth around understanding consumers, media planning and media buying."

He moved into marketing, and worked as a commercial director of BBC Worldwide, before joining CMI.

Miller often thought about returning to Scotland, though he emphasises: "The decision to take this job was purely about the role, not the location. It encompasses so much of what I want to develop as a person, which is to run and build a business around moving image, and the multi-disciplinary thing of film and gaming and advertising. We want to get CMI on to the radar in terms of Scotland, the UK, and globally. The opportunity was both building on the heritage of creativity and culture in the existing brands, and also looking at where we can take it. It's a big job."

That was his take on things earlier this summer. When we caught up last week, I realised he's been working his socks off, regularly arriving at his desk at 7:30am and putting in 12 hours, nearly seven days a week. It's probably just as well that he's single. When I asked him about the logistics of relocating in July, wondering whether he had children, he smiled and confessed: "No. I'm still looking for Mrs Miller." Have there been any surprises, after so many years? Obviously Edinburgh's political and economic landscape have changed, but what else strikes him now?

"I thought I'd be more emotional, hark back to the glory days of my education here. I thought I would have a sense of emotional loss, but actually I haven't at all. My focus has been work: this is what we need to do and this is how we need to do it. I haven't had time for nostalgia. Having said that, it means I'm discovering things for the first time without having to think about the past baggage."

Edinburgh may be Scotland's capital, but it operates like a small town, and that has proven surprising. "The bit I suppose I wasn't acutely aware of is that all eyes are on you, because I come from that big, urban place where you're just one of millions. I've always been quite private and have been labelled a Man of Mystery before. I find I laugh, and say 'no comment' a lot.

"Part of it, remember, is a new person coming in. People go, 'What's he going to do?' 'Who's he?' I get that. When you ask lots of questions, what people don't realise is that you're asking to get informed about decisions you can make, but they often think you're asking because you're questioning how things are run. There's a balance to be struck.

My passion is making sure that we've got the right people in the right place and that they're nurtured and mentored."

Miller's focus is identifying ways to balance creativity with commercialism. In lectures at the Metropolitan Film School, in London, he explored the changing landscape with would-be producers and film-makers.

"Looking at consumer behaviour and how we consume media – all these things are changing. On the one hand, you have the creative and cultural forces, who want to make stuff, to be seen and enjoyed, but on the other hand is the commercial reality. Can you afford it, can you distribute it? You don't necessarily need to prostitute the creative piece; the two sides can work hand-in-hand."

He says it comes back to the importance of talent as a brand. "You can take a name like John Le Carr, for example, whose brand is about thrillers and spies. How do you take that well-known name and extend it to other platforms around content that you can distribute through other channels?"

Wouldn't the apotheosis of that concept be Katie Price? "When I say talent, I mean talented. For me it's about doing it properly and nurturing talent so that it's a long term, well understood and sustainable brand – as opposed to celebrity. This is not about celebrity.

"One phrase I use is 'sustainable, profitable growth'. When you say that in the arts community, they baulk at the word profitable, but for me it's qualitative as well as quantitative. It's not just 'how are we going to make money from this', but also looking at it in terms of education."

It's a big remit, but hasn't the CMI just lost 1.8 million in funding from the UK Film Council? He scowls. "That's the figure the media names." Higher? Lower? He won't say, and when I interpret a hand gesture to mean lower, insists he's merely groping for his glass of wine. "The important thing is that we have a good opportunity to look at a whole new way of putting on festivals," he says, ever on-message.

"The festival puts money into the economy, and we want to make sure its heritage is retained, but this is also a good challenge because we have to be more focused and dynamic about what we then create and go forward with. There's an interesting model we can offer investors, which allows us to retain the brand essence of the Film Festival and Filmhouse, but where we take part of the investment into the CMI and invest in new projects that deliver a return for communities to provide both a philanthropic and a commercial return."

Meanwhile, the Film Festival just lost its artistic director, Hannah McGill. I presume he's been inundated with CVs? "Zero. Not one. I think people are waiting for an official announcement and an ad in the paper." His ideal candidate will be creative, innovative, dynamic, passionate about film, and well connected. "It will have to be someone who really wants to stretch – almost like an author of the film festival, in a way."

Talking about these challenges brings a gleam to his eye. He's clearly thriving on the punishing pace. "I am enjoying the job. It's hard, though not harder than I thought it would be. I wouldn't have it any other way – otherwise I wouldn't feel as if I was making any difference, or contributing."

Miller's Trail:

As commercial director at BBC Worldwide Miller was responsible for building new revenue streams across multi-licensing platforms for brands such as Top Gear, Lonely Planet, Masterchef and Doctor Who.

Before that, he had been marketing director at BBC Worldwide and at Universal Pictures, and commercial marketing director at Capital Radio Group.

An MBA from Durham University Business School, he is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has lectured at the Metropolitan Film School.