Millien uncovers young creatives

According to Millien, 26, she practically lives at the studio.

Uncovered started two years ago as a web series developed by Millien’s creative agency, A Millien Concepts. The series featured lesser-known local artistes performing acoustic covers of popular soca songs. Last year, Uncovered expanded into a radio singing competition and most recently, it’s been picked up by C TV for a third season which began airing earlier this month. As the Uncovered brand continues to grow, the format of the show has moved from featuring covers to highlighting the lives of young creatives of all kinds.

As hard as she works in the field, Millien became involved in film production by chance while studying psychology at UWI. While at UWI she made friends in the Film Programme and used her keen organising skills to help many film students bring projects to life. And if she hadn’t happened upon something “silly” while working on a project with one of these same UWI friends, Uncovered may not have reached the public.

Many will remember Millien from the popular Trini Selfie - a parody of the song “Selfie” by American duo Chainsmokers.

Trini Selfie garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube and inspired Millien to use the mileage gained to finally launch a venture she’d been planning for over a year.

To launch the project, she started at home with her sister Denice, who’s a singer. Coming from a creative family helped Millien a lot as both her brother and father are musicians and she had access to their knowledge, experience, network and even a home studio.

The web series eventually got so popular that people started requesting featured artistes for performances, which has lead Millien to not only produce but also serve as a booking agent. “I didn’t expect people to start hiring us for performances and that’s when I realised that I could monetise the idea,” the bubbly Millien told Newsday.

The project’s success has also inspired Millien to work on other series such as a lifestyle vlog, Social Lime. For Uncovered’s fourth season, which returns in 2017, Millien plans to do a school tour with the hopes of eventually taking the series to other Caribbean nations.

While A Millien Concepts is gaining success, it hasn’t always been easy. For the second season, trying to secure sponsorship proved difficult. “We sent out 200- 300 proposals and most responses were negative. People support you from a distance and will say they like your ideas, but when it’s time to budget you get a lot of red tape,” she said.

For Millien, however, these hardships were valuable and her message to youth is: value ev ery experience. “Don’t take the minor experiences lightly. I left UWI feeling down and out because I didn’t want to be a psychologist or a counsellor only to realise – when things started to make sense – that it was the relationships I built at UWI that mattered and not necessarily the degree.” She continued: “You need to meet people, try new things. You never know where or how or who it would amount to at some point in time, people always come into your life for a reason,” According to Millien, passion is what got her this far. “Once you’re passionate about something and people can sense it, things start falling into place.

Passion is what will drive you to ask a question and meet someone who would appreciate you coming to them.” The Uncovered Project airs on C TV on Thursdays at 8 pm. You can also find out more about Millien and the Uncovered Project by checking out the Facebook page: Uncovered T&T.