Early life[edit]

Milk was born in Glen Cove, New York. After attending Friends Academy High School, Milk studied Music and Film at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then earned a B.F.A. in Film, Photography and Computer Graphics at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California.

Career[edit]

Music videos, commercials, short films and interactive[edit]

Milk began his career directing music videos and commercials for artists and brands including Arcade Fire, U2, Kanye West, Green Day, Johnny Cash, Gnarls Barkley, The Chemical Brothers, John Mellencamp, Courtney Love, Modest Mouse, Nike, O2, Chevy and Nintendo.

Milk’s collaboration with Kanye West on the single “All Falls Down” was shot entirely in first person perspective, a technique he utilized again in a commercial for O2’s “Can Do” campaign and his short film “The Last Day Dream”, signaling his future affinity for virtual reality and subjective storytelling. Milk collaborated again with Kanye West on the video for “Touch The Sky”, which was in part an homage to Evel Knievel, a childhood hero of Milk’s.

Milk’s collaboration with Arcade Fire, Aaron Koblin and Google Creative Lab on “The Wilderness Downtown” in 2010 was one of his first interactive videos that utilized emerging technologies to create new, more personal ways for viewers to connect with digital experiences. The browser based video uses HTML5, satellite imagery and Google Street View to incorporate images from a viewer’s childhood home mixed with digital footage and CGI elements. At the end of the video, viewers are encouraged to write a postcard to their younger selves. “The Wilderness Downtown” was named as one of Time‘s 30 Best Music Videos of all time, and was exhibited^[21] at MoMA in New York in 2011

In 2008, Milk directed Second Unit for “A Mother’s Promise”, the film that introduced Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

Immersive installations[edit]

In 2012, Milk created “The Treachery of Sanctuary”, an interactive immersive art installation currently touring the world with The Creators Project. It is a large-scale interactive installation that utilizes the Microsoft Kinect to project and manipulate a participant’s shadow onto a triptych. In the first panel, shadows of birds congregate to form the participant’s shadow. In the second panel, the participant’s shadow is torn apart by the birds. In the third, the participant’s shadow sprouts wings, allowing the shadow to fly out of the frame as the participant flaps their arms. The triptych created a cycle that according to Milk interprets the universal human experience of birth, death and transfiguration. “The Treachery of Sanctuary” was exhibited at the Onassis Cultural center in Greece, and was selected to be a part of the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibition in January 2016.

Also in 2012, Milk collaborated with Aaron Koblin to create “The Exquisite Forest”, a collaborative online experience that allows participants to create branching animated narratives. In the piece, a series of trees represent a series of narratives, each beginning with the seed of an initial animation. As participants create new animations to add to the narrative, the animated trees branch out, creating a representation of the multiple narratives spawned by user input. The piece was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London between 2012 and 2013.

Virtual reality[edit]

Milk’s first virtual reality production was a collaboration with musical artist Beck entitled “Sound and Vision”. The project was initially released online, giving viewers the choice to watch Beck perform from the vantage point of different 360-degree cameras, and further allowed viewers to use their computer’s mouse to change their viewing perspective. Milk invented a binaural audio recording instrument in order to capture sound in a 3D environment to mimic the real-life human experience. The result allows the audio to shift perspective in accordance with what the viewer is seeing, creating a natural virtual experience for the audience member. In the tradition of his work on “The Wilderness Downtown” and Rome, Milk utilized modern technologies to further expand the viewing experience: viewers could enable their computer’s webcam to shift the perspective of the 360 videos up, down, left and right with the tilt of their head.

In 2014, Milk and Aaron Koblin founded Within (Virtual Reality) (formerly Vrse), a virtual reality technology company and sister company Vrse.works. Within is a leading virtual reality company that builds the technology to create and distribute the most innovative human stories in virtual reality. Sister company Here Be Dragons (formerly Vrse.works) has partnered with top talent in film and television and represents a world class roster of directors for virtual reality content creation. The company has already produced award-winning immersive content including Clouds Over Sidra with the United Nations, and work with The New York Times, Vice, NBC, and Nike. Vrse.farm is working in partnership with Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures to develop original cinematic work in virtual reality.^[51] The Within app is currently available on iOS and Android, works with Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, and will be available on the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive when they are released to the public in 2016.

Virtual reality projects[edit]

Through Within and Virtual rea;se.works, Milk has explored Virtual Reality as a means to tell documentaries, narratives, and share live experiences.

In December 2014, Milk and Spike Jonze captured the Millions March in New York, which protested police brutality for Vice News. Milk launched the Within app platform at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in addition to “Evolution of Verse”, a photo-realistic CGI-rendered 3-D virtual reality film, and “Clouds Over Sidra”, a virtual reality documentary made in partnership with the United Nations which follows a 12-year-old girl’s life in a Syrian refugee camp. After the Sundance launch, Vrse.works captured Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary special in VR. Milk created “Walking New York” with Zach Richter, a VR experience made in partnership with The New York Times which follows French artist JR and his making of a 150-foot-tall portrait of a recent immigrant to NYC that was wheat-pasted across the Flatiron Building Pedestrian Plaza for less than 24 hours. Vrse.works recently partnered again with the United Nations to create the VR experience Waves of Grace. The film transports viewers to West Point, the most populous slum in the capital of Liberia, and follows the experience of Decontee Davis, an Ebola survivor who uses her immunity to help others affected by the disease. Most recently, Milk and his team have released music videos for U2 and Muse in partnership with Apple Music. In the video for U2’s “Song for Someone,” singers from around the world sing alongside U2 within the virtual environment. In Muse’s “Revolt,” viewers watch from the point of view of multiple drones as the music spawns a revolution.

Chris Milk Recognitions

Milk has been honored with the Grand Prix Cannes Lions, the D&AD Black Pencil, the  Grand Clio, and SXSW’s ‘Best of Show’ alongside multiple Grammy nominations, MTV Moon Men, and the UK MVA Innovation Award.

Milk was named one of WIRED’s 100 Most Influential People  in 2016, one of The Hollywood Reporter’s L.A.’s 25 Most Powerful Digital Players  in 2016, Adweek‘s Creative 100 list in 2015, as one of the 50 Most Creative People by Advertising Age in 2011 and 2015, and one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company in 2012. Milk presented at TED in 2015 on the power of virtual reality as a medium to advance humanity, and again in 2016 on the birth of virtual reality as a new art form.

After graduating from high school, Peete entered Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She majored in Psychology and French. After she graduated in 1986, she considered attending graduate school and perhaps working in languages for the U.S. State Department. However, she decided to give an acting career a chance. Within a short time, Peete found roles on a television series and in two films.

Peete’s children’s book, My Brother Charlie, won her an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in March 2011. In 2012 the book was awarded the Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award.

In March 2016, a reality series debuted titled For Peete’s Sake, documenting the everyday life of her family.

She is currently doing commercials for the weight loss drug, Lipozene.

Peete was born in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Dolores and Matt Robinson. Her mother was a school teacher, in public relations, and later a personal talent manager, and her father a producer/writer. She has an older brother named Matthew Thomas Robinson III. She attended Greene Street Friends School in nearby Germantown. In 1974, her family moved to California. Peete graduated from Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, California, where her classmates included Rob Lowe. Peete graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in psychology and French. Peete studied abroad for a year at the Sorbonne and is fluent in French. While there she sang in Paris nightclubs, including a memorable performance with jazz legend Lionel Hampton at the Hotel Meridian Jazz Club. 

Holly Robinson Marriage

One of their twins, Rodney Jr., was diagnosed with autism at age three.

After her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, Robinson and her husband co-founded the HollyRod Foundation, which is dedicated to helping find a cure for the disease, as well as for autism, and assist those living with the conditions.

Holly Robinson Career

In 1969, she made her first television appearance by playing a little girl named Sally on the very first episode of Sesame Street. She recalls that when she was six years old, she kept blowing her line, saying “Hi, Daddy”, instead of “Hi, Gordon”, his character’s name. She ended up with just an appearance where she walked down the street with Big Bird. At the age of 11, Holly worked for the children’s show Kidsworld as a celebrity correspondent; she interviewed many actors and actresses for the program. As an actress, she has appeared on the TV series 21 Jump Street (1987–1991), Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper (1992–1997), For Your Love (1998–2002), and Like Family (2003–2004). She was featured in the video for 1990 hit single “Whip Appeal” by Babyface as the sultry radio host at the beginning of the video. In 1992 she portrayed Diana Ross in The Jacksons: An American Dream. Robinson most recently starred on the UPN comedy Love, Inc. The show lasted just one season and was canceled after the WB/UPN merger.

Robinson has also had a limited career as a singer and recording artist, including the introductory song to 21 Jump Street. She contributed a variety of songs to the soundtrack of the film Howard the Duck.  Holly recorded the theme song “We Got Our Love” for the 1988 film Three for the Road. She and Dawnn Lewis, along with R&B quartet En Vogue, performed the theme song for the first season of Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper.

In 2006, she won, along with fellow writer Daniel Paisner, the Quills Award in Sports for the book Get Your Own Damn Beer, I’m Watching the Game!: A Woman’s Guide to Loving Pro Football.

In 2010, she participated in The Celebrity Apprentice 3, playing for her own charity, the HollyRod Foundation, which provides support for families with Parkinson’s disease or autism.

Hosting

Robinson began co-hosting The Talk, a CBS daytime talk show, on October 18, 2010. In this forum, Robinson was known for expressing herself through her ethnicity and being especially vocal about African American issues and, since her son Rodney is affected by it, autism. In April 2011, Robinson hosted a weekly series on The Talk promoting autism awareness.

After serving on The Talk for its first season, Robinson along with Leah Remini was released from the show. Failure to ever disclose why the two were let go brought on a great deal of audience criticism of the show, as well as protests from the stars’ fans.

Robinson hosted the 42nd NAACP Image Awards, alongside Wayne Brady, on March 4, 2011.

The Peete family star in a reality TV series on OWN, entitled For Peete’s Sake. The series follows the lives of Peete and her husband Rodney as they juggle career choices with their family life.

Holly Robinson Peete Net Worth

Over her decades of work in Hollywood, Robinson Peete has amassed an estimated net worth of $4 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. The site estimates that Robinson Peete’s husband Rodney is worth $5.5 million, giving the couple a combined net worth of nearly $10 million.

Peete also earns money from her book, Get Your Own Damn Beer, I’m Watching the Game!: A Woman’s Guide to Loving Pro Football which costs $13.17 in Paperback. According to some online sources, a TV star makes an average salary that ranges from $150k to $1 million. Moreover, in 2016, she launched her own clothing line, HPR from where she is earning a good income.

Besides, she owns a house in Crest Place, Los Angeles, California worth $5.9 million. The home covered 7234 sq.ft with seven bedrooms and five bathrooms.

HollyRod Foundation

Peete along with her spouse co-founded the HollyRod Foundation after her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Their foundation helo to find a cure for several diseases including autism. In 2012, they teamed up with Nestle’s Carnation Breakfast Essentials where she is featured as the spokesperson. The same year, she also became the member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority