Oats Studios: all the latest from Neill Blomkamp’s experimental film studio – The Verge

This behind-the-scenes documentary shows how Oats Studios filmed its Anthem short film

2019-07-28T11:29:16-04:00

In February, Neill Blomkamp's Oats Studios released a short, live-action teaser film for BioWare's open-world shooter, Anthem. That film tells a short story that highlights some of the world's larger story elements, and features some great, live-action visuals that brought it to life. Now, Oats has released a lengthy behind-the-scenes documentary that showed off how it created the short film.

The 28 minute documentary shows off the incredible effort that went into producing that 3:45 short film: it involved elaborate sets, shoots in Spain and in Hawaii's rainforests, suits of armor, and plenty of CGI and stunt-work.

In the documentary, Blo …

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Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios released a live-action Anthem short film

2019-02-14T11:03:19-05:00

District 9 director Neill Blomkamp unveiled a new live-action short film called Conviction from Oats Studios. It's set in the same world as BioWare's upcoming open-world power armor shooter Anthem.

Blomkamp set up his studio in 2017, describing it as an experimental incubator in which he can prototype ideas and see what sticks before fully committing to a longer work. Over the course of several months, he released a series of lengthy science fiction short films on YouTube along with a smattering of other zany experiments.

This three-and-a-half-minute short film follows the mold of its predecessors, showing off something that plays like a t …

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Neill Blomkamp’s Firebase crowdfunding campaign comes to an early end

2018-04-20T13:44:00-04:00

Just over a week after it announced that it was collecting money to crowdfund a sequel to its short concept film Firebase, Neill Blomkamp's Oats Studios says that it will refund contributions because it hadn't raised enough money to "do something [truly] awesome."

It released a series of short films last year that were intended as conceptual starting points for much larger projects. Blomkamp told The Verge earlier this month that the campaign was an attempt "to set up a situation where [fans] fuel our ability to continue to make stuff, and just have this one-on-one relationship with the audience."

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The campaign seems to have fallen …

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Neill Blomkamp wants to crowdfund his next big Oats Studios project

2018-04-11T13:26:45-04:00

In 2017, District 9 and Chappie writer-director Neill Blomkamp launched Oats Studios, a production house designed to experiment with new ways of developing projects ranging from short CGI films to longer story concepts that could eventually become feature-length projects. Now he's announced his plans to turn one of those shorter films, Firebase, into a much larger project - and he wants fans to fund it.

Blomkamp told The Verge that just as he designed the studio to experiment with stories, he's also hoping to experiment with the relationship he and Oats have with fans, "trying to set up a situation where [fans] fuel our ability to continue …

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How Neill Blomkamp and Unity are shaping the future of filmmaking with Adam: The Mirror

2017-11-30T14:58:21-05:00

Last year, the company behind the Unity game engine released Adam, a proof-of-concept short film designed to show off its cinematic creation tools. It doesn't have much of a story: it's just a robot escaping a prison. But Unity Technologies earned enough of a response to justify developing the story into something bigger, and its representatives turned to Neill Blomkamp's Oats Studios.

Blomkamp, the writer-director of Elysium and District 9, launched Oats earlier this year as an experiment. He wanted to develop his film ideas without waiting years for the attention and resources of a typical Hollywood studio. Earlier this summer, he release …

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District 9 director Neill Blomkamp shows off his CGI chops in his latest short Kapture

2017-08-03T16:11:09-04:00

Earlier this summer, director Neill Blomkamp announced a new creative workshop called Oats Studios, and the filmmaker has just released its latest project. Kapture is a documentary-style CG short about a pair of weapons designers who test out their their latest creations, serving as a callback to a critical scene in Blomkamp's debut District 9, while also highlighting the oddball sensibilities that have been a focal point of most of Oats Studios' projects.

Thus far, the studio has released three long-form short films: Rakka, Firebase, and Zygote, each of which Blomkamp hopes to scale up to feature-length projects. But the director has also …

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Neill Blomkamp on creating the horrific creature in his latest short film Zygote

2017-07-12T14:03:09-04:00

Last month, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp launched his experimental short film project, Oats Studios, releasing an alien invasion film called Rakka, and later, an alternate-history Vietnam War film called Firebase. Now, the director has shared his latest short film, Zygote, which features War of the Worlds and Twilight star Dakota Fanning.

Compared to the other films, Zygote is a comparably straightforward affair. It opens with two people trapped in a mining facility somewhere in the Arctic Circle. They're fleeing a horrific creature made of body parts from other members of the station.

District 9 director Neill Blomkamp on why he's st …

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Neill Blomkamp on his next short film, Firebase, and life in a virtual simulation

2017-06-28T15:01:55-04:00

Earlier this month, Neill Blomkamp began releasing short films from his experimental film venture, Oats Studios. First came Rakka, an alien-invasion concept. That was followed by Cooking With Bill, a wacky infomercial that goes terribly wrong. Oats' third and most recent short film is Firebase, a story about something lurking in the rain forests while the Vietnam War rages on around it.

Firebase opens with a disfigured American soldier tied to a post. Soon, American GIs start coming across bodies with strange, horrifying growths under the skin. When they look into the sky, they see a Huey dismantled in mid-flight, while more footage shows t …

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The latest video from Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios is a wacky infomercial gone awry

2017-06-20T15:20:28-04:00

Last week, Neil Blomkamp released Rakka, the first short video from his experimental short film project Oats Studios. The alien invasion film feels as though it's ready to be scaled up into a feature film, and is one of several that he will release this summer. However, those serious projects aren't the thing that we'll see from him, and the latest video is a good example of what else they have up their sleeves: a twisted infomercial.

Indeed, the trailer for the studio promised some "weird shit" was headed our way, and Cooking With Bill - Damasu 950 certainly falls into that category. The three-minute video is set in a 1980s-era kitchen bef …

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Director Neill Blomkamp breaks down his new sci-fi short Rakka

2017-06-14T21:05:16-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, District 9 and Chappie director Neill Blomkamp unveiled Oats Studios, his new project focusing on experimental short films. At the time, Blomkamp described the studio as an attempt to remain creative in a film industry that rewards endless sequels and franchises. Through Oats, he'll be developing a range of potential projects, from serious science fiction to wackier concepts, with the hope that some of them may eventually make the leap to full-length feature films.

The first film from Oats Studios, Rakka, is now available for streaming on YouTube and Steam, and it depicts the aftermath of an alien invasion. The year i …

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