Oats Studios Releases Firebase; Read Our Interview With Neill Blomkamp!
Jonathan Barkan
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Over the past few weeks, Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios has stunned audiences with two short films, the first being Rakka, a dark vision of humanity facing off against an invading and more powerful alien species, and Damasu 950, a darkly comedic take on late night home shopping network cooking shows. Each film has shown pristine levels of production and talent, not to mention a level of creativity that people have been clamoring for.
Today, Oats has released their next short film in the form of Firebase, a tale set in an alternate Vietnam where soldiers aren’t fighting the VC, they’re fighting themselves.
Below is the short as well as an exclusive interview with Blomkamp himself that delves into the attention Oats is getting, what their vision and goal is, his thoughts on CG vs practical, and more!
Firebase assets will be hitting the Oats Studios Steam Page later today.
Dread Central: Oats has stunned people right out of the gate with Rakka and Damasu 950. What has been the reaction like at Oats to the overwhelming love so far?
Neill Blomkamp: Well, it’s hard to judge. I feel like it’s kind of difficult to get a clear idea of what the audience thinks but it does feel positive, which is good. I think things like the cooking show in contrast with Rakka is kind of, to me, really hilarious but I didn’t know what the audience would make of that. But what it’s meant to be is this umbrella of weird creativity where you can go from strange comedy that you’re not sure how you feel about to dark science fictional horror. I find the juxtaposition of that really appealing and really funny. But I must admit that when I released the first Cooking with Bill show, I was not sure how that was going to go down [laughs].
But yeah, I feel pretty good as long as people are enjoying it.
DC: I got the chance to see Firebase before its release and the version I saw didn’t have finalized VFX in it. Can you talk about having a release so close even though the project isn’t complete?
NB: Yeah, that’s true but almost any film with VFX… The thing about us is that we have a self-imposed deadline. We’re just putting it out on YouTube. But for theatrical released features with VFX, everyone works until the last minute. I mean, it’s extremely rare that something is done for several weeks before it comes out. So, we’re following a feature film methodology, I guess, and we need a really proper type schedule to manage the effects we have.
DC: Something I find fascinating about your films is that the extol the strength of the human spirit but they recognize the limits of our physicality, which is why we often see some kind of power suit or armor. What’s with the interest or love of these devices?
NB: I definitely like engineering, for sure, but I think it’s deeper than that. I think there are several things working at once in my head, I suppose. The one element is transhumanism and upgrading humans, I find very interesting. I also find any form of body horror or psychologically recognizing vulnerable and fragile we are or how infections or viruses or mutilation are kind of so close to us or possible and they’re these horrors that we don’t want to think about. So I’m not sure how that’s working subconsciously but I know that’s all intertwined into whatever’s on screen.
DC: In the genre community, there’s always the discussion surrounding practical vs CG effects. Can you talk about the pros and cons of both when it comes to Oats releases?
NB: I definitely feel like Oats is one of the best places to play with that because we have our own pretty awesome small VFX department. Then, when we were in production, we had our own practical division that was building props and silicon prosthetics and stuff. We have an environment where you can play slightly more than if it were a straight up, normal film because some of the playing yields their own projects and you can go down those roads of creating a one-minute piece just to look at how something works.
So, what I always try to do and, I think, Chris Harvey, who’s the VFX supervisor here, is really interested in doing is…you want to go down a road where the only goal is to fool the audience. That’s what your goal is and you have that in your mind the whole time and never forget that that’s what you’re trying to do. It can inform a lot of the decisions you’re trying to make. And that sounds kind of obvious but it’s not actually as obvious as it would seem. In the 60’s and 70’s when people were actually trying to figure things out how to do things, it hadn’t been done before and you would have to think and actually come up with a methodology to execute something. All of that is gone now, it’s all finished because it’s been worked out. And not only has everything been worked out but the entire new world of computer graphics has been introduced. So it’s not like, “How do we do forced perspective miniature photography?” or “What’s the best silicon mixture?” or, back in the day it was latex and not silicon, “What looks the most real?” Then you introduce computer graphics, you go through all of that, and, eventually, in the 21st century, you get to the point where no one thinks about what they’re doing. They just kind of go to the most obvious thing, which is, “We’ll just do everything with computer graphics because we can.” But it’s not the same as what would affect the audience the most because it also alters the way you film it if you’re going to do something with practical or prosthetics.
I think the two of us always have that in the back of our minds. It’s about conveying the most realistic image to the audience. Once you hone in on that, you can make decisions where this form of prosthetic or practical work is going to catch the light better or interact with the mud or the soil or the water around it better than if it was CG. And this approach with CG is going to work better than anything practical because of the scale or the weight or the size of the thing, we could never have done it practically. I think we balance those two things always.
I do notice with myself having worked on a few almost horror pieces in Oats now that, first of all, I’m more interested in horror and gore and sci-fi/horror than I was before. Secondly, I think that my focus is shifting to want to put even more into practical, only in the sense that it alters how you shoot it. The best example for that is when you look at Ridley Scott’s first Alien. The way that that creature was shot and how you’re not sure what you’re looking at and how the audience builds the suspense in their own minds because you couldn’t just shoot it in bright sunlight 24 hours a day. You have to hide it behind smoke and shadows and I find that really appealing.
So, locking yourself into a practical approach actually alters the filmmaking in a way that adds more tension for the audience. And then, if you need to, you can augment that with CG to get over what they couldn’t do in the 70’s and 80’s.
DC: By releasing your films and files to Steam, you’re venturing into a model that no one has ever really done before. What do you think might be some interesting consequences to come from this approach?
NB: Well, Steam really was the genesis of that idea because we are essentially breaking apart some of the film tools or elements in the way that games are broken apart. If you go onto Oats on Steam, the DLC section refers to it as “Software”. Thinking of film as software and being able to split apart the fundamental layers that make up the film is just a really interesting thing. The idea to release the films on Steam is what resulted in that thought process and if you look at what Valve has done with games, at microtransactions within the gaming community and someone in Vietnam, a kid in Vietnam, modeling armor or skins or assets that can be sold in Steam and a buyer in the US is buying those assets to use in the game, it’s just a very interesting, weird, conundrum to try and solve to see if some of that can bleed into film, into two dimensional narrative. I’m not sure if it can but to look at it and attempt is really interesting.
So, I think the surface level is…if I was 18 or 19 and I downloaded all of the background files to, say, Firebase, it would be cool for me to remix it and play with editing or the effects or 3D print my own gun. That’s easy to understand. What’s more difficult to predict is how people may, or if it’s even possible, to build a skin for a game. I don’t know what that means for film, I’m not sure how that works but I like the idea of attempting to find out what that means.
I don’t know where it’s going to lead and it may lead nowhere. People could say, “There’s no value in this.” Maybe it could lead somewhere. I think the whole “audience judging what you’re doing” thing and seeing if there’s value in it, that in itself is very interesting.
DC: What can people do to help ensure that Oats keeps putting out amazing content?
NB: Well, it’s a really difficult question. We’ve been trying to figure that out for two years because the cost of the films, to make them, is really, really high and it’s going to take a lot of money where we would be able to do volume two. It raises a lot of questions like if, say, four big films that are 20 minutes each that appear in volume one, which are going to come out for free, if you had volume two and they had four films of the same scale BUT the audience now knew what they were getting, would they pay for that? Because, initially for us to just make the audience pay for weird 20 minute films felt wrong. It didn’t feel like the right move.
So, the first question is do the volumes themselves hold value and can we sell the second volume? Is that possible? If the answer to that is “yes”, can we presell volume two to a wide enough audience that we can get enough money to make volume two and we’re not putting up the money ourselves. So that’s one question. The second question is could we presell one of the films in volume one, if the audience likes it enough, could we raise 20 to 30 million dollars to make that film. The third option is that we get outside financing to make one of the films that is in volume one or volume two and put that in theaters traditionally and use the proceeds of that to fund Oats. Those are the biggest questions.
At the moment, the easiest way is to buy the DLC packages on Steam or to donate to us through our website. But that’s more like trying to help Oats. We need millions and millions and millions of dollars to do what we’ve done so far and we knew this was coming. It was just going to be a case of what’s the smartest move is now going forward. But the money does help.
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