Interview: Neill Blomkamp On Launching a New Crowdfunding Platform for Firebase Feature
Jonathan Barkan
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Perhaps one of the most exciting parts of 2017 was the unveiling of Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios and the truly magnificent fare they released on a regular basis. Featuring stellar production values with fascinating stories, Blomkamp’s unique style came to life across several short films that have fueled the imagination and wonder of audiences the world over. Today, Blomkamp wants to take that vision one step further.
Hearing the cries for feature-length versions of Oats Studios titles, Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie, Elysium) and the rest of his team are launching a new crowdfunding platform, one that will direct every committed dollar to bringing a story to life on screen. The first film that will be the beneficiary of this platform? Firebase, the Vietnam War-set sci-fi horror that has been seen over 2 million times since launching.
While we could try to explain everything, we think it best that you hear directly from a more directly related source. That’s why we’re excited to bring you an interview with Blomkamp himself, who tells us about the platform, why he chose Firebase, and how the campaign will work. We also have a few exclusive images from Firebase that you can see below.
If you want to pledge to see a feature-length Firebase become a reality, head on over to Oats Studios to see how you can be a part of this mission.
Lastly, Blomkamp will be hosting a Twitch livestream where he will do live commentary on five Oats Studios film: Rakka, God, Zygote, Kapture, and Firebase. Each short film will be followed by a Q&A with Blomkamp, Art Director Rich Simpson, and VFX Supervisor, Chris Harvey. The stream begins at 11am PST/2pm EST and can be watched on Twitch.
Dread Central: So first of all, thanks for taking the time to chat. I’m really excited about everything you’ve got going on, admittedly I don’t know too much about it so I’m excited by an idea, hoping you’ll shed some light on the details themselves.
Neill Blomkamp: Right, well thank you. Getting the message out really helps so we really appreciate that. Are you familiar with Firebase?
DC: Yes! We covered the Oats Studio stuff very extensively and are always ready to cover it more.
NB: Yeah, awesome, thanks for that. So basically what I want to try to do is really consciously and actively step to the side of Hollywood and kind of make this kind of weird, autonomous studio that just tries to interact directly with fans online and make stuff that is one hundred percent under our control. That’s kind of what the mantra is and how we’ve been approaching stuff that we’ve made so far so going forward, I want to try and shoot another piece for Firebase and I want to kind of call upon fans and anybody who liked the first one to help fund the next piece that we do and that’s really what this is about. So it’s like an appeal to the fans of the first one to help us fund the next one.
DC: From what I understand the crowdfunding platform is something you and your team have built and it kind of deviates from standard crowdfunding norms and concepts that creates something unique in and of itself. Can you tell me a bit about that?
NB: Sure. So if you think of the game industry, and you want to purchase a game, essentially the studio and the player have a one to one relationship where the game is essentially purchased from the studio, right? You may be doing it through Steam but you’re really buying it from the studio. So these creative game studios exist, these stand-alone little eco systems, that sells its content directly to the people who enjoy ingesting the content and so what I want to try to do, I want to get to the point eventually where we are doing that, where we are selling episodes or films or conceptual ideas to the audience that fuels us. The reason that I think it’s different from other crowdfunding approaches is when you buy a game, it’s not like you’re going through some perks and incentive packages, it’s a case of eventually, if we end up selling things the way games are sold you’re just paying for the game. You’re not paying us fifty percent of the amount of money we’re receiving so that we can get into a whole bunch of distracted work that is surrounded by perks and merchandise and rewards and like normal things that crowdfunding situations seem to go through, so in other words all dollars go onto the screen. So right from the get go I’m trying to set up a situation where, even if it means we raise less money, because we’re explicitly saying that we’re just going to take the dollars and turn them into film production, it means we’re not going to pander to the audience and go through this process that is deviating from what our goal is, by spending fifty percent of our time and resources on a whole bunch of things that don’t actually end up on the screen and that was the reason to want to directly link it to our site, under our control, is because it’s a long term plan that eventually the nucleus is just Oats, you just go there and to make more content for you, or, there’s no more crowdfunding in the future and further down the line we just make the stuff and sell it through the same portal. In either case, all of the dollars are on screen and that was the main reason to deviate from the normal practice.
Neill Blomkamp
DC: It’s a very fascinating concept because we obviously see Steam, for better or worse, it does work. There are obviously studios that don’t get a lot of attention because it’s an ocean of names and opportunities out there, but the ones that do well and stand out, they end up being very successful. So I’m curious, with you kind of treading into this water, what kind of research have you done and what are the risks you’re anticipating with this kind of a system?
NB: We still have years to go before we’re generating enough content that we’re just actively selling it on our own platform. I just use the analogy of Steam because, let’s say I’m a small indie game developer and I build a game and put it up on Steam. If I can create enough noise around it and the game is good enough, it will sell. There’s a radical difference between the process of doing that versus making a film in front of Hollywood where the filmmaker is disconnected a lot of time from the audience, it’s not going to be up to them to sell that film to the audience. That also means listening to the audience, judging if something does well or doesn’t do well, is kind of a one on one relationship with the audience, the same way games are. So for us, Steam is the analogy of too much content and getting lost on a large platform, it doesn’t really apply to us because the only thing on our platform is us. The thing it does take from the game industry is the idea of building a virtual destination online that just makes stuff and sells it directly to the customer. All of that is really hypothetical, all talk, the point of that is, is just to be creative, make stuff and see whether the people like it or not rather than second guessing or not whether we’re going to lose money.
DC: I like that idea of let’s make it and then let the audience speak directly to you. In a way it’s cutting out a lot of middle men and you’re going to have a lot more intimate and personal relationship with the people that are enjoying your product.
NB: Yeah, exactly. So now, in the beginning, if you use Firebase as an example, we put up the money initially to make Firebase. We really like it, I want to make more of it, I have a whole bunch of ideas of where it can go, how it can happen and other avenues within the world of Firebase, what I want to show people, what I want to make, but for the second round I want to call on the audience to help us make it. I want anyone who liked it to fuel our ability to make the next one and hopefully at some point we’ll be up enough on our feet that we can start making our own content and instead of releasing it for free on YouTube, charging for it so we can build up enough of a war chest so we can make more and bigger concepts.
DC: The people who invest, what do they get out of it, because as you say, you’re not going to go the route of traditional crowdfunding with t-shirts and posters and things that don’t appear on the screen as you say. So what do they get out of this experience?
NB: If they like Firebase, fund us to make more Firebase and what we’ll do is tailor the length of the film to the amount of money we raise. So if we have a fixed dollar per minute ratio, it’s the same quality of the first one, then instead of raising too little money and killing the contracts, which is what happens on other platforms, we can release whatever amount of minutes we can afford. So we’ll tailor the ideas we have to the right amount of dollars and go off and shoot that and make that, so the audience who pays will get the film. I love the idea that everyone who paid will have their name in the credits and having this long credit list that just rolls, I think it’s a pretty cool idea. Really, it goes back to re-enforcing the original idea, which is every dollar that comes in goes straight on the screen, so if you’re going to give us a dollar we’re going to make the film and that’s the message I want to get across to people, as opposed to some like fluffy toy cat or a hat, it’s like no, you’re going to get the film.
DC: You mentioned that Firebase was something you loved and you have a lot of ideas for it. Was there a particular reason that you settled on Firebase versus some of the other films that Oats has released?
NB: Well, there’s two components to that question. The first is, in a long term wish list of what Oats can become. The main thing I want to see it do is put out more volumes of different ideas, like forever, so kind of like for every time we release a sequel to a film we’ve done, or a feature film based off one of the shorter films, we would also be putting out a new batch of fresh ideas every time, I really like that idea, and there’s always new things you can pull from, so that’s one element of answering your question. The second element is, in terms of sequels that we’ve already made or films in the world of films we’ve already made, I like Zygote just as much but I think Firebase is the weirdest and unique which is something that draws me to them. I also love the idea of, there’s a lot of gnostic ideas and this seed of Gnosticism runs through Firebase pretty strongly so I want to explore stuff to do with arcons and Gnosticism through more Firebase, it’s kind of a psychological mode that I’m in right now, that’s the road I want to go down. I’ve actually written a feature film screenplay on Firebase that is incredibly gnostic but I doubt we would raise enough money to be able to shoot that, so I’m going to shoot pieces of that.
DC: Ok, and coming back to this platform, you mentioned it’s going to take a few years before everything is in line and hopefully you’ve got this war chest and everything is kind of chugging along smoothly and I’m curious, what are the long term goals that you do envision with this system and with Oats in general?
NB: If it played out the way I would love to see it play out it would mean that we had enough fans and enough resources that we could execute District 9 size feature films, one hundred percent on our own, completely disconnected from everything that we sell to our online audience, that’s my number one goal. As a byproduct of that, those films can also be released in theaters, if we make deals with the right distributors but essentially it works a lot like an online game company where you’re just existing on your own as creative force, that hopefully you have people behind you that really like the stuff that you’re doing. We’re just doing it at a scale that’s on par with productions that are coming out of Hollywood, it’s just that we’re autonomously self-sufficient.
DC: Are you looking into all of the upcoming technologies that are making their way in, how ARG is expanding, and virtual reality and seeing if those are ways that Oats can kind of stand out amongst the competition?
NB: Well, sort of. One onset to that is there’s a medieval game that I want to make, it could potentially be VR but definitely a first person perspective thing I want to make. When you start talking about things like VR, there’s an extremely different narrative process happening there where the viewer really is the protagonist and I think for me creativity, I really love that stuff but I think my true passion is in film. So I would rather try to figure out how to make film work in an online twenty first century digital distribution kind of way, a new way of looking at it, rather than merge Oats into something that just does AR and VR, so I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of our passion for 2D linear narrative storytelling in the kind of sci-fi, horror, fantasy landscape.
DC: So is there anything you want to make sure comes across to the readers, to the audiences so that they understand the passion and drive that’s coming from behind this initiative?
NB: I would say if there are any one of our fans who have seen Firebase and who simultaneously want to help us make the next installation of Firebase and also put money into what Oats is, creatively driven, online, strange autonomous film studio, support us. We’ll work our hardest to give the best product back to you, so I think that really is what the message is, what I want to say, that the more money we raise, the more Firebase we can give.
https://youtu.be/FYW89XicK8Q
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