Over the past two years, Neill Blomkamp has been putting together an independent production company which aims to gives audiences a variety of experimental short films. We've already seen the first offering from Oats Studios and now the second, FIREBASE, has been released which throws us back to the Vietnam war. We follow American soldier Hines through an ever deepening web of sci-fi madness as the fabric of space-time literally begins to bend around him. It's a little APOCALYPSE NOW, a little PREDATOR, and a little…well, you'll just have to watch and see.
Neill Blomkamp spoke with Verge about the making of FIREBASE, which was shot in the jungles of South Africa, and what inspired the story behind this latest short film from Oats Studios.
The initial idea was the concept of living in a virtual simulation: simulation hypothesis was the core basis. The theory behind this was born out of the idea that we exist in a simulated construct, where there are errors or anomalies. If you think of the universe as a piece of software, then there would be this self-correcting code that would come in and fix the erroneous code.
We came up with the idea of someone who accidentally breaks through the program and is able to see and understand that there's more to reality than the level they exist in. We wanted someone who could play with the laws of thermodynamics, time, and space. In the case of the River God, he’s acting almost subconsciously. He’s more of an error or an anomaly. Plus, the idea of a science fiction story set in Vietnam is interesting, and a concept I haven't seen that much of.
In this film, the River God starts tampering with the fabric of space-time. This universe corrects that by sending in people like Hines, who don't understand why they were drawn to these anomalies, or what their purpose is. They just know they have to stop this thing from happening. On a higher level, he's almost like an antivirus program.
It's a little too early to say where the future of Oats Studios will lead, but it will be up to viewers such as ourselves to help fund their upcoming content, either through their official website or by purchasing DLC content on Steam, which includes many of the assets used to make the shorts. The next major Oats Studios short to be released will be ZYGOTE, which stars Dakota Fanning and a "really cool" creature.