Its dark, its intense, its Rakka - the new short from Neill Blomkamps Oats Studio.

The director gives us an in-depth guide.. What do these horrible invaders want?

What was that mysterious, angelic being that appeared to a panic-stricken soldier in the first third?

Where might the story go next?

I wanted a sci-fi version of that, where it sort of flips the viewers point of view.

So what was that angelic being?

That swarm of nano-cloud pieces of metal isnt really the creature, or its intelligence.

The intelligence is tethered to the physical presence, but its somewhere else.

So what are the invaders up to?

According to Blomkamp, theres method in their madness.

So whats the best way of blowing up an alien?

Incredibly, these effects are all digital:

There is nothing there that is happening there except computer graphics.

At Oats theres two really awesome effects guys, and theyre doing the particle and fluid simulations in Houdini.

Thats a complete simulated computer graphics event.

So when we detonated the real explosion, we just had a bunch of dust.

So the props inRakkawere made predominantly by Amalgamated Dynamics.

A cool example of those worlds crossing over would be the alien tech thats inside Amirs head.

Thats a build, its a skull cap from ADI, with all this tech in there.

And then its Oats VFXs simulation of the black fluid inside his head moving around.

And thats a satisfying mixture.

Why are we different from them?

So thats what leads to experimentation, and everything that happens to the character of Amir so far.

Its definitely a big part of whats interesting me at the moment.

I can basically just skip around wherever I want to go.

The creative forward momentum right now is, I want to make films that are serious.

Like, if its something I want to direct and go down the road of.

So I just want to get the company to the point where everyone understands this open sandbox idea.

We also have a lot of other ideas.

as well, that we want to put out there.

…Its Heres an example of something wed love to make.

Thats the message I really want to get across, you know?

Then the weird comedic pieces will be dropped in between those.

Oats may also raise financing by putting assets like 3D models and sound files on Steam.

That would be the primary way to do it.

If that doesnt work, then I think that well just raise capital and make the film.

Or put it in theatres.

Hopefully, it grows organically, where theres another clicks and people giving us cash that it can grow.

If theyve seen everything and then they feel like giving us some cash, then they can.

I just want it to be as open and honest a discussion.

Were not charging you money, you dont have to pay for it if you dont want to.

We dont want you to feel ripped off.

If theres value in some of the stuff were making, help us out.