{"id":73235,"date":"2017-10-12T02:42:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T09:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp-hopes-game-engines-can-democratize-film"},"modified":"2017-10-12T02:42:30","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T09:42:30","slug":"district-9-director-neill-blomkamp-hopes-game-engines-can-democratize-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp-hopes-game-engines-can-democratize-film","title":{"rendered":"District 9 director Neill Blomkamp hopes game engines can democratize film"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R8NeB10INDo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This week, Neill Blomkamp, the Academy Award-nominated director of <em>District 9<\/em>,<a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/10\/03\/district-9-director-neil-blomkamp-makes-two-sci-fi-film-shorts-with-unity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> unveiled a short film<\/a> that he made with the <a href=\"https:\/\/unity3d.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Unity Technologies<\/a> game engine. At Unity\u2019s event in Austin, Texas, Blomkamp\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/oatsstudios.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Oats Studios<\/a> showed off Adam: The Mirror, a 6-minute film that was a sequel to <a href=\"https:\/\/unity3d.com\/pages\/adam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Adam<\/em><\/a>, a short film that Unity built as an internally produced showcase demo last year.<\/p>\n<p>Evoking the theme of transhumanism, or the notion that we can live beyond our physical bodies, the film shows an android coming to life and realizing that it was a human trapped in a robot\u2019s body. The film was meant to show off the power of the Unity engine when it comes to making high-quality 3D graphics. But to Blomkamp, it\u2019s also an example of how a game engine can help democratize film, making life easier for independent film makers just as Unity has done for indie game developers.<\/p>\n<p>Oats Studios in Vancouver will release a second film, <em>Adam: The Prophet<\/em>, also built with Unity. And if all goes well, then Blomkamp might be able to get financing for a larger Adam movie, since he has already created a backstory and script for the project. Blomkamp said the game engine helps because it allows him to shoot one scene and then put it into a digital form, like a \u201c3D sandbox.\u201d He shot some scenes in the desert for Adam: The Mirror. And if he needs to re-use that desert scenery, he can do so very easily because it exists in a digital format. So he only has to go out to the desert once to shoot actors.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/10\/08\/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp-hopes-game-engines-can-democratize-film\/\">https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/10\/08\/district-9-director-neill...tize-film\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, Neill Blomkamp, the Academy Award-nominated director of District 9, unveiled a short film that he made with the Unity Technologies game engine. At Unity\u2019s event in Austin, Texas, Blomkamp\u2019s Oats Studios showed off Adam: The Mirror, a 6-minute film that was a sequel to Adam, a short film that Unity built as an [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1509,42,6,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-media-arts","category-robotics-ai","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}