Tweetable: The VFX of District 9

I have seen at least fifty articles in the last week or so in my TwitterFox, so last week me and some friends scrounged together ten bucks apiece and went and caught a late showing at the local theater.  First impression:  Holy _____, was that amazing or what?  I haven’t seen a more well put together movie with the seamless and mind blowing visual effects that this movie has in a long time… at least not one that makes me want to write reviews and rave about it like this.  In this recurring theme of articles entitled Tweetable, I will be highlighting some trending topics that are bombarding the VFX and production sides of Twitter in the hopes to bring you some of the amazing features that you might have missed.

District 9 Trailer

One of the things that I didn’t know about our first time director, is that he is a Vancouver Film School graduate (you can see his 1998 student demo reel here) and that a lot of the VFX were actually produced in Vancouver with around 35 VFS graduates aboard the team.  VFS has a video about what roles their graduates played on the movie, which actually turns out to be more of a promo than a behind the scenes look at the movie, but what the hell… here’s the link.  There is also another feature at Straight about how all the VFX were produced in Vancouver with some nice emphasis on VFX and UBC.

One thing is for sure… the visual effects combined with the unique documentary style and the story’s deep segregation and political roots make it a science fiction movie unlike any on that you have ever seen before.  Keeping this on a shoestring budget… only $30 million bucks (keep in mind this is tiny for Hollywood standards), you can tell that Neill knows how to stretch a dollar to create some of the most flawless visual effects in an alien movie I have ever seen.  You can tell that they really wanted to create a story rather than a steroid-injected high octane VFX movie, like some of the other awesome looking, but missing the point peices to come out of Hollywood lately.

Another article to kill the twitterverse lately about District 9 is the VFXWorld interview that Bill Desowitz got with Neill Blomkamp on some of the inner-workings of the VFX.  Blomkamp reveals that his primary go-to guys were the folks at Image Engine as well as some secondary studios like Weta Digital (they were overloaded with Avatar), The Embassy who apparently relied on Modo to create some killer looking alien pets and the mechanical exo-suite among other things, and Zoic for some minor 2D stuff.  He also talks about what some of his inspiration was for the film, and what he has taken from the experience.  He also hints a new sci-fi/action/drama he has in the works and is planning out right now for later on down the road, and hoping that Weta can jump on the bandwagon as well, since Peter Jackson was so pleased with this last movie.

I highly enjoyed this movie, and have been praising it to all of my freinds, family and anyone that asks my opinion on the matter.  Now you have heard it, seen my supporting facts… now stop being cheap and get over to the theater!  This is absolutely one of the must see’s to end the summer with, and perhaps my top movie of the year.