South African-born Neill Blomkamp makes Hollywood his new district

Hundreds of people undertake the trek to Hollywood, hoping to ‘make it’. The stereotype is actors who end up being fodder for the service industry (read waiters) in the Los Angeles area. However, it is not only actors; it is screenwriters trying to hock a script, special effects guys, camera operators, hair and make-up artists, among
many others.

Not Neill Blomkamp.

The South African-born director has taken the film world by storm. His first feature film, District 9, has been a major international success, having earned (at the time of writing) $117 million. And that is pure profit.

It is an astounding achievement for a first-time director to have that level of success on a maiden project.

And when you take a cursory look at where this unknown director came from, you think: well, he got lucky. He had a good idea as well as the backing of director/producer Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame.

Thinking that, however, would be doing him a great disservice. Blomkamp had his success all planned out. Yes, there were elements of luck involved, but unlike so many others who end up in Hollywood only to end up nowhere, Neill Blomkamp had a vision for where he wanted to be and how he would get there.

Leadership interviewed the young South African shortly after the international release of his mega-blockbuster.

Was it difficult to make the transition from filming commercials to something on the scale of District 9? Is it different or is it the same process, merely longer?

It’s kind of both, which is sort of weird. The reason I got into commercials (and music videos before commercials), was to learn how to work with [film] crews.

If you go to shoot a commercial on a one-day basis, then on that one day you’re going to deal with actors, with a director of photography, cameras, lighting, grips, maybe special effects, probably visual effects.

You’ll deal with all of the same stuff, so I thought, if I did a bunch of commercials, I’d learn those skills. Those are merely the technical skills – but for the creative skills for full-length features, the only way you can develop those is to make films.

So I think that on a technical level, I was completely prepared. I was a hundred percent prepared, which comes from music videos and commercials.

But on a filmmaking level? I was completely unprepared and that’s because no one can explain how much more gruelling the process is over two years.

Shooting 75 days? It’s just f***ing gruelling!

So in order to do it, you simply need to do it?

Yes, that’s why filmmakers become better. So I’d say that on a day-to-day level, it was exactly what I had expected.

What I hadn’t expected, was that 40 days into shooting, your mind becomes like gel. Because it’s so tiring and on that day, you’re shooting a scene that happens at the end of the movie, because everything’s out of sequence.

But let us backtrack to before District 9. You were already fairly successful filming commercials and a television series in Canada, making good money and receiving an Emmy nomination for special visual effects. Where does Peter Jackson come in? How did he find you?

When you do commercials or music videos, you are represented by a production company. So when I felt that my ads were good enough, I sent them down to a company in Los Angeles, which is [director] Ridley Scott’s production company, RSA. So when I was signed to RSA, it meant that it would find me commercials [to direct] in the United States.

The woman who runs RSA was involved in films as well and I asked, “Can you help me get an agent to get into feature films?” Because all I wanted to do was features, and through her I acquired a really good agent in Hollywood. This new agent then took all my work – all the commercials and short films – and sent it to the woman who was producing Halo (the failed movie adaptation of Microsoft’s hundred-million-dollar video game franchise).

She looked at my work and really liked it, and sent it to New Zealand where Peter Jackson looked at it and he liked it. So they flew me down to New Zealand and I hung out with them for a week and then he offered me Halo.

But that is an unusual thing because Halo would not be a small production. It was intended to be a huge movie, such as the recent Batman film, Dark Knight.

Yes.

In retrospect, do you feel that the collapse of the Halo project was perhaps a good thing for you?

I’ve learnt now, since doing District 9, that even if I had been given free rein on Halo, there are a hundred million fans who love Halo [the game], and they may see it differently to how I see it.

And would have disagreed with my vision.

Now I ask myself, why would you become involved in something that has already been designed and has already been established?

What’s the point?

So for you now, it is about new projects, new ideas?

It’s just more creative. Come up with some cool stuff that doesn’t have a pre-existing designed base – to which people wouldn’t say, “Well, I didn’t think it looked like that, in my mind”.

So, Halo collapses. It does not work out, but you and Peter Jackson have developed this repertoire with each other, you have become friends?

I think that’s accurate.

What happens next?

When he was a bit younger, he had films that had collapsed on him and he knew what I was going through. So when we got the call that the production companies were pulling out, within 24 hours he was saying, “Look, it’s happened to me and it’s really brutal”.

And I had also moved down to New Zealand with Terri [Tatchell, who co-wrote District 9] and with my daughter, so it was a big commitment. And now I had to pack everything up and move back to Vancouver.

So he said, “Why don’t you just start tomorrow on a new film, but I’ll finance it in the interim until we get financing?”

And then his partner Fran Walsh said, “Why don’t you develop Alive in Jo’burg?” – a short film I had done, because she had always liked that.

So then the next day, I didn’t have time to think about how much of a [mess-up] Halo was, because the next day I was busy with something else.

When people see this film, they will recognise Neill Blomkamp as a South African name, and it will inspire many locals. They will think, “Well, now I can do this, too.”

Yeah, I think that’s cool. I think that if it has that effect on them, then I think that’s really great.

I don’t actually know the South African film industry that well because by the time I had left, that was when I started getting into filmmaking and it’s always been Canadian and American.

But what I do sometimes feel about South Africans, is that they have a mindset that either you have to make a bleeding heart political film – which is very South African – or if it isn’t that, then it has to be completely American.

And I think that’s what the problem is. I think that you can make a popcorn Hollywood film and it can be as South African as you want.

What was your experience of working with South African crews?

It was good. We had some crew members that I loved to the point that even if I shot somewhere else, I would try to get them.

Do you see yourself as a science-fiction director? Are those the only kind of films you want to make or do you have a ‘normal’ film in you?

No, I don’t think so. A film such as Black Hawk Down would be the closest thing to a film that’s as real as I would get.

But I’d say 99% of the time, it has to have some element of science fiction or fantasy.

You have a unique cinematic style that most people will not have seen before. I imagine at some point, someone will call it the “Blomkamp Style”.
(Blomkamp laughs)

Because this movie is so big, do you think people will copy you?

That would be flattering, but I’m [more] curious about developing my own style.

There are other films that I want to do, that are so different to [District 9] in terms of photographic style and presentation.

So District 9 has done phenomenally well, the main character Wikus van der Merwe is now an icon. Do you think that you will be able to top what you have done now?
Ja.

Easily?

Totally.

Zaid Kriel