The Alien influence is quite apparent in the creature design. Blomkamp was exceptionally pleased with Image Engine's CG work. All images courtesy of TriStar Pictures.

You've seen the District 9 trailers and posters and have been exposed to the brilliant viral marketing campaign. Finally, the potential sleeper hit of the summer arrives today (through TriStar Pictures). A thinking man's sci-fi that's both thrilling and humorous about a clash of races between wandering aliens (a cross between an insect exo-skeleton and a crustacean) and a government bureaucrat -- in Johannesburg, of all places! At the helm is Neill Blomkamp, the former vfx artist/3D animator (Smallville, Dark Angel) and director of commercials and shorts (Landfall: the Halo trilogy of shorts) as well as original founding partner of The Embassy Visual Effects in Vancouver. In fact, after his Halo feature with Peter Jackson fell apart, the South African native and Vancouver resident immediately turned to District 9 at the behest of Jackson, which is based on another of his shorts: Alive in Joburg. In this VFXWorld exclusive, Blomkamp tells us about all of this and more.

Bill Desowitz: So let's jump right into the visual effects. What's CG and who was responsible for them?

Neill Blomkamp: The visual effects were broken down into categories that we saw onscreen, like the aliens were done by Image Engine in Vancouver, the mother ship was done predominantly done by Weta Digital, and the drop ship was Weta Digital and then the exo-suit and the little fighting creatures -- the little pets -- were all done by The Embassy. Zoic also did a few minor shots (overflow 2D work). So it was kind of cool for me because each company had its very own thing that it was responsible for doing. But the bulk of the visual effects work went into the aliens. Image Engine worked on the film for quite a while and did really good work.

BD: How did you discover Image Engine?

NB: Well, originally, I thought Weta would do everything, but Avatar had taken over and absolutely crushed Weta. So Weta said no, we can't do the film. What I wanted to do then was take advantage of Vancouver: I live there for one and in the future I'm going to do more films there, and, two, the British Columbia tax credit thing for post-production. We would be able to get more shots for it. So I know a lot of the effects houses in Vancouver, and I had a bunch of meetings with Image Engine and they actually flew down to New Zealand. They hadn't done anything that was on this scale before, but based on the guys who were in charge of running the company and making District 9 happen, Shawn Walsh [visual effects exec producer] and Pete Muyzers [on-set visual effects plate supervisor & digital production manager], I felt like they were going to do whatever it took to make this work, so I had faith in them, as opposed to the reel of the company, and they totally stepped up to the plate and just hired all the right people, and I'm exceptionally happy with the way it turned out. I guess in a way, it was a bit of a gamble, but it won't be from now on because they have clearly established that they can do A-grade creature work. And it's going to be different for them from now on.