Weta Workshop helped with the alien design, but, with Weta Digital busy with Avatar, Image Engine was given the opportunity of a lifetime to step in.

BD: Cronenberg's The Fly must've been an influence too.

NB: I think subconsciously.

BD: What about Children of Men?

NB: I love Children of Men. It's the future presented realistically and that's what it gives it that cool, grounding sensation.

BD: Talk about the challenge of adapting the short into a feature.

NB: Well, I wanted to make sure it was constantly moving forward. And also at its core it's the story about two races colliding, so first we had to figure out the world of District 9, which was taken from Alive in Joburg and then fleshed out. Once you have that basis, then within that world you can start picking the characters that seem interesting: a pencil pushing bureaucrat inside MNU was interesting to me and someone to follow around. So Terry and I just picked all of those characters and moments and concepts that were interesting and just fleshed them out.

BD: And fleshing out the alien culture?

NB: We did quite a lot. Unfortunately, we don't go much into it in the film because there wasn't time. A lot needed to be figured out and to me there's this kind of ant hive that's had a queen that's died and they're these directionless drones walking around, so it kind of explains how all this technology could've been built and manufactured and thought up. But they don't have it together enough to use that weaponry on humans and turn their situation on its head. So they just keep getting stomped on for 30 years.

BD: Not like Planet of the Apes, where they revolted.

NB: No, they're still just wallowing around in squalor.

BD: What have you learned from Peter Jackson?

NB: I think the biggest influence from him has been to help me just really free my thinking and think bigger. That's one thing I noticed sitting with him a lot: my process tends to be about parameters and about operating within these cubes and his whole approach is 180 degrees away from that: it's all about thinking big and forgetting every possible wall or reason why something can't be done and overcoming it.

BD: Is that partly because of your visual effects background and need to problem solve?

NB: It may be: I do tend to work on a logical, problem-solving basis. But his mind is very free so, out of everything, that's probably the biggest thing I'll walk away with the most -- just aim for whatever I want and then…

BD: …figuring out how to solve it. What do you think of the Avatar footage they showed at Comic-Con?

NB: It was awesome. You know, when you're at Weta as a client, they're not going to show you another client's work. I would speak to some of the artists and I know Joe Letteri [the visual effects supervisor] quite well, so I would always bug them because I'm such a Cameron fan. I mean half the time I was joking just to get them to show me stuff.