Neill Blomkamp, Oats Studios’ Sci-Fi Short Films

The South African movie director and screenwriter Neill Blomkamp, the man behind the excellent science-fiction parable District 9 and the rather more mundane dystopian tale Elysium, has formed his own production business, Oats Studios. Using YouTube and Steam as its distribution channels, the experimental company has started to release a series of short films, each less than thirty minutes long, devoted to a wide range of sci-fi subjects. These feature everything from invading alien armies to laboratory experiments gone awry, plus a few big name stars like Sigourney Weaver and Dakota Fanning. The artistic philosophy of the studio has been compared to that of Filmgroup, the independent production company founded in 1959 by the legendary movie-maker Roger Corman and his brother Gene. Which is no bad thing.