Neill Blomkamp

Neil Blomkamp was born on 17 September 1979 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a South African-Canadian advertisement and film writer, producer, animator and director. He is mainly known as the director and co-writer of the science fiction film District 9 and Elysium. Both of the film did well and collected well at the box office. The film had positive reviews. He was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2009 by Time magazine. He was also named as the 21st most powerful celebrity from Africa by Forbes magazine.

Blomkamp was raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He studied at Redhill High School in Johannesburg when he was sixteen years old. He there met Sharlto Copley. Copley helped Blomkamp to use the computers at his production company to pursue his passion and talent for 3D animation and design. When he was 18 years old, he with his family moved to Vancouver. He there attended Vancouver Film School.

He started working in the film industry as a 3D animator since 1990. He worked in the movies like Stargate SG-1, First Wave, Mercury Point and Aftershock: Earthquake in New York. He played his first role of lead animator for the Dark Angels TV Series in 2000. He also acted as the lead 3D animator for 2000 Miles to Graceland. He then was hired to illustrate photo-realistic future aircraft for Popular Science in 2003. He was signed by Toronto commercial house Spy Films after working at The Embassy Visual Effects in Vancouver as a visual effects. In 2007 he directed a trilogy of live-action short film Landfall. He then directed his first feature-length film which was an adaption of the Halo series of video games produced by Peter Jackson. Jackson knew Blomkamp after his work in the commercial work and short films. Jackson came to known for his four work which are Tetra Vaal, Alive in Joburg, Office Space-esque spoof and Yellow. Yellow was the short film based on the color yellow for Adidas campaign. From the adaption of Blomkamp’s earlier short film Alive in Joburg which was produced by Hansen and Copley, Peter Jackson decided to produce District 9. In 2009, the movie District 9 was nominated for Academy Award for Best Picture. The film also got nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Visual Effects and Editing. A video was released on the iPad version of Wired Magazines on October 2010 aand whole credit went to Neill Blomkamp. Featuring Yolandi Visser, a 23 second video was released on 20 February 2012 with title “IS IT DEAD?” on YouTube. In April 2013 he said that he was interested in making a Halo film. In April 2013 he started working on his next film Chappie. The film was released in March 2015. He admitted that the Alien film will be his next project on February 18 2015.

Neil got married to Terri Tatchell. She is a Canadian screenwriter Festival and Shark Awards. He then won VES Awards in 2005. In 2008 he won Cannes Lions Award. He was nominated for Satellite Award for Best Director and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for movie District 9 in 2009. In the same year, he won Bradbury Award. In 2010 he was nominated for Academy Award.

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