Via a post on CGTalk comes word that a live action Halo short (video above) by well-known director and 3D animator Neill Blomkamp has been “leaked”. This follows another live action piece by Blomkamp that was previously released (Link) to support the Halo 3 videogame launch.

For anyone unfamiliar with Blomkamp’s work, he’s most frequently associated with ingenious commercials from well-known brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Citroën. His showreel (Link to demo reel on YouTube) contains a sampling of his work, including the “Yellow” short for Adidas and my favorite, the robotic soccer crabs commercial for Nike.

Whether or not this footage was leaked or deliberately released as part of a viral marketing campaign, it raised another thought in my mind: What if Microsoft decided to make the movie not as a full-blown theatrical release, but as a series of reusable shorts.

Imagine a series of 18 five-minute shorts released on YouTube that individually acted as virally distributed commercials for the videogame, but when assembled together, perhaps with some additional footage to suture a pseudo-coherent story together, became a theatrical release. It’s definitely something which Blomkamp seems more suitable than most in pulling off. “Alive in Joberg” and “Yellow” both indicate we might see something new, so be on the lookout for a unique approach. Or maybe an old, forgotten approach revisited.