blog.starwreck.com

Antti and me almost died laughing watching this, check it out: Batman and He-Man.

It’s a video originally made for the wedding of our board user miikkaj and now it’s online for everyone to watch via Flash video. There’s a discussion on our board as well (in finnish).

Great stuff. MOAR!!!

It’s about time to start wrapping up this summer. Ropecon in Espoo was the last place we were having our little Iron Sky -presentation, and it definitively was a nice ending to it. We’ve been in Ropecon speaking about our stuff now I think about three times, and every time we’ve had a shitload of good time - the audience is always wonderful and the feeling relaxed enough to run a fun presentation.

This year we had a show on saturday, but me and Atte arrived on Friday, since we had a Star Wreck Studios meeting during the day, and Älymystö show in the night. In the meeting we planned on what are the first features to implement to SWS - fact is, we need to pick something to start out with, and after about 8 hours of going through material, researches and ideas, we had a good collection of basic features, which will make it possible for us to start Iron Sky production on SWS, once we (hopefully) get it released.

Älymystö’s show was, again, legendary - unlike last 2 times when we were unable to do a show at all for various reasons, this time we managed to show almost our whole set until the police crashed in and shut us down. It was all good, since the set wasn’t so special, but the last song we managed to play just banged the shit out of everybody. Here’s some photos from the event.

Saturday was much about meeting with old friends who either live aboard or I don’t get to see often anyways. They tend to show up at Ropecon every year, so most of the sunny day went on a beach listening to Bob Marley and sipping beverages.

When it was about time to do the show, suddenly I started feeling very very bad. I was afraid that I had finally been smashed down by the same stomach flu that Imppu (my girlfriend) and Julius (my son) had been having. So while Antti and the others set up and started running the SW sales table, I was wandering outside trying to figure out whether I should cancel my presentation, puke, or try to get myself in a better shape by some other means.

Eventually I got my shit together and we went out in front of the full auditorium audience that welcomed us all with a cheering applauds and a great energetic spirit as a good audience can ever give out. People seemed - in the best Ropecon fasion - to love every word we said, and after the presentation we had a good bunch of questions and some great feedback for a good show. (Ropecon’s own ConText-newsletter wrote a bit about us as well.)

Looking back at our little summer tour in Finncon-Assembly-Ropecon, I think we succeeded pretty well, although we had our doubts about presenting a film which is nowhere near completion. But people took it unbelievably well, and our main point about the summer was to give a little kick start for Iron Sky, so that people know what we are working on back here in Tampere.

There’s a lot of events we are taking part during the year - business as usual - but Iron Sky -specified shows are now over for this year, and we’ll get back on the subject once we have a demo to release and something more concrete to talk about.

Thanks again for everybody attending to any of these great events, it was a blast! Hope to see you next year, when we also try to arrange something very special out for you. But more about that later.

Oh, one thing! If anyone has any pictures of our Iron Sky presentation in Ropecon, I’d like to have some, just to remember the event later on. So send me your photos over to our forum or directly to me if you got some!

We had a discussion at the office the other day about Star Wreck. We were talking about spending the whole summer at different places promoting our film, and how people still like to hear us talk and love Star Wreck no matter what the situation - science fiction and roleplaying conventions and computer festivals to name a few. The only events we very rarely get invited to are Finnish film festivals or related parties. It’s way strange, but then again, I think our audience is of a very different mold than those visiting film festivals, and the few we’ve been to, we’ve never felt at home there. Maybe it’s the fact we’ve never worked too much with professional film people until now with Iron Sky, or that we’ve never been to film schools - who knows. Either way, this summer is not an exception - first Finncon, then Assembly and now the next place we’re about to drag our asses to is Ropecon, a roleplaying convention taking place in Espoo, Finland. Later on there’s one con in Denmark and another seminar in Japan (more about those later).

To be honest, at first we thought that we’re not going to go anywhere this summer - these past 2 years, we’ve been to all kinds of places presenting our film, and we’ve always had something new - a new film, a roleplaying game, whatever. This year, we don’t - although a lot has happenend since last year. We were specifically invited and asked to come over to all of these events, so although at first we were about to decline, we decided that hey, probably somebody still wants to hear what we have to say.

Presenting Iron Sky is fun, and it’s definitely nice to talk about a totally new film for a change. It takes a little bit of adjusting for us to talk about this, since before it’s either been about Star Wreck, or collaborative filmmaking and Star Wreck Studios. I think we’ve pretty much covered both subjects thoroughly, so it was about time for us to find something new to talk about.

The reason Iron Sky is being brought up at such a very early stage of the production is because we want people to start adjusting to expecting it. I don’t believe in the way films are made and marketed today - first a little hype with a trailer, then the film is out and pretty quickly forgotten and the success is largely bound to the opening weekend or even opening day - if that fails, the film will flop. What I love about filmmaking and watching films with others is expecting the film over a long time, slowly seeing it come together piece by piece, and by knowing that I’ve been among the very first ones to know about the film.

And I want it to last - if I like the film, I want to be able to talk about it when it is released, but also for a long time afterwards, and to hear people’s opinions that have survived and changed since the initial “big bang” of the release. That’s why I love Lord of the Rings - I was waiting for it for about 7 years, and I can still come back to the subject, talk about how much I loved the film and watch it over and over again and it doesn’t feel like a worn-out subject. Unlike Narnia, which suddenly appeared and very quickly disappeared, just to give one example. I think the same happens with Transformers - but then again, 300 seems to last, although I didn’t like the film that much.

I got a bit carried away there. What I wanted to say is, come and join us at the Ropecon Iron Sky seminar, since it’ll be the last one this year in Finland, and although we don’t have much new stuff to show you, we still have some pretty cool stuff on the big screen, a little bit of concept art for Iron Sky - and as usual, we’ll throw a helluva good show there!

Here’s a description of the event:

La 22.00 – Su 00.00 Rautataivas: Natseja kuussa Auditorio Esitelmä

Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (2005) oli jättimenestys, joka ylsi kaikkien aikojen katsotuimpien kotimaisten elokuvien joukkoon miljoonien latauksiensa ja kansainvälisen levityksensä ansiosta. Tekijät eivät kuitenkaan tyytyneet tähän, vaan halusivat tehdä jotakin vielä massiivisempaa ja sekopäisempää. Näin syntyi Rautataivas, elokuva natseista kuun pimeällä puolella. Ropecon 2007 -tapahtumassa tekijät viettävät reippaan tunnin kertomalla, mihin soppaan ovat lusikkansa tunkeneet. Jättimäinen elokuvatuotanto ei Suomessa ole helppo nakki, eikä yleinen ilmapiiri scifielokuvia kohtaan kaikkein hellävaraisin. Star Wreckin tekijät yhdistivät voimansa kuitenkin Jadesoturin onnistuneesti tuottaneiden Blind Spot Picturesin ja Petri Jokirannan, sekä kaikkien aikojen menestyneimmän suomalaisen tieteiskirjailija Johanna Sinisalon kanssa, ja lähtivät härkäpäisesti työntämään leffajärkälettään eteenpäin. Mikä tärkeintä, he aikovat kutsua kaikki elokuvanteosta kiinnostuneet mukaan urakkaan, tehdäkseen kaikkien aikojen parhaan eurooppalaisen tieteiskomedian.

Järjestäjä: Timo Vuorensola

We are in the primetime slot in Ropecon’s main auditorium Saturday 22:00-00:00 - there’s plenty of time for everything, and we try to cover as much as we can.

Antti has also promised to organize a roleplaying session for the Star Wreck Roleplaying Game on Saturday from 16:00-19:00. Be sure not to miss that, as the last time was, I hear, hilarious!

See you in Espoo!

As we’ve mentioned before, Jade Warrior’s director’s AJ Annila’s very interesting-sounding horror film Sauna (aka. Filth) is one of the few very interesting films from Finland coming next year, and we keep our eyes peeled firmly to it’s production.

It’s going to be filmed in Prague this fall, and although there’s not actual news out there for you, Twitch wrote about the film and posted a detailed synopsis and some sketch art for everybody to view - check them out here.

A cruel horror film bathing in the Finnish sauna culture, in the no-zone between Christianity and paganism. A story of two brothers, who leave a young girl to die and become haunted by her, as she follows them in supernatural form, her face pouring with endless filth. The brothers escape with a commission marking the border between Russia and Finland to a Russian-Orthodox village. In there they find a sauna - The sauna where all sins are washed away. Seeking for forgiveness, the brothers step into the sauna…

Sauna is a horror film about sins, repentance and forgiveness. The story leads us into the core of darkness, where there is no forgiveness, no hope, no salvation.

Sauna is produced by Tero Kaukomaa, who’s also one of Iron Sky’s producers.

(Via Twitch)

The Energia team once again visited the Assembly -event, held at Hartwall-arena in Helsinki. Although almost everything we had planned for the event went crashing down, we managed to get our stuff together and crafted a nice joint out of nothing. A lot of peepz stopped by to greet us, support our cause or just to take a glimpse of the video collection we had constantly running on our monitor.

Photo by Sampsa Kurri, borrowed from Muropaketti’s Assembly Photo Report

At first, our idea was to get the same cool stuff HP had made for our Star Wreck –stand at Microsoft’s Vista launch – the bridge of the Kickstart – but, surprise, surprise, they didn’t exists anymore. Too bad we found that out on friday morning, *after* we had rented a van to get the stuff. Well, there’s nothing you can’t fix with a roll of duct tape, few construction site lights and red cloth! Eventually, our stand became a nice, cozy, joint which was positively campish unlike the boring corporate stands over at the hallways.

Energia was fully manned at Assembly – Atte, Samuli, myself, Antti and Jarmo, we all took the weekend off of our schedules and came over to meet our fans and new faces. Our primary idea was to get over there and to promote our next film, Iron Sky, and get our merchandise available to those who never get their hands on it anywhere else. On top of that, we were invited to have a seminar to talk about Iron Sky.

Friday was mostly about building and rebuilding our stand. During the night, Antti ran the example adventure of Star Wreck Roleplaying Game to a small group of fans, which received much appraise afterwards. I even heard that Antti would be posting the transcription of the game here later, but we’ll see what’ll happen.

Antti at the Raven Lounge

On Saturday we kept on going, with our outpost manned 24h/day. We had prepared a video collection out of every video we’ve ever produced - including a shitload of stuff never meant for anybody’s eyes - to run constantly on our monitor. Although Media Player Classic let us down more than often, there was always videos on screen and music in the air, and a lot of people visited us and some of them stayed even to watch a film or two. One visitor that made me extremely happy was this 6-7 year old kid who watched the Legacy-collection Star Wrecks and giggled through them and explained the jokes to his dad who had fun as well. This led me to the conclusion that an animated TV-series of Star Wreck for kids just has to be made!

The Iron Sky –seminar was pretty crowded and we had some fun time there, rambling on about this and that and showing some exclusive material. One of the funny things I found in my email in the morning was the trailer of Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (Original Version) dubbed in German by a group called Crash Dub Studios, and it was actually pretty darn good! I’ll post it here later, once I get the final version from the guys.

More information and discussion about the seminar can be found from our forums, in both English and Finnish.

After the seminar Samuli beat the shit out of some kids at Command & Conquer (yeah, don’t fuck with the Emperor) and went out to represent Iron Sky in the Helsinki nightlife. Me and Antti and Jarmo kept things running. Last year Antti had a group of followers (his “court”) sitting by at our stand all the times, but it was Jarmos duty to gather his own people this year, and he did as good job as Baldur von Schirach would’ve done back in the days!
Assembly-TV was also pretty interested on our presence this year, and we did a long interview there, talking about what we talk about the best: ourselves. (Yeah, we are sorry, we can’t hear you from the sound of how awesome we are). The interview (in Finnish) can be downloaded from here.

In the wee hours of morning we were also invited to join the Assembly-TV’s Nightchat, where me and Jarmo continued where the interview left us. There was a question and a nice reward for it: “What would you like to see in Iron Sky, a film about Nazis on the Dark Side of the Moon”. A lot of funny ideas came along – people wanted to see Samuli in the film, space battles and that sort of stuff – but the winner was the one we agreed the most with: “I want to see Jürgen Prochnow in Iron Sky”. So do we, and by our dirty toes, we’ll give him a call! Yes, we’ll let you know what he thinks. If you have other actors you’d like to see on Iron Sky, you can join the discussion about the actors here.

(There was some asswipe who jumped onstage at the studio after popping some pills and acted like a dipshit he was, but we heard that he was later thrown away from the festivals after being beaten by the cops outside the place. Don’t fuck with us, we’ve got the law on our side!)

Sunday was mostly about getting the hell out of there, but we decided to stay put until every last one of the programs was over. Nothing special went on, I dozed off for a few hours and Antti and later also Jarmo and Samuli joined us at the stand once again. After the closing seremony was over we got our stuff together, tetris-fitted them to Jarmo’s car and left the sunny Helsinki behind.

All in all, we enjoyed our stay at Assembly, and would like to thank everybody supporting our cause at the Raven Lounge, spent some time chatting over there, everybody joining the Iron Sky –seminar, and congraculate the winners of Assembly-TV’s Wreck/IS –related compos. Same time next year, I think!

We have been planning that in the next (summer) Assembly we’re going to do something so amazing nobody else has done it ever before, but let’s see if we have the resources to do it! Until then – take care! And if you got pictures, get them to us by posting them here! And check out our own photo report from the Photoblog as well.

Ps. You might also want to check out our previous blog entries from last year’s Assembly 2006 –event (in Finnish): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and Sherrypie’s opening speech at Short Film Compo last year:

Hi, everybody!

Here’s from our board:

Ok, everybody! I know you got cameras and I know you are shooting like madmen around with them - why not post your Iron Sky / Star Wreck / Energia -related (even remotely… =) pictures here?!

If I see over 20 pictures from at least 10 different participators to this thread, we’ll set up a contest where best picture wins Iron Sky T-shirt! Go for it, start stalking! We want Iron Sky / Star Wreck T-shirts (in action!), Wreck On Screen -pictures, Star Wreck bootleg-stuff, and of course our own frigging faces we never get tired watching.

(Ps. This thread and the one on Finnish side are the same, so post both or just either one of them here!)

- Der Team.

So, get your triggafinga ready and start shooting, and post your Assembly-pics here.

The Assembly has started! It’s Finlands largest computer festival with over 5000 participants over four days. The Energia crew will be there 24 hours a day from mid-friday until the bitter end on sunday. Last year was blast (even though for Antti it resembled a extreme sporting event, with sales shifts going on for 40 hours straight). This year we aim for a bit more organisation and less sleep deprivation, but well see.

This years programme includes our talk about Iron Sky, Samuli and Timo taking part to a night chat on TV and propably something very unexpected. If you can’t make it to Helsinki, the whole event is broadcasted live on Assembly TV. We’ll also be blogging and Twittering form Asm as soon as we get out net connection up.

Oh and the now traditional Assembly special of The Raven newletter is out as well, if you’re not a subscriber you can read it here.

As you might have already heard, the Energia posse is going to crashland to Assembly computer festival this year.

The whole day we’ve been organizing our stuff together, making sure everything works during the weekend. We also know that some of you guys are already at the festival site - can’t wait to get our asses there as well. Too bad we couldn’t come over today as we originally planned, but tomorrow we’ll be there, kicking some serious ass. Hope to see you around too!

Here’s a little schedule on how and where to reach us:

FRIDAY:

20:30 - Assembly Loves You brings Pirk and Sherrypie onstage! More info on this later (when we know more!).

SATURDAY:

16:00 - 17:00 - The great Iron Sky session at Lapin Kulta Ravintola - Don’t miss it!
02:50 - 03:50 - Timo & Samuli on Assembly-TV’s Nightchat, where you can also win some übercool Iron Sky -stuff.

Also, we’ll let you know where else to spot us as soon as we know more.

During all the other times, Energia team - or at least some parts of it - will be at our phenomenal Raven Lounge -table, and you are more than welcome to join the party over there! Follow the map to find us: