blog.starwreck.com

In Star Wreck we had Spaceballs as the benchmark, with Iron Sky we’re still kind of trying to out-do Mel Brooks - this time with nazi humor. Only that while Spaceballs was 80’s Mel, we’re now up with The Producers from the 60’s when he was really funny. Anyways, seems Mel also updated nazi musicals to the 80’s with this clip from To Be or not to Be. Though I have to admit I’ve never seen that one.

Even though running Energia Productions is very much a full-time job for us, we do sometimes find the time for side projects - each according to their skills. For my part, I was delighted when a fun fellow named Aleksi Eeben asked me to contribute to a computer game he was making - for the Commodore 64, no less! The game in question, Redrunner, is the sequel to his earlier award-winning Greenrunner (can you see the pattern here?). Both are rather hectic action games in the old-fashioned, fast and shallow way, and very fun to play (though you do need an emulator like VICE).

My part in the proceedings? Voice acting, of course. Aleksi’s game features cool graphics (for a C64 - there are many nifty little details), top-notch music, and appropriately arcade-ish sound effects - and speech. Though I humbly acknowledge the superiority of The Voice of Greenrunner, Elaine Walker, I must say Aleksi has managed to make my voice sound surprisingly good through the SID chip. Finally I have realised my childhood dream of being part of a C64 game project!

If you’re into this sort of stuff at all, you can do a lot worse than to check it out now - and remember, these days it’s fashionable to be “retro”.

Update: The title screen with great retro music and Antti’s smooth voice:

Hi, it’s Timo here reporting about Some Cool Things I Bumped Into in Eurocon 2007! The first one of them was a techno-thriller Exitz, starring some extremely beautiful, not-known actresses and the wonderful Malcom McDowell. The story is about an Indian illegal immigrant in UK, who gets hired to a massive game company, producing a reality game about real people’s lives – a game, where you can be whoever you want in the world and do whatever you want to. The story starts to unfold as a witty, complex technological thriller when the borders of game and reality begin blurring, and eventually nobody knows what is game, what is reality and who is the bad guy – or is there one.

I met the director of the film, Laurens Postma, in Eurocon, and we had a lehgty chat about UK film industry, film festivals and how he did his film. He’s a pretty well-established director, although his name didn’t ring bells in the beginning, but that’s propably because he’s been working a lot in India. I also promised to send him our film and talked a bit about Iron Sky, and he was pretty impressed about the Iron Sky poster on one wall. That’s nice.

His story with Exitz is that it’s now sitting on a shelf, and he’s unable to release it because the production company who owns the rights screwed the government with VATs, and it (not surprisingly) backfired on them, and now everybody is fighting on who own the rights… So, for him it’s technically illegal to show the film, but he likes to go around and do it anyway, to festivals and that sort of stuff. He also said that this is pretty normal in GB – they make about 40-45 films a year there, and 20-25 never get shown anywhere because of various reasons. So, every year around 50 million euros get just thrown to the well of the Kankkula farm (no, didn’t translate…). Exitz is a 2-million euro production, although the production value would suggest it’s at least 10m€ in Hollywood.

The second super-cool thing was a band called Press Play On Tape. The Eurocon had them playing there, and what they do is they play rock-covers of game music and that kind of stuff. I came in there just by accident, when I head that somebody was playing ‘(The Ultimate Showdown of) The Ultimate Destiny’ by Lemon Demon. Next they rolled in a great cover of Monkey Island’s theme, and as an encore, played Monty On The Run’s theme. What’s even cooler is that for every song they have a video of the game the music is from, in gameplay. That was a big nostalgy trip that rocked the shit out of the audience at the same time. We need to book them for the next Star Wreck Con!

And of course, it was great to visit the Russian Vodka Party and enjoy some sophisticated alcoholocaust with the Finnish scifi-people, who always are a good company. We ended up to my room with bunch of people and continued where the Vodka Party had left us…

Oh, and as a bonus, at the official dinner, Anne McCaffrey complimented my hair. I was walking in clouds for few minutes – an 81-years old scifi/fantasy legend likes my hair! Woo-hoo! Super-Win!

Here’s a video by Press Play On Tape I found on YouTube:

”Krupa Krupa! Q’gcolac GR!”
- Old Plingon proverb about remarkably over-dated means of transportation.

Lt. Dwarf here again!

All hail Emperor Pirk! After spending five hours in a Russian airport, I’m now travelling on an economy-class Russian airplane to Japan, cruising a pathetic few hundred kilometers per hour across the atmosphere. I’m going to make Info pay for this humiliation – a warrior like me, sitting with all these wimps and losers…

Anyway, yesterday was a great day for recruiting. Our propaganda film gathered a nice audience and the recruitment speech worked so well that I ran out of Star Wrecks pretty soon. Other than that, we had a thing called ‘Russian Vodka Party’, where our allies and friends of the great Russian Federation poured a lot of vodka to the glasses of so many people, infiltirating their minds with their ideologies and way of life. Effective method, even so effective I found myself starting to like even more the Russians.

I must admit I also enjoyed some of the vodka, so this morning the hard part was to get to the airport on time. I was feeling pretty un-well and decided to skip the breakfast, but little did I know that I was about to be stuck in Moscow airport for so long. Although in general most of the airports seem to be both huge and well-instructed, this one was small, ugly and instructions on how to get around sucked like a Rigelian sandworm without a bicycle.

I met a fellow traveler, who was also on his way to Japan. With his assistance I was able to find the right gate and the right plane on time, but now I’m a bit worried that my luggage won’t end up to Japan, since I left it a bit strangely somewhere in Copenhagen and although they said it’s gonna end up to right place, I have my fears. I also requested some cultural information about Japan, so I would fit in with these strange human beings in Tokyo. I understood they are very polite, keep to schedules and don’t respect their Emperor. I think I’m going to have some problems there – or, more likely, they have a 100+ kiloes of problem coming their way few hunded kilometers per hour!

There’s not too much to tell right now, I’m stuck on travelling, and will be getting to Tokyo tomorrow morning.

All hail Emperor Pirk!

Lt. Dwarf, signing out.

”Gruhnmhump R’ghoa n’Kho n’Kho!

Gru-’n borgah hoi!”

- An old Plingon proverb, describing what happens to a country that eats sandwiches and drinks green-labeled beer all the time.

Lt. Dwarf reporting in!

Hail the glorious Emperor Pirk! His excellency has sent me on a mission of what he calls Psyfoplophy Warfare. Info keeps on correcting him, that little piece of crap! I wish I could take his metal head between my two hands and tear it off and take a dump into it, and the place the head back in place and call the robot a shithead – which he is, but he always requires me to prove it! No reason to correct what Emperor says, it’s a sign of mutiny and that’s what I can’t stand.

Anyway. Another thing that little piece of shit keeps on doing is complaining about my use of teleporter as a means to get to places. He says we shouldn’t use the secret technology unless extremely necessary, and he doesn’t think Psyfoplophic Warfare isn’t extremely important matter. Well, too bad he makes the decisions when it comes to my travelling, so I was ordered to use the ‘modern transportation means’ for my operation. Aeroplains, buses and trains. What the hell…

I consider myself as an army, and the propaganda film “Star Wreck” as my most lethal weapon. Since when has an army been attacking on a local bus? This is ridiculous!

The first country to attack is Denmark. And what a crappy country this is! Everywhere filth, drunk people begging for cigarettes and trying to sell me drugs, and hookers selling their stuff. Lucky them it’s not my mating season, because they would regret it for the rest of their lives – if they would survive.

As our beloved Emperor is so mingy, and Info obeying every word he says to him – or it – the hotel reserved for me is this one-star joint, built back in the days before computers and as a last surprise, they informed me at the desk that the room wouldn’t have it’s own toilet or shower. Well, little did they know that we Plingon-warriors don’t use showers, and as a small bonus for them, we neither use toilet. So they have a nice little surprise waiting…

So, the event they are showing the propaganda film, and where I’m giving my imperial propaganda speech and recruiting more people to the P-fleet, is called ‘Eurocon’. Don’t know what the place is about, there seems to be many geeks, young and old, talking about outdated technologies from the past. Celebrating about getting to moon and theorizing about the possibility of travelling faster than light… We indeed have a little surprise for this world coming up! I seem to fit in pretty nicely, though, since Info made this great secret outfit for me – a tall, broad-shouldered handsome muscular, a bit darkish guy, a real warrior! Ok, have to admit the suit had to be a bit bigger than me, so he looks like an overweight geek with a mohawk, but what the hell!

I wish I could kill all of these bastards and eat their babies for breakfast, but I must hesitate and focus on the mission at hand. First, Info said, you need to recruit people from all of these countries around Russia, and after that we could start shooting everybody not agreeing with the Emperor. I don’t like waiting around, we are losing the initiative here.

Well, I’d better get ready to start recruiting. All hail Emperor Pirk!

Lt. Dwarf, signing out.

Solar Films has published the first pictures from the Lordi movie Dark Floors. Go check them out at their website. In Cannes they said they’re going to have a 12 minute clip ready at AFM that begins 31st of October, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more of the film soon.

(Via Twitch.)

P.S. For you Finns, there’s some more information about the new Remes book.

Hello, everybody. I just got a reminder about South by Southwest’s Panel Picker - a media/entertainment festival held in Austin, TX - where the Star Wreck -panel is one of the possible panels they would include in to their program in 2008. That would mean that I would go out there and shoot a hypo full of Star Wreck -love right to the Miss Liberty’s veins!

To do that, I will need help. SXSW-festival decides panels based on the public vote, and they’ve set up a Panel Picker -program to see who and what would end up there. You can help us by giving your vote and maybe even a comment on Star Wreck’s behalf.

Thanks for help!

Ps. There’s still few hours left, the vote will end up by 21:00 USA time on Friday, so don’t wait - just do it!

It’s 23:37 in Wednesday evening.

Last night we had a scriptwriter’s meeting with Johanna, and as it so often happens, after the productive and creative part we took a couple of beers and let our imaginations roam more freely. Not surprisingly it was way past midnight when I found ourselves sitting in a pub nearby, so this morning I felt a bit woozy. We used all of our creativity and quality points yesterday, so today was just a major failure in so many ways. The high point of fail was when I lost my wallet with everything - including my passport - in it. Not such a big thing, unless you’ve just bought 3000€ tickets to Japan and losing your passport means you can’t go there.

Luckily, I found it. Well, the nice people at Foxy (a local shoestore) found it where I had left it, in the third shelf filled with shoes, between the shoes. What could be a better place for a wallet? At the same time, I also bought a very nice shoes to accompany my hypercool suit I had just acquired as well.

Ok, this has nothing to do with what I was planning to write about. The reason I’m a bit worried that it’s almost midnight on Wednesday is that I’m going on a presentation spree again, starting tomorrow and ending who knows when, and I should have a presentation ready by tomorrow. The problem is not ‘what’ to say - I have pretty good points here and there - but how the PowerPoint slides will look like. Ok, somebody might say that who the hell cares, as long as they are informative - I think the opposite way. The less information but the cooler they look, the better.

So, again, I’ll be ill-prepared for the presentations, and trying to get something on the slides in the middle of the night won’t save me, so I might just as well hit the hay and see what I can do on the train tomorrow. But at least I’ve made a pretty nice look and feel for the slides, so this day hasn’t been totally wasted:

Up and coming presentations are much about Star Wreck, free internet distribution and collaborative production model we’ve been talking so much about. I’m planning to throw in a bit of Iron Sky here and there, but as we don’t still have anything concrete to show, it’s best to focus on Star Wreck for now.

Here’s a calendar what’s coming up. If you are around, come over to say hi:

20.9. - Broadband Forum, Helsinki - I’ve been asked to talk about Star Wreck’s huge download numbers and the Internet as a distribution channel in general, and also about the future of the Internet and film business.

21.-23.9. - Eurocon, Copenhagen - The european science fiction convention in Copenhagen is going to show Star Wreck this year and asked me to come over and tell more about the film and our future plans.

25.-27.9. - New Context Conference, Tokyo - This big conference focuses on the future of the Internet, and I’m talking both in a panel and in a workshop about Star Wreck and my thoughts about how things might look in the future.

28.9. - Jupperi School in Espoo has asked me to teach the kids about film business.

2.-5.10. - The Mindtrek/Open Mind in Tampere, we are present in at least few panels, but I’ll tell more about this once I’ve gathered all the data.

21.-22.10. - Roma Film Festival, Rome - I’m talking about Star Wreck and our visions on future film production.

25.10. - Presentation for Nuorkauppakamari in Helsinki.

1.11. - The monstrously named seminar TAVARAN JA PALVELUJEN TUOTANNOSTA ELÄMYSTEN TUOTTAMISEEN - Elämystalouden, merkitysintensiivisen ta-louden ja vapaa-aikateollisuuden nousu, in Tampere-talo, Tampere.

Phew. There seems to be a lot of running around. Well, each person who learns about Star Wreck is always valuable, and I really love presenting our case and ideas. Although these take time and usually you don’t get rich by doing these presentations, you meet great people and get to go to places you wouldn’t easilly go anyway - take Tokyo for example. And you never know when you meet the Missing Piece from the Iron Sky puzzle somewhere on the way…

Well, I better get back to work, a long night ahead… And I’ll try to write about these events if I have enough time - so stay tuned.