Thinking about my next two trips, first Austria (Zell Am See), then straight into the heart of darkness, Berlin, Germany, one might think me as a method director, trying to understand what a certain madman has seen when building his empire. Well, more than that, coincidence stepped in and arranged these two occasions where I’m heading for: Berlin Film Festival being the other one of them, and a seminar in Zell Am See, Austria, being the other one.

So, it’s on the road with Iron Sky again for this year, and now we have a much stronger repertoire than last year, and we really look forward in closing some essential funding later this year! Cross your collective fingers, y’all!

We’ve been working like madmen on the demo, and although there’s still stuff to do, it’s coming together. We now have a version of the demo we can show to closed audiences (we don’t want the unfinished work to leak) and the feedback has been very good. The main purpose for me on the demo now is to use it as a tool when presenting Iron Sky to possible funding sources, and if it helps us to make this film possible, it has done it’s job and has been certainly worth the time we spent on it.

Johanna has been working on the script very heavily for the last five months she’s been back in Finland, and we’re pretty much all set to move from step outline to first version of the script itself. The way scripts are done – at least in our case, and in many cases as well – are four-fold. First you have the synopsis, a few-page lively description of the story itself. We had about 5-6 iterations on that. Synopsis is then expanded to treatment, more detailed description of the plot and characters – another 5-6 versions of that as well. Then it is expanded into a step outline, the first version resembling more script than a short story, where every scene is separated and described on it’s own – only thing basically missing is the dialog.

We just received fourth version of step outline, and soon it’s time to write the first official version of the script, with all the dialog and the charactes in place. It will take from one to ten versions to get it into a filmable form, but we’re hoping it’s closer to 5 than 10, since we’ve been working on the story so hard, all the twists are pretty much thought through already. But who knows, it’s a creative process and takes as long it takes, and although it never is ‘ready’, we know when it’s time to let it go and film it.

During the different phases of the script we’ve been able to create a very unique story. We’ve had our issues there, and had pretty agitated script meetings from time to time, but every iteration has built the story stronger and the characters deeper.

The service we call Star Wreck Studios – the collaborative film production platform – is coming together very well. The graphics and tech are pretty much in place for the first alpha release (where you guys will be invited as well), and although we know that it’s a *long* way from what it will hopefully be in few years, we’ve got a good start there. What’s dragging behind a bit is funding the platform – we’ve been talking with investors and other funding sources, but haven’t been able to close the first round completely yet, but we keep our fingers crossed and hope to find the right people soon. The team we’ve gathered during the last year for the platform is unbelieveably good, and I’m anxious to introduce them to you when we know the alpha release date, which, hopefully, is soon.

In Austria and Berlin, my aim is to talk about these two things we are working on here, get the people interested and spread the word. Many people might think it’s nice to travel around the world, meet the people and talk about your stuff – like a vacation… Well, it would, but I happen to hate travelling, and I have a family back in Tampere, so my feelings are a bit mixed on these things. But anything to get the sky painted with iron!

I’ll write about my trips here during next week, so keep coming back!

By the way, although I’m not a heavy traveller, I get to go around the globe from time to time, and I added my trips to a service a friend of ours – Taneli Tikka - has been working on, called Dopplr. It’s a service where you just put up your trips and see where other people are going, maybe meet them and read reviews on things like clubs, restaurants and other relevant stuff. Not a bad service, and although I personally hate Facebook, they have a nice FB widget for that as well. I’m there under my real name, find me and I’ll share my trips with you. If we happen to be in the city at the same time, I’d loved to meet our foreign fans, too!

Ps. I know this blabbering about funding may make you feel like we’re focusing on money, not the film itself, but this is a necessity we have to play out carefully to make sure we have the resources available to make the film and not have to do huge compromises during the production. Of creative control we are always hyper-cautious, even to the state of paranoia, and *no* compromises are accepted there. It might turn some people away, but if it does, we know they wouldn’t have been the right ones anyway.

Thanks to Brett Lamb for this great art! Spread it to the Net!