Every voyage starts with one step – except those voyages which start with sitting on your ass for 30 hours straight. As Timo wrote in the previous entry, we had quite a grueling flight trip to Australia. One of the weird points on the trip was the layover in Hong Kong, where the airport was full of these checkpoints with two department of health workers enclosed in a small pen, wearing breath masks and measuring the temperatures of crowds around them with an IR camera. In spite of having a fever our production manager succeeded in dodging them long enough to board our plane to Australia.

When we got to the air, it was already night. The whole pacific rim seemed to be one big thunderstorm. Over Manile chain lightnings kept splitting the sky from horizon to horizon every two seconds, and whenever I woke up and peeked out, the storm was still coming. In the morning, right before the sunrise the sky near the Australian coast was still full of dark anvil shaped clouds, with small angry lightning fizzing inside them.

Sunrise over Australian coast.

Studios and Post Processing

Yesterday was spent napping, settling down and managing jet lag, but today has been busy right from the morning. Timo started the day with an eight kilometer hike around Kangaroo Point while I handled some tasks related to the next two weeks. Then we were off to check out a potential studio, a location where we’ll be maybe shooting some outdoor scenes, and visit a post-production company.

The studio shots will be done in Australia and we are facing two choices: renting a warehouse or three and building our own studio there, or renting proper studio space. Each approach has their obvious merits. The first option is cheap, but laborious, and if something goes wrong, we have only ourselves to bla… to rely on. A proper studio is expensive, but there we have all kinds of options and resources we wouldn’t otherwise have. Warner Roadhouse Studios certainly seemed to meet our needs. They had enormous sound stages where the Nazi moon base would fit nicely, and a large water tank which was cool, but which we won’t really need – or will we? Maybe it’s time to add one scene that was stripped from the script earlier…

There’s a movie theme park next to the studio and we went there to check out a potential location for a scene. It was far too early for us to go into any of the rides or attractions, we were happy to just take production shots of the surroundings at this time.

The second stop of the day was a post production company where the producers went to sort out stuff having to do with the special effects of the movie. There are challenges in creating a film in three countries at the same time and figuring out who’s going to render what and where isn’t the least of them. Thankfully we live in a wired world, were people can move around pretty freely.

Fan Meeting and Supanova

For me most of the evening went to figuring out some press stuff and the specifics of our fan activities here in Australia. First of them was our fan slash investor meeting next Tuesday. We were initially thinking about having it in Mana Bar, but unfortunately the place was booked solid. Thanks to our great fans and the efforts of our Australian allies, we found an another nice place for the event. So, if you are in Brisbane on Tuesday 15th of June, come see us in Chill Lounge, Shelter Bar in Story Bridge Hotel at 6pm. It’ll be a pretty informal event – come meet the team, ask us questions about the film, see some materials and knock back a few beers. If you are interested in investing in Iron Sky, we are happy to tell you about that and answer your questions about that process!

The second order or work was to arrange the specifics of our appearance in Supanova Expo in Sydney – stuff like electricity, audiovisuals, booth decorations, schedules and so on. Actually if you are in Sydney, you can maybe help us a bit: we need a TV or a big monitor for the booth, but their rental prices are quite steep. If you could lend us on, we’d handle the transportation, give you free merchandise and buy you free beer – check the details in here!

Now it’s the time to hit the sack, since if anything, tomorrow will be even more full of activities!

Doodling plans during the dinner. One day that napkin will be worth millions.

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