Yesterday we finished the shoot at the location in the top floor office of an abandoned bank in the middle of Frankfurt by shooting it to pieces. We also found out that when you rig 20-30 sparklers on the wall, what you’ll get is a Rammstein stage show effect, but not a very good looking bullet impacts. So after that fail, we had to reset and go again. And finally we got what we wanted.

A detail of destruction. (Photo by Tarja Jakunaho)

Building special effect shots is usually quite time-consuming, and it did take several hours to shoot just two shots, so I was feeling a bit desperate when we still had loads of pictures left to shoot, and time was running short. But luckily Götz was – again – really ruling the set, and Peta – being a real trooper – was hanging tough and playing great (although she had all the reasons not to) – we were able to crunch the best performances out of our beautiful cast and finished the day just in time.

This concluded our three-day shoot in that location. We will return to the bank today, but instead of that set, we have another one, a rooftop set, of which I’m a bit nervous, since it’s a cold, windy and slippery location. We’ll also be returning to Opel factory today to shoot one more scene there.

Yesterday was the first shooting day with Udo Kier on Iron Sky set. It’s a funny thing to recognize that when an actor of that caliber and experience arrives to the set, everything suddenly quiets down a bit – the aura of respect and authority he brings with him resonates to the whole crew. I also realized for the first time how complicated it is to actually direct passages of the film that are in German – it’s hard to jump in ask the actors to tweak a little bit the lines, or put pressure on certain words, when I understand almost nothing. Luckily, we have a great script supervisors and the cast is always helpful in trying to explain me exactly the meaning of certain words. But in the end, it’s just the best guess I can give on the set, and hope I’m right in the end.

A piece of action on the floor (photo by Tarja Jakunaho).

Working with Udo is nice and professional. He can offer quite a big variety of ways to approach the character, but we both agreed that instead of creating a cliché screaming Nazi Hitler wannabe, we go soft and smooth. Given the fact that the guy is the Führer of the Moonbase wearing an all-white Nazi uniform, Marshall’s Baton and a Luger, the one way to bring a bit more danger to the character is really to play smooth. I think we launched nice basis for the character, and we’ll be continuing today with a bit of special effect shots, stunts and all this type of fun.

In other news, there was quite a nice article on us at Wired, with some fresh photos of the cast included. Check the story out here.

Yesterday was a very complicated day, although we shot only one scene and not so many pages. The set was, again, just heartbreakingly awesome – it’s impossible to describe how well our set designers have been working. And when you add the handpicked extras wearing detailed costumes, the picture is quite damn perfect. It’s definitely helping the actors, as well – and especially yesterday, when we had an emotional scene that needed quite a roller coaster of emotions to work.

Before the shoot, we found a little present from our mailbox. Given that me AND Chris have birthday tomorrow, and a day off, I’m supposing the content goes to a good use.

No worries, mates.

Today, first shooting day of the three-day shoot at an office just across the street.

I’ve been afraid of this day ever since we landed here in Frankfurt. On the very first pre production date I got a message that the regulations here in Germany are way tighter when working with kids – saying, basically, that we have only 3 hours of active shooting time / day with children. And already, we had crammed two quite big scenes into one shooting day, which was easy 10 hour shoot to start with – and then we had to find a way to squeeze the 10 hours into 3 hours with some magic trickery.

But we managed to do that. Actually, we finished about 1 hour early. That’s never happened before. But this is all thanks to great coordination, effective choose of shots and especially because the kids were just awesome. They never complained, never behaved badly, never did anything but exactly what they were told – those kids were just plain pro. We shot the angles we had kids in first, not specifically focusing on the main cast, and then let the kids go and begun to fine-tune the performances of Julia and Götz. That way we got the shots we needed with the kids, and got best performances out of the actors, and everyone was happy.

At around midnight, we all started to be a bit tired – we have some quite rough days behind us already on this week, and doing a late night shoot is always quite demanding, but the last shot we di – a plain plate shot – was the 100th shot of Iron Sky, which we celebrated with a can of beer and a nice ride back to home. Now, I’m sitting home, feeling like I’ve been ran over by an earthmover, but quite happy for the stuff we shot.

Tomorrow we’ll return to the same set, and shoot the last scene of the film. Wish us luck, it’ll be a big day.

By the way. During today’s shoot, I found myself – again – standing and looking at the monitor, watching as the scene floats on before my eyes and thinking that we’re making quite damn strange film here :) It’ll be a lot of fun, I promise you that.