In early November, we here at Energia began an experiment in community
creativity on our discussion board. The task was to design elements around
the Nazi base on the far side of the Moon, freestyle, no restrictions.

The amount, diversity, creativity and sheer quality of the submissions were
a pleasant surprise for us – we knew to expect the community to be active,
but it was nice to see how eagerly people took to the task and how much
effort they put to their work. Based on a month of active discussion on the
forum, we have now put together a selection of the best ideas and
formulations, and the next step will be to refine them into elements for
the Iron Sky demo. The thread on our board amassed a total of 283 replies
from 53 individual participants, for a grand total of almost 20 forum pages
of discussion.

Creative communality has once again demonstrated its power, for which a
great big thank-you is in order to all participants! This thread will make
a fine example to show filmmakers when discussing the potential of
communities in motion pictures, but the process was by no means an
uncomplicated one. It is not a question of whether communities can offer
new avenues for filmmaking, but rather of how to control, motivate and
schedule the community.

The phpBB-based discussion board we use is far from the best possible tool
for this. As many of you will know, we are in the process of developing an
online production platform better suited for the communal creative process
– Star Wreck Studios – which is scheduled to be released for use with Iron
Sky early next year. The goal is to provide an answer for the problems of
the forum model, as well as developing a quality community service for
films in production.

The best use for communality was found in situations where a single
participant presented an idea that he or she found interesting, then
someone else developed it further and suggested some references, from where
a third person took it and modelled, drew or otherwise realised the final
result. As an unexpected bonus, much discussion centred on questions far
more scientific than the original task, not to mention the wildly divergent
tangents that developed internal details for the station or just generally
speculated what life might be like for the Moon Nazis.

The community experiment now concluded was an excellent experience for us,
and provided an extra push for the development of the Star Wreck Studios
platform. Anyone interested can visit www.starwreckstudios.com to let us
know something about themselves and their interests, as well as sign in the
beta testing team who will help us test and develop the platform towards
initial release.

Once again, thanks and a deep bow to everyone involved!

Some Statistics:
- Forum pages: 20
- Total replies: 287
- Individual collaborators: 53
- Textual ideas: 48
- Reference pictures: 30
- Sketch images: 13
- Links: 65
- 3D-models: 8
- Indirect textual ideas: 14
- Production pictures: 5

ENERGIA PRODUCTIONS WEBSITE REDESIGNED:
The Energia Productions website has been redesigned. The new, improved site showcases our 3D and community engineering expertise. Take a look (especially all you bosses of rich international businesses).
www.energiaproductions.fi

CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM STAR WRECK STORE
We’d like to celebrate having come this far by giving away holiday gifts to customers at the Store. Everybody who makes a purchase of at least 10 euros will get the original Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning DVD AND its original soundtrack CD for free! You have both of them already? No worries, the christmas is coming and you can give them out as a present! Hooray, Emperor Pirk!