Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Need some pics? Most of our photos are under a by-nc-sa license

July 9th, 2010 by Jarmo Puskala

Koala

Most of the pictures on our Flickr account are now under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-Attribution-ShareAlike license. That means that from copyright viewpoint you can copy, remix & re-distribute the photos as long as it’s not for commercial purposes. They can for example used to illustrate blog posts or Wikipedia articles. Just remember that if pictures have recognisable people you should respect their privacy.

The few pics that have all rights reserved are usually pics where the photographer has given us the right to use the images, but we haven’t yet asked them if it’s okay to let people remix the images.

Why? Why not. If Peter from Northampton needs a picture of a Koala for his school presentation of animals that fail in natural selection then why not let him use the one Janos took? It’s not like we’re loosing anything. But maybe koalas win if Peter’s presentation is a bit more convincing and gets Mary to study to be a vet whose research saves those cute, fuzzy bears from extiction. Probably not though.

Have fun.

Opera By You – World’s First Collaborative Opera on Wreckamovie

May 6th, 2010 by Timo Vuorensola

I know not too many of you go to see opera – at least not on regular basis – but have you ever wondered *what* would be an opera you’d like to go and watch? I mean opera has it all, kick-ass music, hot chicks & guys, drama, huge sets, massive costumes… Everything one could ask from any good film. Ok, they sing. A lot. But who the hell cares – once you’re there, the whole thing weaves together and delivers an atomic bomb of an experience, and you leave the hall with your ears ringing, hands shaking and knees all rubbery. It’s like the best film, theater play and heavy metal concert, all slammed together.

At least that’s how *I* think it would be. Yet, I never go to opera. Why? Because there’s usually nothing I could give two shits about – Figaros, Don Giovannis and Magic f*ckin’ Flutes… Who cares?

But what would be an opera you’d *really* want to see? Ever thought of it? Well – now you should. Savonlinnan Oopperajuhlat – a world-famous Opera festival in Finland – just set up an opera project on Wreckamovie, and it kicks some serious ass. The guys decided that instead of shuffling the old operas over and over, let’s try a different approach this time: let’s make opera together with the Internet. Here’s a pretty cool promo they put out there, check it out:

Right now, they start from the very beginning. They’re asking you, we, us, everyone to create the story for the opera. Already there’s some damn cool concepts out there. How does a real Space Opera Opera sound? How about Time Travel? I’m thinking about posting my own idea about an Opera set around Internet Memes – hell, could be even called l’Opera De 4chan.

I know you freaks can come up with crazy, great ideas – just go out there and start Wrecking!

- Timo out.

Why I left FaceBook

April 28th, 2010 by Timo Vuorensola

One of the things that I hate in life are impolite jerks. You know, the kind of people who just don’t give a shit about other people around them, and just steamroll on doing things their way, the way it suits them the best.

I just left FaceBook because that’s how I started to feel about the service, especially after its recent implementation of the Like-button. If you’re logged in to FaceBook, and go to a web page which has the new FaceBook’s Like-button, instantly FaceBook knows you’ve visited that site – without you necessarily taking any action on the site, whatsoever. For a much better article on the issue at hands, read more from here:

Philosophical Zombie

TechCrunch

The Like-functionality is almost like those bonus cards or loyalty programs in the supermarket chains – in Finland, S-kortti, Plussa etc. They exist only for one reason: to get to know what people buy to know how to sell their stuff to them more efficiently. But unlike FaceBook, they at least have the dignity to claim that they are paying back something for you for letting them know your shopping lists daily – in the form of bonuses and/or discounts. And – more importantly – I can easily decide not to use the cards when I don’t feel like it.

When it comes to the Internet, I’m not comfortable with the idea of somebody being able to monitor most of the websites I visit. It’s my own personal matter where I download my porn, where I find my Torrents and where I go “anonymously” trolling just for the fun of it. And although the new “Like”-button is not completely rupturing my privacy on the Internet – and definitively, it’s not the first one to do it like that – it offends me the way they slide this feature out as if it was something cool and fitting to the world of social media, sharing is caring and all that bullshit – forgetting to mention that fact it’s just their way to dig out my website history to be able to push their ads and who knows what else. We all know FaceBook like any company out there – has an agenda, and they won’t be stopping to this.

The reason this saddens me is because I like FaceBook. I was among the first ones signing up to it from Finland, and I’ve been using it quite a lot for both professional and personal matters – and I still do. Iron Sky group, or page, or Like-thing or whatever it’s turning and changing into – has been, is, and will be a very effective way to communicate the progress of the film to our fans. Same goes with ZombieRoom’s and Wreckamovie’s pages. I’m the first one to admit that I’m trying to exploit FaceBook to the max, without an intention to pay them a dime – and I’m getting the feeling that’s exactly their plan, too. And that’s just not OK.

Quitting FaceBook over the Like-button was not the main reason – if it was, I wouldn’t be using Google’s services, or basically any other social network out there. The thing is, I just don’t like their style. FaceBook is like the hunkiest douchebag in the bar. You know the type, the guy with enormous muscles and fake tan and bleached teeth. He gets to act just as badly as he wants, but there’s still always people swarming around him. Sometimes big online services just go into that path and never come back, and I don’t need that kind of shit around me.

But FaceBook always gets the final word. You can’t never leave FaceBook completely. Not even if you die.

I’m still up on the Internet, without FaceBook – you can follow me over Twitter, and read our blogs at Zombie Room and Iron Sky, watch how I Trek, or reach me via eMail.

Also, please note that this has no effect on Iron Sky’s presence on FaceBook in any way – Jarmo has been the guy updating it regularly, and he’ll keep on doing that also in the future. This is just for my personal FaceBook account.

Moon Nazi Invasion Begins – First Shots Fired!

March 24th, 2010 by Jarmo Puskala

Yesterday in Tampere we filmed the first shots of Iron Sky that will end up in the actual film. No, this wasn’t the start of the main shoots, that is still in the future. This was one day spent in front of the green screen shooting marching Moon Nazi troops and other material. We will use these shots to determine the final look, feel and mood of the movie and to iron out the kinks of our effects and CGI workflow. You’ll get to see the shots in the film and we hope we can show you something more before the summer as well.

We started the process on Monday with shopping. We needed a bit of rough concrete for the Space Nazis to walk on. So our production manager Tarja Jakunaho led us to a hardware store to find the best (and cheapest) way to fake a slab of concrete.

They look amazingly real through the camera. We’re kind of thinking of using the “concrete” blocks as a dividers in the office…

Tuesday we headed out to a building that used to be a electronics store and probably some sort of a factory before that. There was renovation going on on the other side of the hall, but since we didn’t need to record any on-set audio this time we were able to set up the greenscreen on the other end of the building. Iron Sky’s cinematographer Mika Orasmaa was behind the camera working with camera and lighting team from Obscure Entertainment.

The stars of the shoot were the costumes, made by our costume department headed by Jake Collier, who has worked on project such as Australia, The Pacific and of course the cult sci-fi series Farscape.

These are the suits of the “modern” Nazi troopers. Compared to the bulky spacesuit of the 1940’s Nazi astronaut in the teaser they’ve come a long way. While the outer layer of clothing is very traditional uniform, underneath they wear a new type of skintight spacesuit. This means the space troopers have far greater mobility than the current designs would allow. And yeah, there is a rationale for the leather straps.

SS_troopers

The shoot itself was quite simple – it get’s a bit more complicated in post production when the three marching troopers are cloned into a small army. Still, it’s not easy to goose step in perfect unison when you’re wearing a gas mask, but after a bit of coaching our extras did really well.

Space Nazis in Aamulehti

The title is: Space Nazis attacked Lielahti.

We also had a couple of reporters come see the shoot, both from paper press and the radio. Turns out we managed to invade most of the front page of Aamulehti, the second largest newspaper in Finland, with a huge pic of space nazis! You can read the article here, it’s in Finnish but there are some photos worth checking for.

Things are picking up speed and it’s time for the CGI department to get busy with the new materials. If you want to help us on our task, remember to Demand to See Iron Sky, and link our demand site and teaser video to your pals, acquaintances and your movie minded enemies. This stuff really helps us, since the more we can show people are interested in Iron Sky, the better standing we have with the distributors, funders and other such elements of the business side of movies!

Watch the Oscars with us!

March 3rd, 2010 by Jarmo Puskala

Right now tanker trucks filled with Botox are running 24/7 to LA to make sure all the important people are wrinkle free next Sunday, for the 82nd Academy Awards.

The Iron Sky gang will still be in Finland, so thankfully we are not required to paralyze our faces. But we’ll be watching. It doesn’t matter how many Botox jokes I make, Oscars are still the highlight of the film year and absolutely unmissable. Especially with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin hosting the gala.

Thanks to the miracle of time zones the Oscar gala starts at 3AM monday here in Finland. But we’ll be staying up late to watch the Oscars. Our director Timo will be on TV commenting the gala live on Nelonen.

I’ll be on a comfy sofa at home, chatting about the Oscars on Twitter and IRC. Timo will try and join the Tweeting as well. So follow @Energia and @LeonBlank.

If you don’t use Twitter programs I’ll make a blog post on Oscar night and add streams of our tweets and the general Oscar discussions.

See you sunday!