And here is the second part of our Australian odyssey! This time we visited the Australian countryside in search of some shooting locations we didn’t yet have, and a wilderness of a different variety – that of 15 000 scifi and fantasy fans in Supanova Pop Culture Expo in Sydney.
Archive for the ‘Iron Sky’ Category
Iron Sky is our upcoming film. A science fiction comedy about nazis on the Moon.
Iron Sky Signal #12 – Iron Sky Goes Australia Part I
July 26th, 2010 by Janos HonkonenIf you are an active follower of our blog, you’ve probably already read about our June escapades in Australia, where we went to meet our local production team and to handle a whole lot of practical stuff about our shootings Down Under. If not, you can start from here. If the moving picture is more of your thing, here’s something for you – a brand new Iron Sky Signal about the first half of our trip to Australia! This time you’ll see us explore what will probably be our studio, find some shooting locations, and spend a day out encountering Australian wildlife up close and personal.
Iron Sky & Wreckamovie at Finncon
July 12th, 2010 by Jarmo Puskala
A rare picture of Emperor Pirk on holiday at the 2007 Finncon in Jyväskylä.
Finncon 2010 starts next Friday in Jyväskylä. Finncon is the Finnish national science fiction convention. For a long time it has been arranged together with Animecon, but this year it’s all about science fiction – the reason being, that the combined event had grown to over 10,000 visitors and grown out of almost all viable venues in Finland! This had become quite a challenge for a free convention organized by fan for fans.
Wreckamovie Festival
A far smaller but quite interesting companion for the convention is that one of the venues at University of Jyväskylä’s campus, Ilokivi, is reserved for Wreckamovie festival. It showcases Wreckamovie productions from all over the world, with film screenings running daily.
There are some interesting films you should check out, like the (still) excellent What Became of Us and Snowblind, a feature length post-apocalyptic western produced on Wreckamovie. There’s also a chance to see a little known short film called Tokyo Baby, in which the plot involves the main character running away from home to attend Animecon. It’s produced by Blind Spot, but while you might guess otherwise Blind Spot’s geek squad had nothing to do with the film, it’s just that anime as a hobby has exploded in Finland as well and become very much a part of mainstream.
Iron Sky
I’ll be talking about Iron Sky’s use of social media on Saturday. Including the latest news about where we’re at with the production. I’ll be also hanging around at the Wreckamovie festival along with the makers of the Star Wreck 2pi fan film and other interesting people.
As always Finncon is free and very much worth booking a flight to Finland. I’m planning on checking out the lecture about fantasy in Don Rosa’s Donald Duck stories – if I can fit into the auditorium. The Donald Duck panels tend to be epic.
p.s. Samuli will also try and make it to Jyväskylä to talk about the next Star Wreck. Okay so Samuli probably won’t make it, since he has to work on Iron Sky. But he’ll try.
Iron Sky Goes Australia – Sydney, Supanova & Back Home
June 28th, 2010 by Janos HonkonenHere it is finally, the last part of our Australian odyssey! The last days of the trip were too busy for blogging and on our way back we were too beat to do anything but wind down and relax throughout the 34 hour trip back to Finland. Then, there was the Finnish midsummer festival Juhannus…
In any case, we spent the second half of our Australian trip in Sydney doing some casting, having more meetings and attending the Supanova Pop Culture Expo. This time we were staying right in middle of Sydney downtown, in Meriton Serviced Apartments, where Timo and I got a nice two bedroom apartment in the 45th floor. The view was great and it was a definite luxury to be able to start the day with a sauna and a dip in a pool before heading off to work.
The first major thing we did was to do some casting for one of the main roles of the movie. We had a nice and productive casting session which we topped off with a nice sushi lunch. We have some really strong candidates for several roles now, which is a damn good thing – we are again that much closer to the shootings.
Supanova Expo
Timo, Tarja, Tero and others had again plenty of meetings about the budget and logistics, but most of my time went to getting ready for the Supanova weekend. We were a relatively late addition to the lineup, so getting our booth and stuff together wasn’t trivial. Luckily I didn’t have to do it alone, since my local contacts in Australia or left lane driving skills aren’t anything to write home about.
(Check out more photos in our Flickr-photoset!)
Getting Supanova going was a job for me and Jessica, a super effective production assistant from our Australian partner New Holland Pictures. We ended up driving around Sydney, picking up bits and pieces, such as our large Iron Sky banner that was sent via air mail, and a TV which one of our Wreckers was kind enough to lend us (thanks again Jeremy, you are a lifesaver!). We had a couple of interesting detours, thanks to the crappiest Garmin GPS I’ve encountered so far, but managed to make it on time to Sydney Olympic Park, the venue for Supanova. Setting up the booth was a breeze, although someone had forgotten to provide us with electricity, but that got corrected in time for the morning.
Timo and Jessica setting up the booth.
The two days in Supanova was a blast. Our booth was in a prime location, right next to the celebrity signing area. We had our Iron Sky teasers and Star Wreck trailer on repeat on the TV, which drew in satisfying crowds of people. We managed to sell most of my merchandise, which was a blessing. Because of a technicality, we were able to fly it in rather cheap, but flying it back to Finland would have been insanely expensive: we were literally in a situation where we had to sell everything we have in order to make it back home. We more or less managed to do that, but even flying the practically empty case home would have cost us 750 euros…
The Iron Sky booth before the event began. Just add customers.
The booth was manned by mainly me, Timo and Jessica, but we took short pauses to go and enjoy the expo atmosphere and get our geek in. I did some geeky T-shirt shopping, went to listen to Dichen Lachman tell how to blow soap bubbles from under your arm, and steal a glimpse of Eliza Dushku and Summer Glau on the signature booths. Later Timo and I almost barged into Eliza and Michael Winslow of Police Academy fame when we were hurrying out of the backstage. Timo bought a huge amount of Star Trek stuff, so I guess that Trekathon-stuff is working. Timo also had two presentations about Iron Sky and collaborative movie making, both on Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday evening we had a fan/investor meeting, where people who are interested in Iron Sky and investing in the movie got to meet us face to face. The meeting took place in Steel Bar & Grill, that really isn’t what you’d expect by just the name alone. It’s a stylish brasserie in downtown Sydney, definitely an upscale place. A big part of the crew and some of the fans ended up being out in the city ’till the morning hours, having fun.
Stormtroopers came to pay homage to their Moon Nazi counterparts.
Dr. Kroenen dropped by to say 'hi'.
Suddenly: Lordi and Amen.
The Conclusion
All in all the whole trip was extremely productive for us. This is a good thing, since the next time we’ll come to Australia en masse will probably be in November when we start shooting in there.
In the end we had a huge amount of people drop by our Supanova booth to check out the teasers, buy some stuff or just to exchange a few words about Iron Sky. Thanks to each one of you, and thank you for the massive amount of Twitter love, blog posts and other attention you’ve given us after the expo!
See you this November – or maybe a bit earlier, if certain things work out!
Iron Sky Goes Australia – Auditions and Recce
June 17th, 2010 by Janos HonkonenWhile we are here, we have been nailing down our plans about the exact schedule of what we are going to shoot and where. Right now it looks like this:
First, we go over to Frankfurt for about four weeks, and shoot almost all of the location scenes. That means that we’ll double Frankfurt as New York (that’s where part of the story happens), for both exteriors and interiors. It’s quite a good place for that, being the banking city with a high-rise skyline and nice indoor locations all over.
Then, we move to Brisbane, Australia, and shoot another four weeks. Altogether that adds up to 40 shooting days, give or take few. Here we will go to Warner Roadshow studios in Gold Coast, and shoot all of the studio sets – mostly the Nazi Fortress interiors and spaceship bridges and so on. There are some locations to shoot in here too, and one part of our trip to here was to go check them out.
Our Monday was spent doing auditions for one major and several smaller roles in the movie. Basically we had people coming in from ten in the morning to six in the evening and doing their lines in front of the camera. We had some really talented and hilarious people show up, and fittingly for the project, the last audition was interrupted by a smallish grease fire and a curious opossum.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we did a bit of recceing around Brisbane to see some of the locations we found extremely hard to come by in Frankfurt. One very complicated one has been a farmhouse – Frankfurt is not a huge farming area, and most of the farms are very “European” style. So we thought about it and gave it a kick over here in Brisbane.
"Maybe a little bit too dilapidated?" "Yeah, maybe a little bit."
And boy did we find an awesome farm! An old, shabby nice farm, exactly the kind we had been looking for, with all kind of old rusty cars and scrap metal all over the yard, just screaming our name!
After a good day of recceing, we went back to Brisie for a mini-fan-meeting. We met a couple of local Iron Sky fans, all great people. We flashed them a bit of some exclusive never-before-seen material and had a few beers with ‘em – if you’re reading this, very nice to meet you, hope to get to possibly even work with you, and definitely to catch up with you when we come back here.
We stumbled into old movie sets - this one was used for Scooby Doo.
Next up, there’s only a bit of recceing left to be done, and then we’re off to Sydney and start preparing for Supanova. But before that – and of this I’m extremely excited about – we’re going to meet a strong contestant to be one of our main actors.
But more on that later.
Try not to hurt yourself, and to all of you Sydneysiders out there, check out our Sydney come over and say “hi” to us in Supanova where we have our booth right next to the entrance to the signing area! Also, there’s a fan / investor meeting on Saturday at 7:30pm in Steel Bar & Grill, a stylish brasserie in downtown Sydney.
Oh – and we’re about to explore a bit through the city, so if there’s any cool shite to do over in Sydney – or, even better, any cool parties we should attend to – just give us a holler.
The electricity addicts are littering the corners of the airports, scrounging for juice for their disgusting habit for mobile computing.
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