The Cosmonaut, a Spanish film about Lost Cosmonauts, will have its’ premiere on May 14th. Iron Sky team has been tracking down the production process of this crowdfunded science fiction masterpiece for a several years now, and we are all hyped about the upcoming release.

I had a chance to screen the film in advance, and I can tell you, it’s definitely worth the wait; an instant modern indie scifi classic, right up there with Moon and, well, I’d like to think Iron Sky as well!

We are urging Iron Sky fans, friends and followers share their enthusiasm, that helped us to make Iron Sky such a successful film worldwide, to The Cosmonaut as well. Best way to help out the film is to spread the word (sharing the link to their homepage, for example) and if you are in US, go see the film in one of the Tugg screenings – and if none are available in your area, you can easily create your own The Cosmonaut screening to a theater near you! Just go to Tugg.com and click Create Event on the top right corner of the screen!

The Cosmonaut Trailer (In all your screens – May 18th 2013) from Riot Cinema on Vimeo.

But, as it’s always with films, crowdfunded-, sourced- or plain good old “normal” films (whatever that means), the director is the one who lays down beat, the style and the feel of the film. Meet Nicolas Alcala, a 25-year-old Spanish filmmaker, a film school reject and a university dropout, who rather spent his time making his dream come true – according to his own words, “doing The Cosmonaut was so much fun and a lot more interesting.”

What was the biggest thing that made you realize you want to make this film?

Probably the first time I went to Star City, the real place where all the cosmonauts have been training to go to space since the sixties. It was a hidden city for many years and even now it’s not that easy to get in. Being in that place, which is frozen in time, with all those big training facilities, the military part, all the mockups, the cosmonauts walking around to buy bread at the bakery, or with their kids, the museum… it’s a very special place and I realized there was a huge story to be told about it.

Star City in the distance

You’ve had a long and windy production; what were the highlights and lowdowns you think you’ll remember the rest of your life?

Phew, so little space to write them all! It’s been a roller coaster. When you read all those stories about difficult shootings in films like Fitzcarraldo, Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner… They sound like fun. It’s not so much when all the hell breaks loose on you – but hey, it’s always nice to have enough stories to write one of those books by yourself. I wouldn’t change a single second of the last four years.

The best moment? The first time we saw the ending credits and we realized we’ve made a real film after all. And all the talks and master classes I’ve been lucky to be invited to, that relation with the audience is very special.

The worst is probably the moment when our russian co-producer dropped out a week away from the shooting taking with him 150.000$… but it wasn’t so bad since we asked for help to our fan base and we managed to raise 170.000$ in 3 days.

Talking about crowdfunding and -sourcing – what were the pros and cons of those methods, would you use them in the future, and what’s your take on the future of crowdsourced and/or -funded films?

PROS:

I have made a film.
I have made the film I wanted to do.
I have made it with complete (and I mean it) creative freedom. Not a single producer/distributor/investor up my ass telling me what and what not to do.
I have made it with 5000 new friends I made along the way, who were there for me through the good and the bad moments, and who will talk about their movie much better than I will ever be able to.

And all this allowed us to not only make the film we wanted to, but also to be able to skip the intermediaries if we needed to, to be able to negotiatie in our terms many times and to distribute the film the way we wanted.

All of this ROCKS.

CONS:

Melville once said that your first film should be made out of your own blood. That was definitely our case.
It has been the most difficult challenge of our lives. It has been painful and exhausting and nasty some times.

I would use it in the future but I think it shouldn’t be the basic funding for the film. It should be used to raise a community of people, fund like a 10% of the film and be able to make cool stuff for your fans and raise awareness. Our problem is that since we were going to license the film with Creative Commons and distribute it for free and on a day & date release… every other way of traditional financing came apart and we had to manage with only the crowdfunding funds, which are difficult to raise.

I think, in the future, crowdfunding will be a small part of film budgets and a big one if you are really famous like it happened with Veronica Mars and Zach Braff.

So, if The Cosmonaut is the love child of Tarkovsky and Kubrick, who are the rest of the closest relatives?

There is no way to answer this without looking like an asshole… so I’ll go for Wong Kar Wai and Aronofsky.

Russian space exploration is often easily being overshadowed by American achievements in films. Was this one of the themes of the film?

The first reason to make this film were there characters and the relationship between them. The second was a thing that interested me a lot: the solitude of a man lost in space, hundreds of thousand of kilometers away from home, knowing he is not coming back. Then came all the historical context once I started reading about the Soviet Space Race, which I feel have been totally overshadowed by the American side of the story. There are a lot of fucking epic stories from the soviets and I felt it was a great field to explore.

In the end, not much of the stories ended up in the film, which is focused on the characters, but they are on the 34 transmedia webisodes that we produced, which tell more about how the cosmonauts train and prepare for their missions, and give clues of one of many conspiracies that might have happened without us even knowing.

The Soviet Moon landing

What was the decision behind making the film in English language, rather than in Russian?

When you make your first film, you usually go Kevin Smith -style: 3 characters, a couple of locations, 3 to 4 weeks, your home town – you know, easy stuff, to be able to control as many variables as possible.

I went for a period film, set in Russia, shot in Latvia and Moscow during 11 weeks, with literally more than a hundred locations, with a tenth of the budget you will need to shoot the 90 minutes of the film and more than 200 of the transmedia pieces we shot.

Going for the Russian language, finding the russian actors, having a translator on set, not being able to direct them – that might have been too much for us at that time. So we decided to make it in English and make the film as international as possible.

What’s your take on the Torre Bert recordings, you think they were a hoax?

I think some of the them were probably made up or at least shined up a bit but, hey, who cares? The Cordiglia brothers story is so incredibly amazing that deserves all the credit. I can’t understand why nobody has made a film about them yet. It has everything: young passionate guys in the sixties, secret agents, conspiracies, dead cosmonauts, groupies, love…

Would you participate to Mars One -mission, the mission where you’d be sent to Mars to build a colony and live your life there, but would never have a chance to return back to Earth?

Not in a million years :)
There is a quote in my film which I really relate to, even though all the love I have for space:

Stas – So… you didn’t came to work here because you loved your work?
Yulia – I hate space. There is so much to see down here…

Reading through a crystal ball, I can tell you your near future: you will be running around the world in festivals with the film and being invited to gazillion crowdfunding-, sourcing- and transmedia seminars as a speaker. But what do you envision, how would you ideally see your career grow? Would you rather go towards Hollywood, or focus creating the career here in Europe?

Thanks but no thanks. I love going to seminar and so on, but what I really want to do is films. I believe in this great idea of “one for them, one for me”. I would love to do films in US, which is a little bit more oriented towards the big audiences, and then smaller and more personal films in Europe. At the same time, working in transmedia stories for my own, or someone else’s films. And having fun.

The Iron Sky team wishes the best to The Cosmonaut team for the release. You’ve done a big job so many others only dream of, and I can assure you, the upcoming year is going to be all about reaping what you’ve sown.

The film has been in production for several years now. Directed by Nicolás Alcalá, the film is a deep, thoughtful and emotional science fiction story set in the year 1967, the Space Race era, but looking at the world from the Russian perspective. It centers around two cosmonauts and the wife of one of them, their friendship, love triangle and the exploration of space and Moon.

What makes the film special, in addition for being a really good film, is the method it was produced, which is heavily inspired by the production process of Iron Sky and Star Wreck. The filmmakers raised a considerable amount of money from the collaborators over the internet, over 400k€. They will be releasing the film online for free distribution on May 14th, on a Pay-If-You-Like -model, on a DRM-free HD release. Those who contribute money get an access to a huge body of additional material online. A perfect release, available on every screen everywhere.

In addition to this, they are organizing a bunch of theatrical screenings of the film via Tugg.com, which was used also very successfully on Iron Sky’s US release.

Keep your antennas up for the film, it’s an unforgettable experience, and check out their website for more information. The Wikipedia article about the production is rather conclusive as well. The Wikipedia article about the production is pretty conclusive as well. Cosmonaut is here:

Let me address these questions one by one. First, the name – Director’s Cut. The original version, which I’ll call Theatrical Version from now on, was just as much director’s version as this one, but this version is closer to the original vision of the film, which was the cut down for several reasons before the theatrical premiere.

The reasons were both time and money. We didn’t have enough time to finish the film to hit the Berlin premiere in February’12, so we decided to cut some corners and focus on getting the film out. Second, as you know, we were always tight on money, and we just didn’t have enough resources to finish some of the more complex sequences with adequate quality. But it’s not to say that the Theatrical Version would’ve been anyhow lesser or minor version of the film; the two versions are quite different and it’s interesting to find out which one you will prefer. Theatrical Version is much faster paced and dashes on relentlessly, where Director’s Cut takes a little more buildup, staying a bit longer on scenes on the Moon and establishing the characters, thus rendering the pace to a more epic and grander scale movie. Both have their pros and cons. I prefer the Director’s Cut.

So, what’s new then? Well, first, we went back to the original script and storyboards and decided to slam together several scenes we had skipped in the storyboard phase, and finish them. Most of that stuff was already somehow planned, either as animatics or simple scribblings on paper, but our adamant idea was to not to bring anything new to the film that wasn’t there in the planning stage. This meant, of course, a lot of more work to Troll, the VFX company of Iron Sky, who finished the visuals in an amazingly beautiful way.

Then, we opened the very first cut of the film, slammed together by Suresh Ayyar, our editor, and pulled in scenes we felt that would fit the film that had ended up on the cutting room’s floor for whatever reason. We were giggling through a lot of awesome stuff, and decided to bring in most of the scenes – there were few bits we knew were left out for good reason, but mostly the stuff was just too brilliant not to tuck in. Then, we sat down with editor Iikka Hesse in Finland and took a new stab on the material, trimming and squeezing it, finishing with almost 20 minutes longer cut of the film.

Last but not least, we of course needed a lot more music, so we contacted Laibach and introduced them to the idea of composing new music to the film. They, of course, were interested, but the process proved to be a bit more complex than we expected. Adding to music is much different than just putting new material in here, adding few beats there – basically, much of the stuff had to be either completely re-composed or at least had to be torn open and put back together from much bigger portions than just the added new material.

We then finished the sound with our sound designer Heiko Müller in Münich, color-graded in James Post in Finland and — well, here we are! All new shiny version of Iron Sky is now out, and we are eager to hear your thoughts! You may post them either to our Facebook page, or as a comment here – I really want to know what you thought of the new version of the film, especially those who’ve seen the first version, and which one you prefer?

Wolfgang and his cronies greet the troops as they march into the next Great War

The last question that remains is: where to get Director’s Cut. Well, the answer is Netflix Nordic. If you don’t have Netfix and you live in Finland, Sweden, Norway or Denmark, now is a great time to get it. I can’t appraise enough the service, and premiering Iron Sky there is a great honor for us.

We are right now opening the discussion with our distributors on getting the new version available on Blu-Ray and DVD, and hopefully even on a small theatrical run – and will keep you informed! So stay tuned!

Here are some memories from the Berlinale premiere, one year ago:

It wasn’t an easy year, though. Travelling means being a lot away from your loved ones, and releasing this film means I traveled more days than I stayed in Finland. Being public property of sorts, dealing with criticism can be sometimes flooring, but luckily there’s always you, fans, to help me back up. Interviews are great, but you can only tell your story in so many ways. Premiere parties are nice, but there are healthier jobs out there than being a film director.

But now, here I am, back at Berlinale, sitting on the floor in the corner of Martin-Grobius-Bau, watching as the buzz of the European Film Market is around. New films on the market, new people celebrated, new deals being made. Iron Sky was out last year, to these people, it’s old news. But truth be told, the story of Iron Sky goes on. We have started to write the sequel, and the Director’s Cut is coming out this year. The Moon Nazis are still very much alive. But what’s most interesting is that everyone knows Iron Sky, worldwide. The film industry is aware of the small Finnish film freaks who made quite a ripple in the international market with the craziest film in long time, and we are proud and happy about that. We came here to make films and disrupt the ways films are made, released and distributed, and intend to continue down that road.

Tonight, we are having the first public screening of the Director’s Cut (we used to call it Extended Edition, but realized that Director’s Cut is probably more truth, we were forced to leave a lot of cool stuff out of the film due its’ initial release, and I was really happy for the opportunity to bring the film into its’ originally-meant glory). I will be reporting back to you from the premiere, but in the meanwhile, for those wanting to take a little trip down the memory lane, here’s the Director’s Diary archives of Iron Sky. Watching them you get quite a good idea on how big a job it was to create the film, quite personally seen through the lense of the director’s camera.

To celebrate the first year of Iron Sky, we released the Premium Anniversary shirt design, by wonderful artist Izumikawa MacFLY!

Click here to buy the shirt and support Iron Sky! Buy now and get -20% off of the price (now: 19,90€, normally 24,90€)

NEW SHIRTS AT THE STORE!

We also launched 3 new shirt designs, first one is out now for purchase, two next ones will be unlocked during February! The first shirt, designed by Janina Åberg, is an amazingly beautiful THREE MOON NAZI -shirt, inspired by the legendary THREE WOLF MOON -design. This unique design comes printed on a high quality T-shirt, with big Iron Sky logo in the back. Place your order before 10.2., and get 20% off of the price!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE IRON SKY STORE

To celebrate the Best Film Poster -award, the theatrical poster of Iron Sky is available at a huge sale at our store! Get yours – SIGNED with director Timo Vuorensola’s, VFX producer Samuli Torssonen’s, poster artist Jussi Lehtiniemi’s and producer Tero Kaukomaa’s signatures – now for only 14,90€ (normally 29,90€)! We signed only 100 of these, so be quick and get yours before we run out of these beauties! Click here to get your copy of the winning and signed poster NOW!

And, as a cherry on top – you can Download the Three Moon Nazi desktop wallpaper here for free!

Rakennehan Iron Sky:n rahoituksessa oli se, että n. 10% koko elokuvan budjetista rahoitettiin fanirahoitteisesti. Iso osa fanirahoituksesta koostui ns. fanisijoituksista, eli ihmisten tekemistä piensijoituksista. Sijoitusten osuus on n. 700000 euroa.

Sijoitussopimusten mukaisesti fanisijoittajat ovat samalla viivalla elokuvaan sijottaneiden tekijöiden kanssa (tuottajien ja ohjaajien), jotka saavat nyt ensimmäisessä vaiheessa rahojaan takaisin elokuvan tuotoista.

Tärkeää on kyetä erottamaan elokuvan nettotuotto vs. bruttotuotto. Eli elokuvan tuotanto- ja levityskustannuksia ennen tulleet rahat vs. elokuvan tuotanto- ja levityskustannusten jälkeen käteen jääneet rahat.

Jotta tuottoa voidaan alkaa maksaa, on ensin saatava katettua tekemiseen ja levitykseen kuluneet rahat. 10 miljoonaa maksanut elokuva on tehnyt rahaa takaisin 10 miljoonaa, mutta ei vielä tarkoita, että edes kulut olisi peitetty; matkan varrella on elokuvateatterit ja levitysyhtiöt ottamassa oman osuutensa elokuvan tuotoista, tuottajalle päätyvät rahat eivät vielä ole kattaneet elokuvan tekoon käytettyjä rahoja. Elokuvan tuottaja ei siis ole vielä tehnyt bisnestä, vaikka elokuva on näennäisesti “tehnytkin takaisin omansa”.

Toisin sanottuna, elokuva on tehnyt rahaa, mutta ensimmäisenä nokkimisjärjestyksessä olevat ovat napanneet ensimmäisen vaiheen rahasta, eli pääsääntöisesti elokuvateatterirahasta, omansa. Varsinaiset osuudet fanisijoittajille, tuottajalle ja ohjaajalle jäävät odottamaan ns. toisen vaiheen rahaa – tallenne- ja digimyyntiä. Jep, siis käytännössä niitä DVD- ja BluRay-myyntejä, jotka nykyään muodostavat merkittävän osan elokuvan tuottajalle tuomasta voitosta.

Elokuvateatterilevitys on kallis tapa markkinoida tallenteita, mutta valitettavasti se on suunta, johon bisnes on kallistunut. Rahaa siis on vielä matkalla, peräti melko paljonkin, mutta ne eivät valitettavasti ole tulossa ihan heti eikä viidestoistakaan päivä. Elokuvan elinkaari on useiden vuosien mittainen, joten tulevina vuosina tullaan vasta näkemään, kuinka iso osuus sijoituksista palautuu sijoittaneille tuottajalle ja fani- ja perinteisille sijoittajille. Toivottavasti kaikki. Ehkä jopa vähän voittoakin.

Tämän lisäksi elokuvarahan liikkeet ovat hitaat. Levittäjä on voinut tehdä merkittäviä määriä bisnestä ja rahat makaavat tilillä jossain päin Retoromaniaa, mutta se, että ne päätyisivät tuottajan tilille ja sitä kautta fanisijoittajien tileille ei olekaan ihan niin simppeliä. Iron Sky on myynyt satoja tuhansia DVD- ja BluRay -levyjä jo tässä vaiheessa pitkin palloa, ja valtavia määriä rahaa makaa tileillä pitkin maailmaa odottamassa sitä Herran päivää kun levittäjä jaksaa tehdä raportin ja antaa mahdollisuuden laskuttaa, mikäli laskuttamiseen on aihetta. Valitettavasti raporttien odottaminen ja niiden metsästäminen kissojen ja koirien kanssa on yksi koko tämän elokuvalevitysmambon vähemmän mieluisista mutta vääjäämättömistä sivupuuhista.

Tiivistetysti siis: elokuvarahan liikkeet ovat hitaat ja jyvittyvät pitkästi vuosien mittaiselle ajalle. Iron Sky:n tuottajat tekevätkin siis niska limassa töitä saadakseen fanisijoittajiensa – ja omansa – rahat takaisin. Osa tästä työstä on rahojen hidasta kotiutusta maailmalta, mutta osa myös uusien tuotteiden – kuten Iron Sky: Extended Editionin – tuotantoa ja myyntiä. Ei siis kannata heittää kirvestä kaivoon, edessä on vielä vuosien mielenkiintoinen urakka, jonka lopputuloksena toivon mukaan kaikki ovat saaneet rahansa takaisin, kenties pientä voittoakin!

Tero Kaukomaa
Iron Sky:n tuottaja

We grabbed the AACTA award for Best Visual Effects category in a ceremony held January 28th in Sydney. The VFX budget of Iron Sky was under 1 million dollars, and the team consisted of only 20 artists working from Tampere, Finland. We did the visual effects for Iron Sky in a little under one year with a small but highly specialized team from Finland and abroad, and the production was extremely demanding – we had never done anything that big – and the work was finished only two days before the premiere. But we made it. Which is nice. And the award highly appreciated! So thanks, Australia!

The main guys behind Iron Sky visual effects team formed a new company, Troll VFX, with aim to produce visual effects for international films and TV series. Working together in tight conjunction with Blind Spot Pictures (the production company of Iron Sky), the team is now forcing their way to Hollywood with a new science fiction action film Jeremiah Harm. An extended edition of Iron Sky is coming out this year, featuring 20 more minutes of material, and the team is now sharpening their pens, preparing to write the sequel for Iron Sky. Blind Spot Pictures is also coming out with a new film from Aku Louhimies, crime drama called 8-ball.

I guess every country has their own awards ceremony, and not surprisingly, the Finns have one, too. We call it Jussi Awards, there’s probably a good reason behind the name but I’m guessing it’s because our AD/Concept Artist Jussi Lehtiniemi. We are nominated there for best Production Design, but there’s also the audience award. And we WANT TO WIN THAT, TOO. And you can help. Just vote here for Iron Sky, and help us get the audience award (yleisö-Jussi)!

That’s all, Troopers, for now! Oh, but… Yeah! Buy our T-Shirts. They are DIRT CHEAP for few more days, now!

Official IRON SKY CALENDAR 2013 has been released. Containing amazing artwork by Jussi Lehtiniemi, the man behind the steampunk world of Iron Sky, this wall calendar puts all the competing wall calendars to shame. Calendar hangs open proudly in its’ 30cm x 43cm size, adoring the walls of your home or office, and reminding your co-workers or family members that you have participated in defending the Earth from the vile Moon Nazis and their attack plans.

The calendars are available for a limited time only, so get yours while we still have them! IRON SKY CALENDAR 2013 is also a great gift to a friend, lover – or an enemy (keep them close, they said).

Get your IRON SKY CALENDAR 2013 NOW at Iron Sky Store, at the low price of 18€!

The year is coming to an end, and now is a good time to take a look back at the year 2012. And what a year it was! One year ago, we were still sitting in edit booths, in front of CG programs and sound studios and grading suites mixing, tweaking, rendering, forking and fiddling to finish our six-year behemoth of a work, Iron Sky.

Finally, in February, the film saw the light of the day at Berlin International Film Festival. It wasn’t a silent, sneaky release – the whole film world was speaking of the weird little film hailing from Finland. Some loved it. Some hated it. Everyone spoke of it. And that’s the kind of film we had set out to do six year earlier. A controversial, dark comedy about Nazis from the Dark Side of the Moon.

Then, at the premiere, in front of almost two thousand cheering spectators we thought the work was done. Little did we know we were about to be dragged to every corner of the world and back during the next nine months. The release tour of Iron Sky started in Berlin, continued to Oslo, Texas, led us through 20 cities across Finland, then off to Zürich, Brussels, Ljubljana, Moscow, Tokyo… List goes on and on, all the way to Hong Kong, where the film was released just few weeks ago. Altogether, Iron Sky was released in almost 50 countries in film theaters, and even more countries it’s coming out on a DVD & BluRay.

So far way over million admissions in theaters, already hundreds of thousands of DVDs sold. After six years of hard work it’s good to see that it was worth it. And for that the biggest thanks goes to…well, you know who.

You.

You were there, all the way from the early moments of the production, through the hard, horrific months of uncertainty, working on the script, trying to get money together, shooting the film, post-production… All that. So, thank you. A lot.

And we are not done yet, no sir. As we speak, we are finishing the Extended Edition of Iron Sky, bringing in nearly 20 minutes of new material. Stay tuned, Extended Edition is coming soon!

The next ventures are taking us even further – we are working on our next film already, which is our first US co-production, a scifi actioner Jeremiah Harm. And then there’s the story of Iron Sky – and that story is not over yet. We have assembled the old team and are starting to develop the story for the sequel and a prequel as well!

So there’s a lot of fun stuff coming from us next year, and we wish to invite you all onboard! But before that, let’s all have a quick break, just few days not worrying about Moon Nazi invasion or intergalactic bounty hunters; spend few days with our families, friends – or just by ourselves, if it’s more to our liking – and have a Happy Holidays, and a fantastic New Year!

Signed,

Tero Kaukomaa,
Timo Vuorensola
Samuli Torssonen

and the rest of the Iron Sky team!

Foreword is written by yours truly!

Iron Sky – The Book by Ilsa von Braunfels is available on a very reasonable price (a bit under 6€) in English and German on Amazon and iTunes! Enjoy – and let us know, what you think!

Iron Sky – The Book Based on the Movie on iTunes (ENG – don’t worry, the page is in German but the book is in English, I checked it out myself)
Iron Sky – The Book Based on the Movie on iTunes (GER)

Iron Sky – The Book Based on the Movie on Amazon (ENG)
Iron Sky – The Book Based on the Movie on Amazon (GER)

FOR US CUSTOMERS - you can find the ebook on Kobo!

(The printed version is coming up in January!)