I posted the video to our Facebook page and the comments keep rolling in. It’s amazing how everyone seems to have an opinion about Uwe Boll. Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned, even though it’s actually been quite a while since Uwe has made a truly bad film.

What, you don’t believe that previous sentence? Check the reviews for “Rampage” on iMDB and prepare to shit bricks.

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.

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.

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!

Facebook kaivaa jälleen kerran omaa kuoppaansa. Ilmeisesti suomalaiset sivut hassuine suomenkielisine sanoineen ovat punainen vaate Facebookin sensuuritiimille. MoonTV:n sivun poistosta on ehtinyt kulua vasta pari viikkoa, kun Facebook on iskenyt kauhansa entistä syvemmälle lietteeseen. Tällä kertaa vasaran alle joutui Suomen suurin kesäilmiö, eli Jukka Mutanen joka Facebookista lähteneen vedon johdosta ajaa parhaillaan minikaivurilla Hangosta Kuusamoon. Iltapäivälehdet huutavat Facebookin sulkeneen Mutasen sivut.

Tämä on Facebookin poistoista ehkä käsittämättömin. Minikaivurit eivät tietääkseni ole laittomia, loukkaa uskonnollisia ryhmiä tai uhkaa sukupuolisiveyttä millään lailla. Sen sijaan kyseessä oli Suomen suurin Facebook-ilmiö, suorastaan palvelun kultapoika – siellä aloitettu vitsi voi paisua näin valtavaksi mediatapahtumaksi.

Facebookin yrityskäytön kannalta Mutasen sivun poisto lienee tähänastisista vahingollisin. Paitsi, että tästä kuulevat muutkin kuin netin aktiivikäyttäjät, kertoo tämä hyvin vahvaa kieltään siitä kuinka mielivaltaisia Facebookin päätökset ovat. Tämä tuskin kannustaaa yhtäkään pienyritystä käyttämään vähiä rahojaan Facebook-markkinointiin. “Jos Mutasen sivut poistettiin, niin eikö ne voi poistaa meidänkin sivut?”, tulee varmasti olemaan yleinen kysymys sosiaalisen median markkinoijille.

Oma arvaukseni on, että sivusta on tehty piloillaan valituksia ja nämä valitukset on käsitellyt suomea ymmärtämätön työntekijä. Tämä ei ole voinut millään tietää palvataanko sivulla saatanaa, vai jutellaanko minikaivurilla köröttelystä. Koska valitukset on tehty niin vaikeiksi, Mutasen fanien ainoa toivo lienee se, että uutinen sivun poistosta leviää mediassa niin laajalle, että sana siitä kiirii myös Facebookin markkinointiosastolle. Jos näin ei käy, sivut jäänevät palauttamatta ja suomalaiset sosiaalisen median palvelut saavat yllättävän kilpailuedun taisteluun kotimaisista mainosmarkoista.

I wanted to take a moment and tell you about an interesting experiment I’ve embarked on with my girlfriend Essi. It’s called Trekathon, and the its basic idea is to find out what happens to two film nerds who decide to consume the full franchise of Star Trek in just one year time.

Yesterday was the 100th day of Trekathon, and I wanted to share our results with you, the Iron Sky and Star Wreck people. As some of you might know, I’ve directed a small film called Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning some years ago. As the name would suggest, it’s a Star Trek film.

Now the funny thing was that when working on the film, I hadn’t seen practically any episodes of Star Trek. Ever.

Finally this year, I decided to fix this. I even lured my filmnerd-of-a-girlfriend Essi to join me – make her give up her obsession on films and focus completely on Star Trek for the next 365 days.
So that’s what we’ve been doing for the last 100 days. Watching Star Trek.

And to make things even more interesting, I decided to combine my long-time dream to run a marathon. So, in addition to watching all of the Star Trek movies and episodes in the next year, I’ve promised to buy a Star Trek fan shirt and wear it proudly when crossing the finishing line of Helsinki City Marathon in 2010.

Here’s where we’re standing now with Trekathon:

So far, we’ve seen 194 episodes of Star Trek, starting from the unaired pilot (“The Cage”), then moving on to The Original Series, The Animated Series and we’re just about to finish the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In addition to that, we’ve seen five Star Trek movies.

To finish our great undertaking, we have 530 episodes and 6 movies left – and 265 days to go. This means we need to watch approximately 2 episodes every day for the next 265 days.

So, what do we like Star Trek so far?

It’s awesome.

It’s better than we had ever expected.

It’s even better than that.

It’s … Grand. (Yes, I did say that in Patrick Stewart’s voice.)

We’ve set up a blog that follows our progress daily – check it out here. In addition to that, you can follow us on Twitter, and even wear a Twibbon to show your support.

Alright, friends – Live Long and Prosper!

Timo.

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.

I had planned on going to dive, but the logistics were too much of a hassle for that. My backup plan was to join the others to go see some plants and hug some koalas.

Timo and I started the morning by listening some music and chilling out, followed by going to Brisbane downtown to do a bit of shopping. From where we are staying we have to take a river boat to cross the creatively named Brisbane River to the downtown. We’ve really grown to like the place. People in here seem to be generally laid off but efficient at the same time. It’s a mentality that works for us Finns pretty well, I think. Generally the service in the shops and restaurants seems to be like the top-20% service in Finland: friendly but no-nonsense.

After Timo had his shopping done we headed off for the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens to wind down. Botanic gardens are great places to go to when you want to just let your mind grind to rest. The one in Brisbane had plenty of palm trees and bamboo, very noisy birds and a stretch of mangrove in the riverside.

After the gardens it was koala hugging time. We hopped into a bus that took us into Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in the outskirts of Brisbane. In spite of the net it’s not just koalas, but a nice zoo featuring a lot of Australia’s indigenous species, such as kangaroos, platypuses (platypi?), dingos, wombats and several kinds of birds. We also happened to run into our production manager Tarja and production designer Ulrika in the zoo, where they also had ended up visiting.

There was also a chance to hold koalas and have your photo taken, and how could I miss a chance like that. I mean, I’m one of those people who like to touch animals, which of course is a rather bad idea in Australia where anything that’s not poisonous is downright venomous, or bites your nads off. Everybody had told me that koalas stank to high heaven and they were basically stoned and able to rip out a man’s jugular, but the little bear I was handed was far from that. It even smelled nice, like some weird old cough drops.

In addition to koalas there was also a field full of kangaroos, who were pretty blasé about all the tourists walking around them, shoving cameras in their faces and scratching them – perhaps because you could also feed them. We didn’t think of buying any kangaroo snacks, so we just kept photographing and scratching them.

"Hello, Mr. Kangaroo!" "Erm... do I know you?"

We got out of the zoo at the closing time when the staff started to gently nudge us out of the door, although I could have spend a couple of hours more with all the fun animals. After that we grabbed a taxi to downtown, ate a very nice dinner and headed off to the hotel.

This was definitely a good day for recharging our batteries, which was sorely needed. Timo dropped to the bed like a sack of potatoes and is snoring hard enough to make the window panes rattle and now it’s off to the bed for me again. Tomorrow, a full day of casting and meetings, meetings, meetings!

(Check out our Flickr set for more photos from our trip)

Most of Saturday went to talking with our stunts and special effects co-ordinators. Yes, at this stage 90% of filmmaking is sitting in meetings. Handling stunts in a correct way is very important, though. Back in the fuzzy Ozploitation days in the 70’s, the life of an actor on set was hanging by a thread. During that time, many filmmakers got injured and even died because of neglected safety instructions. So, not surprisingly, the regulations are nowadays much more strict. This reflects especially to the actors and stunts – basically, an actor can’t do anything that could be even potentially harmful on the set. Meaning: fake-punch in the face – stunt. Falling down on the floor on your ass – stunt. Running in the forest – stunt.

But it does make sense; if anything was to happen, even something as small as spraining an ankle, there’d be nobody to shoot then during that day. Or the whole week. And that’s when it starts to get really expensive…

A meeting with our stunts and special effects co-ordinators in our Australian producers' beautiful house slash home office.

But this is all small stuff, because then there are the real stunt maneuvers, which we have plenty in the film. We have some quite complicated action sequences, and we’re playing around with the gravity quite a lot; surface of the Moon has 1/6th gravity, and space, of course, zero. There’s anti-gravity generators being turned on and off, people floating around and so on.

We had a very interesting meeting with our Australian stunt coordinator (who, by the way, looks *exactly* like Sean Penn…) where we were planning quite a lot of these effects. Most of the Nazi troopers can be played by stunt people, since they have their masks on, as you’ve seen in the teasers, so we don’t have to spend too much time training them how harnesses and wiring works: and yeah, jumping several meters while dangling on harnesses takes some skill and practice.

Floor plans of the Nazi moon base, or at least a part of it.

Actually, here’s something you can be helpful with – I need a good reference library of films that have zero-G or Moon gravity effects. If something pops to your mind, share it with me – I need to get hold of those films and start doing a bit of research. I’m especially interested to see how hair is done in films in zero-G. Our main character, Renate, has a long blonde hair, and we would need to understand how that works in a zero gravity environment, and how to fake that.

Other than discussing the stunts, we re-visited the studios. It was nice to walk in the huge halls, around the massive set pieces of the new Narnia film that was shot there, and imagine that in few months the sets of my film will be populating the lot. I also learned that we’re shooting Iron Sky most probably during the same time as one of my all-time favorite directors is shooting in the studio across the yard… More on that later.

These studios are big. The joke is that we'll need at least two. Now you may start to see where all those 6.5 million euros are going to go.

(You can find more photos in our Flickr)

I’m starting to like it here in the Down Under. A funny moment I found myself yesterday evening in was that I was sitting by a very traditional Finnish wooden table, just fresh out of Sauna, sipping coffee from a Moomin mug, listening to Irwin Goodman and discussing the differences between Turku and Tampere… And all this in Australia. Bunch of our producer Tero’s friends live here in Brisbane and we visited them. It’s good to know there’s also a Finnish sanctuary available whenever one gets too homesick here on the other side of the world.

I’ve been sleeping very badly lately. I managed to completely wreck my rhythm with the jetlag, and I’m basically falling to sleep around two in the morning, but jumping up at five not being able to sleep anymore. So most of the day goes by in a strange, fuzzy numbness, until in the evening I finally perk up…

I need to do something about this jetlag. Any suggestions?