Here 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.
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 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.
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!























