The team behind the films Star Wreck and Iron Sky has been awarded at the World Summit Awards with their online film studio Wreck a Movie. Officially the ceremony was to be held in June, but the Swine Flu outbreak caused it to be postponed until September.

The winning team grinning like idiots after the MindTrek win :)

Wreck a Movie won the 20,000-euro first prize at the Finnish MindTrek event last year, and was consequently chosen as the Finnish representative at the World Summit Awards. The WSA is a biennial e-content contest, funded by the United Nations among others, and is one of the largest of its kind globally.

This is the first time that the WSA first prize has gone to Finland since 2003, when Sulake won the award for their service Habbo Hotel, which has millions of fans.

Wreck a Movie is a production platform focused on community-driven film making - a virtual film studio, according to the team. It is a means for filmmakers from around the world to work on their pictures together with the community, regardless of the location, occupation or resources of the participants. It is free for both users and featured projects.

“Naturally it is encouraging to be rewarded, but it is my principal hope that this may act as a signal to both international and Finnish filmmakers that Wreck a Movie is a platform worth trying out,” says Timo Vuorensola, director and one of the primary developers of the platform. “Currently we have going about a hundred productions from music videos to feature films, and the services, productions and user base of the virtual studio are increasing steadily.”

Visit the Wreck a Movie platform at www.wreckamovie.com.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Just wanted to note that Power to the Pixel, a London-based forum for filmmakers with eye on the Internet and future in general, has announced a Cross-Media film project competition, which is accepting submissions now. Here’s what they say about the thing:

The Pixel Pitch is Power to the Pixel’s ground-breaking new pitching forum for up to ten of the best UK and international cross-media film projects.

We are looking for stories that can span film, TV, online, mobile and gaming to be presented to a select group of financiers, commissioners, tech companies, online portals and media companies in front of an audience of PTTP participants.

The selected project teams will compete for the
BABELGUM PIXEL PITCH PRIZE of £6,000.

Teams will benefit from significant international publicity and be introduced to new international business and partnership opportunities as well as one-to-one consultancies.

Last year’s Launch saw four cross-media projects presented to international companies including Babelgum, Sony Computer Entertainment, BBC, YouTube, MySpace, Amazon, Channel 4, UK Film Council, Arts Council of England, Tribeca Film Institute.

So if you feel like you could have a story, why not push it to PttP compo, and start working on it via Wreckamovie!

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

I’ve already mentioned the Star Wreck fan fiction production Star Wreck 2pi some time ago on this blog, but thought about coming back to it now that it seems that the guys have really managed to shoot most of the film, and just released a short making-of clip of how things are progressing. The folks behind the production are Thierry and Fabienne Gschwind, a bro and a sis, and they are based in Switzerland. Check out the making-of, and join the production on Wreckamovie to help them get this thing off the ground!

They seem to have quite an ambitious hull breach scene!

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Here’s an interview I gave to a Finnish-Mexican blog called Tequila Bajo Cero, where I explain a bit about Iron Sky & Wreckamovie.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Vorwärtz!

After Cannes, things have been moving on with quite a pace. We were able to close most of the funding for Iron Sky at Cannes, so it means that we now actually have a schedule and we really need to start pushing to get things done!

In short, the schedule dictates that Iron Sky will be shot in January 2010, and the film will be finished (not out, though) in January 2011. It’s still a rough estimate, but the best we have for now.

For CGI, here’s how we’re planning to do: we shook hands with a London-based post production house Molinaire. We’ll fly Samuli and his team to London, to Molinaire, to work on the Iron Sky’s special effects once the time is right. This way, we’ll be able to take all the advantage of Samuli and his world class skilled team, without having to worry about building the infrastructure and renderyards to Tampere, and get to work with one of the best CGI people out there.

Right now I’m most worried about finding the locations we need to shoot Iron Sky. We’re planning to utilize an old and abandoned US Army military area located close to Frankfurt for the studio - they have a huge old sport hall that could suit our needs quite well, and possibly some quite interesting other locations as well.

We had an alternative to this place - an old Nazi-era military bunker also close to Frankfurt. The only problem was that there was too much of sheep and TNT in the area. Yeah, sheep and TNT. I can’t get the image out of my head, us shooting scenes on the Moon in the front yard of the bunker, being forced to stop shooting every now and then because a sheep explodes. KABOOM. Sounds quite Pythoneqsue.

Oh, one thing more! I’m not sure if we already wrote about it here, but we’ve moved! The Iron Sky office and Star Wreck Store hauled it’s (quite fat) ass to the other side of the Tampere center, to Hämeenkatu, where we teamed up with Restate, a brand new digital content developer company led by Erik Lydén. As always, the Star Wreck Store is open for visitors, so if you want to take a peek at the Iron Sky production, why not stop by at Hämeenkatu 30 B 1a.

One last thing - I need some of your suggestions for reference films that I should watch. I’ve set up a task where I describe a bit more, just go to Wreckamovie and check it out.

BTW, if there’s any Spotify users out there, I’ve created a collaborative Iron Sky playlist for Spotify, where I’m dragging every now and then some music I think somehow fits the mood of Iron Sky. If you have any ideas, you can put some songs there as well - just open this link to Spotify and start playlisting.

I can’t seem to end this post… But here goes - I also spotted that we have now our own Iron Sky entry on IMDB´- and the good ol’ Wikipedia entry still exists.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The Finnish Film Foundation just released their latest funding decisions.

Obiously the big news for us is that Iron Sky will be receiving 800,000€ in production support. Most Finnish films receive support from the Foundation and it’s often a big part of the budget. We’re obiously very, very happy of their support. If you read Finnish there’s a lot of other info on the film as well, maybe even bit of a spoiler in the synopsis, so watch out.

Also, it’s been very interesting lately to read the support decisions. There are many interesting projects in developement right now and I’d go as a far as saying that the field of Finnish film is changing. The gem (that has absolutely nothing to do with us) in this month’s support decisions was called Zombie-Risteily, that would translate to “Zombie Cruise” about a cruise ship overrun with, you guessed it, Zombies! And what’s even better for us Finns is that’s it’s one of the ferries sailing between Sweden and Finland - also affectionately known as “drilling platforms” and many other names. Basicly they are huge cruise ships with about 2000-3000 passengers that are not so much going somewhere as going to the ship to get absolutely and totally wasted. There are thousand and one stories to be told on those ships and zero films thus far.

Also in the scripting stages is a film adaptation of Kimmo Risto Isomäki’s book Sands of Sarasvati. A thriller about the climate change - and trust me, it’s good. It should also adapt to the screen very well. If you want to have a look the comic adaptation is already translated into english, but the translation of the novel isn’t out just yet.

Other interesting genre-ish films are Haaska (aka. Carcass) - a horror film about a nature photographer in the Finnish wilderness. And Lykantropia (Lycantrophy) that’s to be a drama/thriller about child killing wolves in the 19th century.

And since we’re talking about Finnish films I can’t resist gushing on about the teaser for Mothgirl, upcoming film from our friend Toni Pykäläniemi.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Here’s the pdf version of the second issue of The Truth Today distributed in dead tree form at the Cannes Film Festival.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

In Cannes every day is like christmas.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The original paperboy is back, bringing The Truth to the busy people at the Cannes film festival. How do they react to the shocking news of a Space Nazi attack?

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

We talk to our friend Eric Vogel,producer of the awesome upcoming Norwegian film called Norwegian Ninja. I read the script a while back and even in text form it was a blast in the best possible “holy crap, ninjas! In Norway! Oh wait, didn’t that really happen in the 80’s?” kind of way, so really looking forward to seeing this one.

Check out the Norwegian Ninja project on Wreckamovie.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

Ukko, Pekka and Janne “Junior” Torssonen head over to the Palais to distribute the latest issue of The Truth Today.

And Ukko offers a glimpse to the glamour of Cannes by stalking Lenny Kravitz.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The internets in Cannes appear to be acting out revenge for every time the phrase “cheese eating surrender monkeys” has been used, so Cannes updates have been sporadic. It seems the wifi connection works at night when everyone is out partying, but come daytime and millions of laptops it all goes down. Last I heard from the Cannes team was last night when Timo got up at 5am to send out emails.

See Twitter for the latest updates. The team in Cannes includes @LeonBlank, @Gerosimov and @pollula. For Cannes updates you might also want to check out our friend from Norway @vogeleric and #cannes hashtag.

Below is the latest update from Essi, originally posted over at Zombie Room:

The biggest movie in Cannes last year was of course Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which also turned out to be the biggest disappointment of the year. Never the less the whole festival was all about Indy, even me. It wasn´t in the official selection of course, but it was definitely the most anticipated and overly marketed film here. Another big one was Kung Fu Panda, which was actually a hundred times better than Indy. Anyway the real gems of last year (in my opinion) were Blindness by Fernando Meirelles, Che by Steven Soderberg, Entre Les Murs (The Class) by Laurent Cantet, Gomorra (Gomorrah) by Matteo Garrone, Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman.

If last year was Indiana Jones´s year, this year is all about Mr. Quentin Tarantino and his new World War II epic Inglourious Basterds. The movie will open on the 20th and I will definitely be there reporting from the scene. I´m planning to see it on Wednesday morning. Tarantino won Palme d’Or for Pulp Fiction in Cannes in 1994 and now he is back with a vengeance! Inglourious Basterds has the biggest ensemble cast Tarantino has ever had and the footage looks amazing. I also read somewhere that Tarantino might even have a sequel/prequel to it if the movie is a hit. “I have a half-written prequel ready to go if this movie’s a smash,” says Tarantino.

One of the most interesting movies in Cannes is Up. It was the opening film and it was also the first animation ever to open the festival. Up is Pixars new comedy adventure directed by Pete Docter, who also directed the amazing Monsters, Inc. He is also one of the writers behind WALL·E. So all these things considered I´m pretty exited about the film. The movie tells a story about a 78 year old balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away. This year Cannes has finally installed their very own 3D projector(s), so Up will be seen in the best possible format.

On the horror front we have two pretty exiting projects. The other is Antichrist directed by Lars vor Trier, who is one of my favorite directors of all time. It seems that he has returned to his roots a by doing a very visual and beautiful movie. I have heard a lot of talk that the movie is really scary and that it will take some time to recover from it. Sounds just like a Trier movie. Then we have Drag Me to Hell by the legendary director Sam Raimi who is very well known for his horror films, but lately he has been doing huge action films like Spider-Man 1-3. With Drag Me to Hell he is also returning to his roots much like Trier.

There are a lot of titles here that I know nothing about except the director. And for me that is enough in some cases. Here are a few examples: Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky by Jan Kounen, Das weiße Band directed by Michael Haneke and Taking Woodstock directed by Ang Lee, which opened yesterday. I´m not sure if I have time to see any of these, but I will definitely be following these movies now and after Cannes.

I also must mention Los abrazos rotos, which is a new film from Pedro Almodóvar. It stars Almodovars muse Penélope Cruz (who else?). I will try to get to see this as well. The premiere is on thuesday, so maybe me and Pekka will go there to do a video blog, let´s see…

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was Heath Ledger last role. Among him the movie features actors like Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell and even Tom Waits. I don´t know too much about this one, but images are quite disturbing. In a good way I mean.

Yesterday I went to see a market screening of a movie called Run Bitch Run, which was a full out exploitation movie. Unfortunately the movie was so bad we had to leave after 30 minutes or so. Today I´m going to see scifi movie called Moon directed by Duncan Jones. I have high expectations for that, after all he is David Bowies son.

As and end note I want to apologize that our blog is not updating as planned. We have huge problems with the internet connection here. But we try to keep these posting coming never the less.

- Essi

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The Cannes team has been fighting with the French internet for two days now, but the good news is they got it up and running long enough to post the first four videos of this year Cannes Dailies.

As usual it all starts with massive amounts of fail with missing stuff, missing Up and being stuck in Dusseldorf. However by episode four we’ve reached epic win with some great news about the funding of Iron Sky.

There are more to come, so keep watching our channel on YouTube.

Episode 1 - Stuck in Dusseldorf

Episode 2 - At the Cannes Office

Episode 3 - What’s Up, Doc?

Episode 4 - Money Makes the World Go Round…

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The latest episode of Iron Sky Signal is here! Samuli and Timo talk going to Cannes and interview the main cast of Iron Sky, Julia Dietze and Götz Otto.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.

The Iron Sky team currently at the Cannes film festival announced the latest additions to the films cast today. Not only is the cast great, but amazingly it includes someone who’s taller than Timo!

Götz Otto as Klaus Adler

German actor Götz Otto will step in the boots of the intelligence officer Klaus Adler, a fanatic Moon Nazi devoted on invading the Earth. Otto has previously appeared in numerous feature films and tv-series, including attempting to kill James Bond as Mr. Stamper in the film Tomorrow Never Dies.

“When I first heard about Iron Sky, I instantly realized that it’s a really wicked idea, something only a Finn could come up with. Being German I thought it would be time for a comedy and spoof about this topic.” Otto comments.

According to Timo: “My main interest was to find an actor who’s shorter than me, and for this there’s no one better than almost two meter tall Otto. Götz is a humouristic actor and a real gentleman with the right kind of rough charm and a voice that blow the windshield off the microphone.”

The other two new cast members attached to Iron Sky are also from Germany. Veteran actor Tilo Prückner (The Neverending Story) will design the wunderwaffe of the Fourth Reich as the Nazi scientist Doktor Richter.

The legendary Udo Kier (Dogville, Blade, Shadow of the Vampire) will appear as the Nazi Moon base commander Wolfgang Höss.

Julia Dietze as Renate Richter

Earlier German actress Julia Dietze (1½ Ritter) joined the cast as Moon Nazi officer Renate Richter, who is sent to Earth with her fiancé Klaus Adler to find out if our planet is ripe for the Fourth Reich.

p.s. The Iron Sky team are attending the Cannes Film Festival 2009. Daily video blogs will be released from 13th of May onward on our YouTube channel.

Originally published at Beyond the Iron Sky. You can comment here or there.