Iron Sky & Crowdsourcing

Iron Sky Poster

Iron Sky is the latest film from the team behind StarWreck (the Finnish amateur crowdsourced film released under creative commons and viewed over 8 million times before gaining a distribution deal with Universal). While some things have changed in the team’s approach - the most obvious being Iron Sky’s 6.5 million euro budget versus StarWreck’s 15,000 euros - director Timo Vuorensolo remains impassioned about the importance of creating an active community around film projects.

“Everything you do should involve creating community around the film. This isn’t just a marketing tool, it’s a way of life.” 

Before I get onto Iron Sky I should do a quick run down of it’s predecessor – StarWreck - because this is a perfect example of how creating a fanbase benefits not only your current project, but future projects as well. 

StarWreck 
StarWreck began as a series of short animations made by Samuli Torssonen from 1992 onwards. Timo joined the team as director in 2000 to make the better known live action feature film (released in 2005). This film was made in a very haphazard manner, with the team learning on the go, however it had notable successes. The quality is amazing, considering: it was made by five students/unemployed people; the CGI was rendered on home computers; the blue screen was shot partly in the producer’s living room and partly in his mum’s basement; and so on. How they achieved such a feat falls in part to crowdsourcing.

A community of 3000 fans helped out. They donated props for the shoot, helped with concept design, screenwriting, chroma key, artwork, model design, ideas, research and a small amount of money. Just as important, this fanbase spread the word about the film, helping it reach one million downloads within the first week of release, and going on to be seen by over eight million people.

After StarWreck, Timos created www.wreckamovie.com, which provides a way for filmmakers and fans to crowdsource projects. This has its own active community, and is well worth a look – it really is amazing the help you can get for free just by inviting the audience in to be part of the experience.

Iron Sky 
As such, Iron Sky has the benefit of inheriting an active international community of sci-fi fans thanks to StarWreck. However, this hasn’t led them to rest on their laurels. I met up with Timo, Finnish producer Tero Kaukomaa, and Australia Co-Producer Cathy Overett last week when they came to Sydney to talk to their fans at SupaNova. They felt this was a good opportunity to meet their audience face to face, but they also remain active online via social media, the Iron Sky, Wreckamovie and StarWreck forums, their blog, third party sci-fi forums, and they’re also always looking for new and better ways to engage.

This time round the team have taken a professional approach: they’ve secured an international sales agent, distributors in several European territories, and Co-Producers in Germany, Skandinavia and Australia. This has helped raise funds prior to production so that the film can be made to a higher standard.

There is however a partial shortfall between the funds they’ve raised traditionally and the intended film budget, and for this amount they have turned to crowdfunding.

They began selling “War Bonds” and merchandising three years ago to help raise funds for Iron Sky. This has raised about 50,000 euros to date, which might not sound like a lot of money, but it has helped support the core team while they’ve been working to develop the project and secure finance partners – they are now 90% funded.

Six weeks ago they opened a way for the crowd to become actual investors in the film, for as little as 1,000 euros, with the goal to raise the final 900,000 euros this way. This is going well, with 200,000 euros committed by crowd investors so far.

It’s important to note that this type of investment is far easier to arrange in Europe than under Australian or US laws. At the time of the interview they were still working out the legal T&Cs for potential Australian investors. Cathy has promised me an update on this when it’s been sorted. :)

Another thing Timo is excited about with the larger scale of Iron Sky is the ability for transmedia extensions. A computer game is in development, there are plans for a graphic novel, card games, merchandise, and he loves seeing the fan fiction spinoffs that occur when you invite the audience to participate on their own terms. Timo thinks of cross platform as a “big sandbox of possibilities,” and an area in particular that is ripe for crowdsourced collaboration.

He likens audience interaction to an onion: the outer layers of audience are bigger but have less involvement, and at the core are evangelical fans who are most important to satisfy and will be your greatest supporters.

A few tips from Timo on creating an engaged audience ( “participants”):

• Create cool stuff that can be shared on Youtube – teasers, trailers, videos. 
• Be very active on all social media, relevant websites & forums, conferences, etc. 
• Go into a new area where your audience thrives (e.g. SupaNova) and get involved. 
• Create small steps into the world, such as a “Demand it” button or Facebook “like”. These work well to introduce a new person to the community in a low-risk low-effort manner. 
• Identify as many ways as you can to draw people in, and get them to dig in deeper, by meeting their needs. Come at the project from different angles, so while some involvement may ask for high skill or commitment (model design), others require less from the fans (vote), so they can pick their own level. 
• Constant communication is highly important, and this should be from the filmmakers themselves – there needs to be personality around the project, not corporate speak. 

The one concern I myself have over the notion of “crowdsourcing” creative work is regarding quality control. So I put this to Timo. He agreed that collaboration can be tricky, however the key thing is in how you treat the community, that you must communicate from the beginning that you’re not necessarily going to use their work. In Timo’s words, the filmmaker can be a “creative dictator.” Thus, filmmakers don’t use substandard work, but still maintain community good will.

Talking to Timo, Tero and Cathy was highly informative, but this post is already too long! So expect to hear more in another post about their use of International Co-Production to help fund the film. Until then, have a look at the trailer - pretty exciting.