Iron Sky: 800+ Incredible Visual Effects, 8 Months, and 20 Artists

The morning after seeing the movie Iron Sky, a story of Nazis secretly hiding on the dark side of the moon for 70 years preparing for their imminent attack on Earth, I sit here at my laptop with my coffee, eggs and bacon (all getting cold) to bring you this message: It was worth the wait.

Since hearing of this film over a year ago and watching the trailer some months ago, the anticipation to seeing this vfx spectacle has been slowly building up. Not just for the twist of a story concept. And not even for its political humour. The visual effects of this production are as epic as the fleet of Nazi spacecraft they depict assaulting the Earth.

With a total budget of 7.5 million euros, about 16% of that was crowdfunded or invested by fans.

Energia was the company behind the visual effects for this production with CEO Samuli Torssonen as the VFX Supervisor. The task: to complete more than 800 complex visual effects shots within 8 months with a team of 20 artists. If you've seen the trailer, you know that these are no sub-par independent film effects. They produced Hollywood-caliber eye-candy with little time and less than a couple dozen workers. Achievement Unlocked: All Work and No Play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc

Especially considering the challenge laid before this team of intrepid artists, it was very exciting to see such the delicious fruits of their labour and feeling relieved that after a year of expectations building I had not been disappointed.

In the time of post-production the team toiled away and also kept their interested fans well updated. Of particular interest is this video update from Samuli showing a fairly lengthy behind-the-scenes look at the visual effects team at work on set and in post. You can watch it and more production diaries at this playlist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9raYQYdh-E

Even with a cheesy concept, the story itself is not too overly campy to become completely ridiculous (not like some other films like Mega Python vs. Gatoroid). That is, if you can overlook how the Fourth Reich got set up on the moon and established a massive armada with no natural resources save for a bit of Helium-3 (which actually exists in abundance on the moon). If for nothing else, go see it for the eye-candy shots like I did.