Iron Sky: A Movie Funded By Subscription

I was hanging out with my friend David after I visited the fossil show a few weeks ago and we found this gem online:



The alternate history stuff isn't all that plausible--if the Nazis had the resources needed to colonize the moon, chances are they wouldn't have lost the war on Earth--but despite this, it simply looks awesome.  And it's got a really cool soundtrack, especially the music playing when you see the swarm of Nazi flying saucers approaching Earth.

Another aspect of it that's interesting is that they're relying on donations to fund part of the production of the film.

http://www.ironsky.net/site/support/finance/

That's pretty clever.  It seems they got most of their resources through traditional filmmaking channels, but "crowd-financing" could be useful for someone interested in producing a film that the banks don't think is going to be profitable (and thus won't underwite) or the "Hollywood set" would not be interested in producing (say an adaptation of Starship Troopers that doesn't deform Heinlein's belief system into something resembling Nazism and actually includes powered armor).

It would need to be something with a pretty big existing fan-base to have a good chance of working--funding "Starship Troopers as it should be" might be doable this way because there are masses of ST/Heinlein fans who were disappointed by the actual film, but something like Hiero's Journey, which is relatively unknown, would need to rely on the fundraising talents of the producer and not an existing fan-base that can fork over the cash.

I'd send the producers of the movie some cash to help finance the project, but they're only accepting a limited amount of funding outside of the European Union and apparently there are various rules to invest in it.  However, this blog has gotten a fair number of hits from Europe, so I might have some readers who would have an easier time chipping in some cash.