It needs a right mix of creative madness, good business sense and a group of talented people to start a company as smoothly as Fantastec, a rising Oulu-based game company. Fantastec was started August 2009 with its idea of virtual Lapland, an educational adventure 3D-world for children and families. Now the company is launching a test version to get child players to join the development.
I meet up with Nicklas ”Nifflas” Nygren at a coffeehouse in Umeå just hours before FiNCK (an abbrevation of the nonsensical ”Fire Nuclear Crocodile Killer”) is about to be released. He’s sitting at a table with his laptop, playing through the game one last time to make sure there aren’t any bugs that he might have missed. When asked if he still gets nervous when releasing games, he tells me that most of all he’s just excited to finally let people play it.
The Norwegian-European co-production Robert Mitchum is dead was screened in Cannes, and the Norwegian producer Joachim Lyng, Sweet Films, represented the movie at the festival.
- The movies international profile makes it perfect for a European market, says Joachim Lyng.
Lyng is really satisfied with the response for the movie in Cannes.
Report from John Arvid Berger,Producer, Jabfilm.Jabfilm just participated at MIPDOC and MIPTV in Cannes. This is one of world’s biggest markets for selling, buying, learning and networking around TV and media concepts. We presented our new films and received great interest!
Can you make a comedy that works both in Sweden and South Africa? According to Jan Blomgren, Bob Film, you can. Or, more correctly, they can!
Jan Blomgren, Bob Film, is at the moment co-producing a South African movie with the title “Stockholm, Zululand”.
“What is funny in the South African manuscript is also funny in Sweden”, says Jan Blomgren to Filmnyheterna. They have not discovered any culture collision regarding the humor yet.
Indie game night with Petri Purho, the man behind the game Crayon Physics. He will be talking about the pros and cons of being an independent developer. Read more at the Indie game night Facebook page.
In such a vast region as the nordic countries, filled with so much talent and dedicated entreprenuers, one cannot overestimate the importance of an event like the Nordic Game conference. A couple of days each year you’re given the chance to meet up with your colleagues, make new friends and find inspiration for another year’s worth of work.
In the beginning of February Hollywood landed to Oulu. Mr. Mario Van Peebles, a Hollywood based actor-director-producer-screenwriter, stopped by to give a speech about the American Cinema today. Van Peebles’ visit was a part of the national tour organized by the US Embassy to Finland and National audiovisual archive. Here are some highlights from Van Peebles’ two day trip to Oulu.
Two Oulu based game companies, Tuonela Productions and Alpakka Media, have got nice sums from AVEK’s (The promotion centre for audiovisual culture) DigiDemo funding. Tuonela Productions got 18 000 euros and Alpakka Media 16 000 euros to promote cultural contents in digital terminals.
