Star Wreck: in The Pirkinning - Production

Production

The "prime mover" of the production was Samuli Torssonen. In the early 1990s, he produced short animated humorous Star Trek inspired fan films under the collective title Star Wreck. During those early years, Torssonen recruited his friends to help him in these productions. Most notable of them was Rudi Airisto, who hated Star Trek and helped add parody aspects to those films.

After four animated short films, Torssonen and his friends decided to produce a longer live-action piece. The result was 1997's Star Wreck V: Lost Contact, a straightforward parodical retelling of Star Trek: First Contact, with some original elements. All of the non-location shots were produced using a bluescreen technique. This movie, like the preceding animations, was a small cult hit in the Finnish science fiction scene.

After Lost Contact, Torssonen and others intimately involved with its production decided to create a final, sixth episode. It was planned to be a fifteen-minute live-action special effects heavy film, containing the basic plot elements of In the Pirkinning: Pirk acquiring a ship and then a fleet, a quick transport to a Babylon 5-esque world, where the Trek-inspired P-fleet ships would have a huge battle with Babylon 5-inspired ships. Rudi Airisto was to direct, and the production started in the way Lost Contact was made: without proper planning and learning as they went. After Airisto moved to the UK to study, Torssonen called Timo Vuorensola and appointed him as the director.

The first years of production were a learning experience for the cast and crew. Essentially no footage shot during that time survived to the released film. During this process, they acquired more people, mostly through personal connections, to volunteer in the production either behind the scenes or in front of the camera.

In 2000, the production crew released an intermediate film, Star Wreck IV½: Weak Performance, a short live-action piece.

For the next several years, to an outside observer, In the Pirkinning was continually "almost finished, to be released within next six months". Eventually, it took seven years from the first conception of the movie to its release, most of that time being taken by the huge time it took to render all the computer-generated imagery that formed all of the special effects as well as the virtual sets for all non-location scenes.

For most part of the production, the studio was a converted two-room apartment: one room featured the blue screen and most of the computers and other equipment involved in the shooting, and the kitchen contained the render farm. A closet was used for dubbing. A number of locations were also used, including a newly built college building, outside a Finnish government building, and most extravagantly several scenes (primarily a party scene involving Babel-13 and Kickstart crewmembers, a "stand-up comedy" sequence that was later cut from the film, and a "love scene" between Pirk and Ivanovitsa), were shot on board a cruise ship.

The film features the appearance of three professional actors, two of which are Finnish national celebrities: Jari Ahola, Karoliina Blackburn and Kari Väänänen. Väänänen's appearance was a favour in exchange for a video CV the production crew made for him.