Samuli Torssonen's Star Wreck 4½

Running time: 20 minutes

The Potkustart is heading back to Earth and Admiral Pirk has been demoted back to the rank of Captain. While Pirk is enjoying his free time inside a halludeck simulation, the Potkustart is viciously attacked by a Romuclan Warturkey.

The Potkustart bridge is manned by unexperienced officers who are incapable of making the difficult choices in life - such as whether or not to return fire.

Lieutenant Kynnysmatto, a German officer, commanding a starship for the first time in his life. Played by Atte Joutsen.

Ensign Joojoo. Also his first time on the bridge. Played by Esa Jaatinen.

While the Potkustart soaks up damage, Captain Pirk finds himself in deadly one on one combat with a weird monster . Pirk wanted to be a hero so the computer picked a hallu-simulation called "Andy Bones: Alone in the Dark".

The halludeck control circuitry was damaged in the Warturkey's initial attack, so Pirk must defeat the monster before he can leave the simulation. Armed with a whip and a revolver, will Pirk survive?

The fate of the CPP Potkustart is once again in the hands of Captain James B. Pirk. Has he run out of his famous cunning and blind luck ? That's just plain impossible !

Those flames are real, not CGI. They are "big chinese", small explosives often used to detonate mail boxes on New Year's Eve :-)

Star Wreck 4½ started as a simple joke - what would happen if we included 4-5 years old material in a Star Wreck story ? We never said a word to our director (of Star Wreck 6) Timo Vuorensola or to our camera man Sami Aho-Mantila.

Andy Bones has been the inside joke of the Star Wreck 6 production team. Generally we consider it the worst movie series ever made. Especially the first Andy Bones movie, which you are unfortunately never going to see.

Left: The monster was played by Samuli's cousin, Pauli Kukkohovi.

I and Atte (the co-director of SW6) decided to prepare a surprise for Timo, Sami and the Star Wreck fans. The goal was to create something never seen before in Star Wreck movies, and I think we succeeded :-) The fart humor is so pointless and bad that it really fits the overall idea of Star Wreck 4½: bad quality made with care.

Left: The old Mr Fukov, Janne Torssonen played the role of the Romuclan commander.

Captain Pirk finally gets back to the bridge. Some minor internal damage is already visible.

This is the first time ever we see the whole bridge crew in one shot. This shot was composited in Adobe After Effects. Due to time constrains many bugs were left unfixed.

The bluescreen scenes were written & filmed in one day. We wanted to achieve the retro mood from Star Wreck V: Lost Contact, so it was enough that the actors just remembered their lines :-)

We filmed this movie on a Hi-8 camcorder without any external microphones. We could have used the DV camcorder from Star Wreck 6, but that would have shattered the illusion of using old film material.

Star Wreck 4½ is also a proving ground for new software and hardware. I played with some new features which will be used in Star Wreck 6, and I didn't want to use practice their use on SW6.

I used Lightwave 6.5 for the first time in Star Wreck 4½. It's much slower than 5.6 but it handled scenes with two ships very well. The plasma leak & plasma bolts were done using hypervoxels.

The Potkustart firing all weapons. Much patience and tweaking was needed to achieve the right phaser look from Star Trek Voyager.

The Potkustart returns fire at last.

Would you believe that the final fight was filmed in one shot ? It was already freezing and my cousin wasn't wearing a jacket. The beginning of the movie was filmed during summer...

We first used a ketchup & water mix for the gore effects, but that stuff made the actors puke... So we came up with thick blackcurrant concentrate. It tasted and looked much better !

Those strange horizontal lines were caused by the camcorder and were not made on purpose. You can sometimes see them in Star Wreck V as well.