Onboard Diary

Double share of crowdfunding

Yes, this week we bring you a double share of crowdfunding.

Do you remember Footagevault? It's very nice website that have helped us a lot. They supply with shot-stock, and, almost one year ago, they contact us to offer us all their material. We have already used some of their images for our second teaser trailer, and we'll be using more in the film. We will never be able to thank them enough for their help! So the least we can do is telling you that they now have a project in IndieGoGo to edit DVDs of the documentary First Orbit. We have already told you about this documentary in our social networks, but we remind you that it is a one-hour film that recreates what Yuri Gagarin saw that first historic flight using images taken from Space. There are ten days left to end, and there is still a lot to raise, so we encourage you to go to their project right now.

The second share of crowdfunding is CC World. It is a project by the Barcelona Creative Commons Film Festival guys, BccN for their friends. The project promotes the Creative Commons film festivals by means of copying the original festival, the aforementioned BccN. In fact, a few days ago, one of these copies took place in Madrid, the CC MAD. The festival has been terrific, with the screening of An Island, among others (a film we have probably also told you about). They are so nice that they screened our trailer before the films. Keep in mind that the CC World project is not only looking for economical contributions, but many other types of contribution such as translation, web design, organization of the copy festival, etc. Do not hesitate in keeping an eye on it; there are many ways of helping.

We, by the way, are also still dealing with crowdfunding. Even though the film is already shot, there is still a lot to be done. So, remember, if your grandma is not a producer yet, what are you waiting for to turn her into one?!

The Cosmonaut's Christmas dinner

Yes, we know that Soviet Russia did not celebrate Christmas, but take this as the end-of-the-shooting dinner (if nothing happens, we'll have done by then the 4 sequences we have left).

Reflections on Save the Cosmonaut

Hello everyone!

This is one of those informative posts that can be of interest of many of you as The Cosmonaut's investors. More than 400 people decided to support, help and believe in us when the project had its most delicate moment. And they made the project their own, as many other people before them.


From that moment on, "Save The Cosmonaut" became a "milestone", and thanks to you, we could finally do what we had been waiting for for so long: shooting the movie.

Regarding the sending of the contracts, you were so MANY who supported us, that we couldn't actually offer you a good service. Just after the campaign started, we went to shoot to Latvia, and just one of our production boys stayed in Spain, so he couldn't cope with everything, not all the contracts were signed, there was some delay manufacturing the patches, and the problems that the wonderful Spanish postal service sometimes offers us... All this and some other issues made it impossible to answer you equally and at the same time.

But some days ago we finished the hard job, so we wanted to write this post, both to apologize in public to those who had suffered any delay, and to inform you about the current situation:

All the contracts had left our headquarters in Madrid. Unfortunately, and after more than 3500 people supporting us, we know some orders just got halfway, as if they were lost cosmonauts. We have sent them all as registered post. Sometimes, if the recipient is not home, the postal service leaves us a notice, and sometimes they are not read/received or they get lost. They come back here, delaying it much more.

Many of you have already answered an e-mail we sent yesterday explaining the situation. But we would like to put the facts on record here to avoid any possible confusion. We want you to still believe in The Cosmonaut, as if it were that day you decided to actively participate in it.

Please, write to tienda@elcosmonauta.com if you have any problem, and we haven't talked in the past days, to solve it as soon as possible.

It really cheers us up to know that many of you are answering us telling us that everything went perfect, so we hope we make you all have that feeling soon.

Thank you very much again. :-)

The Cosmonaut's book of the filming

Hi everyone,

Let me introduce myself: my name is Daniel Mayrit, and I have the opportunity today of writing and sharing with you a very special post for me.

At best, you recognize my name for some pictures published in this blog, but for those who doesn't know me at all (most of you, I imagine) I am a photographer, I live in London, and I have been linked in different ways to The Cosmonaut project almost from its beginning. Besides, I have a great friendship with the guys of Riot... even before they were Riot.

The reason I briefly write to you is this: On a night like any other night, two years ago, handling a beer, it was decided that I was going to be the official movie stills photographer. From there, we jump to only two weeks ago. In one of the frequent visits of director Nicolás to London, lying on a park under a shiny sun (one of those we are grateful to have in England), we had the ambitious idea of taking the work a step further. Instead of the stills, we were going to make a book of the filming of the movie. Yes, a great book as a making off. It will mainly contain pictures, but it will be open to any interesting material. From diary fragments to interviews, even the pictures taken by the crew members in their moments of relax.

Why? Because we believe it is the best way to bring closer what the filming of the movie really was to the crowd of fans and producers who have also been supporting The Cosmonaut since two years ago. As you can imagine, taking more than 3000 producers to Russia and Latvia would make the budget to get out of our control. So we decided to do it the other way round, and try to bring a little bit of it so you can also take part, to an extent, in how life was during the shooting of the movie. This way, we continue the production company's line of keeping a close and constant contact with the audience, which has been really successful so far.

But, as we were telling you, the idea is not only great, but also ambitious, so we place our project in your hands once again to get it off the ground.

Right now, it is on the website Lánzanos, where you can contribute in different ways and obtain different exclusive rewards in return (only available there, you cannot find them in our shop). For instance, a picture of the book signed by the director and myself, the electronic version of the book in .pdf, or the book of the filming itself printed and also signed.

Think about this as a further push so your movie can become true, as well as a project where a beautiful book will come out, a book we would love to have ourselves as spectators.

We ask you for supporting and spreading it as much as you can. We know you'll do it, because you always do it, surprising us once and again. With you, cosmonauts, we go to the end of the world.

Daniel Mayrit

You can become a producer even if you don't have PayPal

Since we started with the project, we wanted the process of becoming a producer of The Cosmonaut to be easy, just some clicks away from anyone to join the project.

That's why we implemented the option of becoming a producer with just an sms in Spain, thanks to ComunicaBox...

... and that's why, at last, there is also the possibility of using a bank card for that purpose. It's no longer necessary to have a PayPal account to buy anything from our on-line shop: you can choose now the card payment option, because we have just installed a Virtual POS system.

Everything is still as easy as usual: you go into the shop, you choose the option you want to become a producer, and once you clicked "pay", you follow the steps.

Stop looking for excuses! Do you think there is a better way to celebrate with us that there are less than three months left to start shooting than spreading the word of these news?



We are 2.662 producers now. Are you helping us to reach 3.000 before the shooting starts? We'll have a double party then!

Crowdfunding in Spain

The trip from Moscow to Baikonur is 2000 kilometers long. The oil expenses will be, but the tiredness of every kilometer, the battle we have to win. Contributing with 5 € you help us covering 5 kilometers, and you will receive an exclusive video diary of the trip. At the end of the way, the platform where Gagarin took off towards the stars is waiting for us.

New merchandising on sale

We have been thinking about changing the designs of our T-shirts for some months. We wanted to do something special for the final journey of the project,renewing ourselves a bit. There were loads of rejected ideas, like this design for the idea "Earth is so out out indies shoot in space".

Nevertheless, you can see the final designsin the shop. We have 6 new t-shirts with 5 different designs:

• New design of the Kolibri Programme: Our symbol par excellence. It was conceived by Brezhnev in the seventies, and designed by Laszlo Kovacs, with a new touch, changing red for grey.


• Matrioska 3D: by Freckels & Pickles, the winners of the redesign contest of our first Matrioska by Isidro Ferrer. [3D Glasses are not not included, but you are going to need them]


• So many people...: "NASA tried. Russia too. But no one has sent so many people out to space as we did". Almos 2.500 producers and still rising.


• Indies shoot in space: "Earth is so out. Real indies shoot in Space.". The T-shirt Kubrick would have loved to wear.


• I support piracy: "I support piracy (of my movie)".There are two colors available, blue and pink, both for men and women.

All the T-shirts, but the Matrioska 3D, have been designed by The Cosmonaut design team, and we would like to highlight the drawings by Ángel Trancón. As we said previously, they are all available for both men and women.

We hope you like them. We also hope you join the producers who have given the Cosmonaut pack as a birthday or a Christmas present :) Let's all sport T-shirts!

Becoming a producer: the Russian way

This is a post especially addressed to all the Russian people who have discovered our project recently and want to become a producer (maybe through this recent interview or this other one).

As you may already know, we currently only support PayPal as the payment method in our shop. The problem is that PayPal support in Russia is still very limited. As a result, our Russian fans can't buy anything in our shop, not even a single welcome pack. Therefore, they can't become producers of our movie.

We're already working on adding more payment options to our shop, so you can pay directly through your credit card. In the meantime, we've decided to offer our Russian fans the possibility of paying by bank transfer. All you have to do is write an email to hello@thecosmonaut.org and tell us that you want to become a producer. We'll write back to you with our international account number and all the details.

We hope this way all the Russian guys willing to become a producer will be finally able to do so. Thanks in advance! спасибо!

The perfect opportunity for small investors