Mission in Jedha - An immersive unofficial Star Wars-themed event
For the fans from the fans

Client: Night In Experience Productions
Kulttuurikeskus Gloria, Helsinki
2018

Join with the rebels and help to prevent evil empires' plans. You are about to enter Jedha where you'll meet dangers and plot to steal plans of a super secret new hyperdrive plans.

Wednesday and Thursday are for the whole family (i.e. kids over 10 years old) and Friday and Saturday events are only for adults (K18). The event is in English. After the immersive event, there is a secret movie showing.

The Project

For this event, I got to create the logo, and all the promo material like posters, banners, and a short teaser video. I had planned a lot more videos for this, but as it was an unofficial event put together by volunteers the scheduling end up being a nightmare. Most people had to build their costumes completely ground up, so at the beginning, the only people with costumes were the ones from the 501st Legion.

If you have ever been part of any fan-made events of other larger projects you know it's chaotic and nothing goes as it does in the professional world and for me this was the first one of these. After this one however I've taken part in multiple similar projects, so I've learned the difference by now and how to navigate through them, but back in 2018 I gotta admit that I was annoyed most of the time because it was sometimes a complete waste of time and waiting for other to get things done and when I finally got to do my work, everyone had a rush to somewhere all of sudden because my part was always put the last even though my materials were needed the first. Of course, I can't expect a similar commitment from volunteers working on a fan project as I do in professional projects.

The Logo Design

We had an excellent idea about the logo, so there was really no conception at all. We wanted to create it in a similar style as the Star Wars original trilogy logos that came with the Empire Strikes Back (if I remember correctly)

The Photoshoots

This is where all the chaotic stuff really started as it was quite hard to get everyone working together. First I had a shoot with Darth Vader alone and later I took photos from a few members for social media ads, but then organizers decided not to spend any money on advertising and I never really did anything with the later photoshoot materials other than a few poster designs for fun (this was a volunteer fan-made event after all).

The Teaser Video

This is where I got really frustrated as we had planned this for weeks and when the shooting day came it end up being a crafting day instead and we had to rehearse and shoot everything in only 30 minutes. Probably my fastest shoot for anything, but at least it was fun.