„Since the beginning of time a fragile balance has been maintained between our world and the „otherworld". That balance has played out over centuries of conflict between the elusive "Wasservolk" and a cabal of demons bent on dominating our realm. In the ongoing war, an unexpected threat has manifested. A once forgotten enemy has sent his minions to obtain an artifact... a piece of a magical key. This key, once intact, will release a malevolent force from bondage... spelling certain doom for mankind..." (from www.vedunia.com).

What sounds like a fantastic setting for a computer-game is the background story of VEDUNIA, an Austrian Web 2.0 movie project, starring Erwin Leder, known from movies like Das Boot or Underworld. VEDUNIA was initiated by filmmaker Stefan Wolner and is designed as an online series, which will be screened in six short parts, as prequel for the planned feature film, which resumes the story six years later.

The project was supported by the Austrian Film Institute and the traditional Vienna Filmfund, which is an exceptional success as it is the first time that a web 2.0 series is supported by official state agencies in Austria. Wolner is glad about this important step:

Wolner, together with his partners at Red Monster Films, introduced the fictitious world of VEDUNIA online a few years ago and since then has managed to build a fan-community around it. For the purpose of creating awareness for their web series they started blogging, podcasting and set up VEDUNIA-channels on MySpace and Facebook.

Social networks are more than just online-communities to them; they can also be used to test their ideas during pre-production:

Wolner would certainly take the opportunity to produce a movie the traditional way, but he says that the system has to be changed or at least modernised for that to happen. He is a strong believer in cross-media film promotion, which includes the Internet as well as mobile devices and a theatrical release:

At the moment Wolner and his team are doing pretty well and they have been busy working on pre-visualizations, meeting with SFX people and producing their first trailer. We are looking forward to seeing the first part of VEDUNIA soon. If we sparked your interest, check out the VEDUNIA Teaser