User:Imagi-King/Maiden Heaven

Maiden Heaven is a 2010 Irish comedy/documentary film, directed by and starring Aaron Noonan and Ronan Doyle. Produced and distributed by Freiherr Films, the film follows the pair as they travel across Europe to attend multiple dates of the Summer 2010 European leg of Iron Maiden's The Final Frontier World Tour.

Background
On March 4, 2010, Iron Maiden revealed information about their long awaited fifteenth studio album. Alongside the announcement came news of a concert tour to include a European leg, incorporating a July 30 show in Dublin's The O2. After cancelling other summer plans in order to attend this show, Aaron Noonan and Ronan Doyle, Irish fans of the band, decided to pursue the tour across the continent. Due to ticket unavailability and academic commitments, only three further shows were added to the schedule: Wacken Open Air in Wacken, Germany on August 5; Sonisphere Festival in Pori, Finland on August 8; Bergenhus fortress in Bergen, Norway on August 11. The pair decided to bring along a camcorder to document the journey, which covered seven thousand kilometres through seven countries. The "10 Days" of the film's tagline refer to the time of departing Ireland on August 3 to the return on August 12. In order to minimise expense, budget airlines were selected as the primary mode of transport, with a total of seven flights in the ten day period. Additionally, buses, trains, and a ferry were decided upon in order to reach the destinations.

Synopsis
The film opens with a simple sequence of intertitles introducing the concept of the film as Noonan explains the origin of the idea in voiceover. A clip of "Running Free" from the Dublin concert follows, before we join Noonan and Doyle in Stansted Airport as they further discuss the film's beginnings. After approximately twelve hours of waiting, they fly to Lübeck Airport and find their way to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof via a combination of buses and trains. Arriving in Itzehoe by train, the two travel from there to Wacken with the Wacken Open Air shuttlebus. Shortly after arrival at the festival, a sudden rainfall forces them to pack away the camera. The next footage is from twenty two hours later, when they are suffering from alcohol-related amnesia accentuated by sleep deprivation. After a day of exploring the festival and its host village, a series of clips from the second Iron Maiden show follows, featuring "The Wicker Man", "Blood Brothers", "Fear of the Dark", and "Iron Maiden". A clip punctuated commentary/review by the two comes after, discussing the tribute to Ronnie James Dio, as well as the introductory speech to "These Colours Don't Run". The next footage is from the morning after where, to Doyle's bemused chagrin, Noonan constructs a tent-within-a-tent. The pair, despite postulating sobriety, seems nonsensical and irrational, possibly due to continuing sleep deprivation. Thereafter, they attend concerts by Anvil and Corvus Corax before taking the opportunity to catch an hour's rest before departing for Bremen via Itzehoe. The intended route, after an overnight stay in Bremen, includes a flight to Riga, Latvia, another to Tampere, Finland, and a combination of trains to Pori. During pre-production, it was thought that this route might see the Pori arrival slightly after Iron Maiden's stage time. With the main camera's battery dying just before the departure from Wacken, the following twenty eight hours are documented with a combination of stills and lesser quality footage, set to the song "Still Life". On the train from Tampere to Pori, the camera captures an extemporaneous thunderstorm which, Noonan and Doyle are informed upon arrival at their Pori hotel, has threatened cancellation of the band's appearance at the Sonisphere Festival. Arriving at the festival in time to see Bruce Dickinson announce that the show will go ahead (albeit considerably delayed), they begrudgingly watch an Alice Cooper performance. Clips of "Ghost of the Navigator", "El Dorado", "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg", and "No More Lies" taken from the concert follow, before we rejoin the documentarians in Helsinki. Standing beside Helsinki Cathedral, they examine the city sights, explain how they came to arrive in the Finnish capital, and recall the Pori concert's finest moments. A montage of local attractions, such as Uspenski Cathedral, and the journey to the harbour follows, set to the tune of "These Colours Don't Run". They board the Viking Line ferry to Stockholm and the camera films Helsinki slowly fading from view. The extradiegetic "The Talisman" suddenly cuts to the diegetic "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" as the camera captures footage of dancing ferry customers from later that evening. Footage follows from the next morning, where Noonan is standing in the shower washing vomit from his hair as Doyle records him and laughs.

Production
The two filmmakers shared an approximate sixty duties during the film's production. With only the tape-based camcorder and two low quality digital cameras, over three hours of footage was captured, with an additional eight hundred and fifty three still photographs. Originally intended as a home movie, the pair decided upon reviewing the footage to release it as a feature documentary film, detailing the mishaps encountered as well as examining the devotion of the Iron Maiden fanbase. Due to the poor quality of the recording equipment, the audio and video were largely out of sync. Doyle began editing the film together with clips from the concerts as well as the music of Iron Maiden, synchronising the audio and forming an appropriate documentary film structure. The production company Freiherr Films—a name derived from the German for baron, Doyle being a baron of Sealand—was created for the film.

Marketing
The film's first teaser trailer, released on August 26, showed a camera movement "accidentally" spotting Iron Maiden guitarist Janick Gers, followed by a series of pictures of Gers on Fløyen in Bergen, Norway, and Doyle's comment that "I think he knows that we're following him". The teaser was set to the song "Satellite 15... The Final Frontier". The second, released on August 31, featured a more general sequence of short clips from the film to the tune of "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg". The music stops suddenly as the video cuts to the captain of a ferry asking Noonan and Doyle to leave in Swedish, followed by a clip of Noonan washing vomit from his hair and screaming "This is so bad!". Both teaser trailers marketed the film under its working title Aaron Maiden, and proclaimed the film as "coming soon". The official trailer was unveiled on November 2, featuring a series of clips of Doyle and Noonan screaming at the camera as well as shots of various signs and tourist attractions identifying the many locations visited in the film. The trailer also gives samples of the soundtrack, introduces the film's "mascots" (Sancho: a Burger King bobblehead model of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore character Butch, and a postcard of Queen Elizabeth II), and gives a release date of "December 2010". The film's official poster was released on November 28, giving the release date as "Christmas 2010".

Release
The film was released to DVD on December 18, 2010.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack features a mixture of Iron Maiden songs from across the band's career, including a selection from nine of the band's fifteen studio albums.
 * 1) "Running Free" (from Iron Maiden, 1980)
 * 2) "Satellite 15... The Final Frontier" (from The Final Frontier, 2010)
 * 3) "Transylvania" (from Iron Maiden, 1980)
 * 4) "Reach Out" (from the single "Wasted Years", 1986)
 * 5) "The Talisman" (from The Final Frontier, 2010)
 * 6) "The Wicker Man" (from Brave New World, 2000)
 * 7) "Blood Brothers" (from Brave New World, 2000)
 * 8) "Fear of the Dark" (from Fear of the Dark, 1992)
 * 9) "Iron Maiden" (from Iron Maiden, 1980)
 * 10) "These Colours Don't Run" (from A Matter of Life and Death, 2006)
 * 11) "Still Life" (from Piece of Mind, 1983)
 * 12) "El Dorado" (from The Final Frontier, 2010)
 * 13) "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" (from ''A Matter of Life and Death, 2006)
 * 14) "No More Lies" (from Dance of Death, 2003)
 * 15) "The Legacy" (from ''A Matter of Life and Death, 2006)
 * 16) "Losfer Words (Big 'Orra)" (from Powerslave, 1984)
 * 17) "The Man Who Would Be King" (from The Final Frontier, 2010)
 * 18) "Wrathchild" (from Killers, 1981)
 * 19) "Dance of Death" (from Dance of Death, 2003)
 * 20) "Wildest Dreams" (from Dance of Death, 2003)
 * 21) "Starblind" (from The Final Frontier, 2010)
 * 22) "Coming Home" (from The Final Frontier, 2010)