Phil Rice 00:16
Hello everyone, and welcome to Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima and machinima related topics. I'm your host, one of your hosts Phil Rice and with me is Ricky Grove, Damian Valentine and Tracy Harwood.

Damien Valentine 00:32
There, hello.

Phil Rice 00:34
Today we are going to talk about insert film name here, and introducing that film is going to be insert podcasters name here, go ahead insert name! Tracy what you got for us? Okay, that was our generic intro I use that on all of them right?

Tracy Harwood 01:06
Okay, so I've got a really, well I really enjoyed it. It's called The Eye: Calenthek and and it's it's by Aaron Sims creative. And it was released on YouTube on the fourth of November 2021 and posted on the Unreal Engine channel as an exemplar of Unreal Engine five, whilst it was actually still in early access, so it's using meta human creator and the alien character in it. If I can pronounce this correctly, tooth the sun

Ricky Grove 01:47
Yeah, Tucson

Tracy Harwood 01:48
has since become a free downloadable asset for Unreal Engine five. Now, it was actually made as part of the Short Nightmares Film Festival, which took place inside Fortnight creative mode, I think as part of the 2021 Halloween period, Fortnitemares and was originally shown during that period between 28th of October 1 of November last year. Now it's an eight minute long, alien planet story with shades of that amazing film we reviewed a few months ago if you remember, which was made in Star Citizen by the Adrift team, for me. It has a female lead character astronaut, who, excuse me, she's assigned one last job before heading home, and presumably retiring. Now the Explorer lands on this mysterious planet where a spaceship has crashed, having hit a drone, and she's going to try and investigate what's happened on this planet to this drone and potentially try and repair it. Now in the process, she gets spooked, and tries to leave the planet. And then there's this really wonderful twist in the story. It's super creepy, and incredibly well done. A lot of the story is driven by some fabulous voice acting, and really excellent sound design and music, which is really what drives the suspenseful thing. And the detail in the assets and the scenes is really interesting. And I'd say there's what I would call a gratuitous bug in there too. Which seems to be a bit of a go to for most of the Unreal Engine five creators. I don't know if you remember what we also mentioned one in the Cloud Racer film last month. There's a fabulously detailed, hostile creature in this with some very interesting movement design. And of course, that's the whole point of the film because it's one. It's been done by this sort of infamous creature creator Aaron Sims. And it reminded me a little bit of the 2009 JJ Abrams Star Trek monster, which, which actually wasn't created by Aaron Sims, it was created by Neville Page, by the way, although I understand it's probably originally derived from a mutated giant squid from the Godzilla radiation stable. Anyway, Sims creative is of course a special effects giant and has created some of the most memorable creature characters we've seen in big budget film. So it's worth hearing about his creative process in Unreal Engine five and you can catch up on that with a really nice little interview that he's done with Alan Mackay on his podcast which we'll put a link in to as well. So that's all I got to say on it. I don't know what you guys thought of it. I really enjoyed it, but maybe you didn't.

Damien Valentine 04:50
This was a film I was going to pick and then I saw you I thought it's a really stunning film. Do you can as you're watching it, because you don't really see the main character out of her spacesuit or you got her eyes visible and the rest of it because she's got a mask on and the helmet, she stayed like that throughout the entire film, you kind of forget that you're watching an animated film, because that could so easily be a real person in the real suit in a real environment. That's a testament to the rendering capabilities of Unreal, is because you, you forget that it looks real. And all the detail on the spaceship on in the landscape on the monster. And everything about it is just absolutely stunning. That's one of the reasons I was gonna choose it. But I can I can see why it's been used by Unreal to show off the capabilities of what the engine can do. And yeah, I just just really feel amazed by it. And it's one of my favourite films that we've seen this month. So

Phil Rice 05:56
that's great. That's great. There was some particular detail work, that that really impressed me early on in the short, she's still in the spaceship. And it's showing kind of a side view, as she's looking at all these different controls and readouts on her craft, right on the on the cockpit. And the eye movement. Looking from different looking between different things, it was so yes, just so beautifully done. I mean, like so believable. And just I find myself kind of stepping out for a second watching that and going, how do they? How do they do that? You know, is there face capture that can get that I mean, because it's I've heard different scientists talk about the marvel of our eyes and the way that they focus on the fact that we as a human being that I can be standing across the room from someone, and I can tell what they're looking at. And basically, they talked about that in terms of what incredible calculation that is, you know, this is there's a geometry to that, right? And that we are so precise, we if if someone's looking at your head, instead of looking at your eyes, you can tell or if someone's looking in a particular direction, you can tell just from the eye movement, and the fact that we can interpret that and make decisions, if you will, at a sensory level. Based on that just what a marvellous piece of equipment this is right. And it's incredible to see a real time engine captured that precision that really you only ever see in a real human face. And so I was I was ensnared by this from the get go once I saw that, because that's, it's exquisite work. And the film that you mentioned, from the the Adrift film, Tracy had similar strengths. This was this was, I think, to the next level, and to some degree, Cloud Racer, even though there was some problems with some of the face animations, particularly in the jaw area, but upper face, I mean, holy cow, some of those expressions that the the younger racer would make when talking to his dad and eye rolls and things like that. It's just, it's amazing. The detail there, I liked the story overall. I wish it had caught me a little more by surprise, but I kind of was able to see it coming a little earlier than I wanted to. It's not a fault. A fault in the story. I don't think the creature felt a little familiar. Yeah, maybe disappointingly familiar. Like, I can't tell you where I've seen it before. But I had this overwhelming sense of oh, I've seen something like that before. But the story craft was nice. I think my one criticism if it's even my place to give it you know, given the who Aaron Sims is, is I would have liked to see a version of this film that had about 1/3 the amount of spoken dialogue as this did. I felt like that for me it suffered a little bit the fact that the character was constantly articulating verbally every thought she was having Yeah, good point. And it's kind of falls into that show, don't tell thing that I feel like man, you got all these tools. You've got this exquisite control over animations and stuff that do you really need her to tell me? Oh, gee, what should I do next? You know, it's it's I You know, it's it's nitpicky, I guess. But um, I think that that the sense of of suspense and and maybe terror or horror to some degree could have been elevated even more if there wasn't quite so much soliquiy. I think because I think the overall story which dammit we can't even really talk about without giving away. Yeah. It's a neat little sci fi thing. It's not wholly original, the concept of it, but it's well executed. Whose enjoyable. But yeah, that's, that's, that's what I kind of felt like was jarring me out of it is, you know, I'm not sexist at all. But I just like, lady, shut up, you know? Shut up and be terrified, please. That was my only beef with it. But it's Yeah, I mean, obviously, a lot to admire in this work, for sure.

Ricky Grove 11:02
You've all made the points that I would have made as well. I liked it, I was drawn into the story. I too, was caught up by the facial animations and just the superiority of the Unreal rendering. You know, we've watched a lot of Unity films, we've watched a lot of other machinima shot and different things. And Unreal by far is the highest and best rendering and animation capability. No wonder so many virtual productions are using it because it is so good. And it's free, folks. It's free. You can just jump right in and get it it there is a learning curve. But like anything, there's going to be a learning curve. So I was very appreciative of that. I came away smiling and enjoying the thing because it was somewhat familiar. But I do have a couple of things that troubled me. One is it it seemed very traditional. Other than switching the a woman for a male character, which I'm glad because it didn't turn out to be a woman in peril situation. You know, there were a couple of things that troubled me. One is she kept talking about retiring. And yet she looked to be no more than 25. Yeah, I didn't make much sense to me it to me, it would be a better choice to have an older person in that role. And the other thing is, is that why in the world did she go into that cave in the first place? You know what I mean, she's only has a flashlight. She obviously knows that this is a world that could have some danger elements. She doesn't have her gun out first. She just walks blindly into the whole thing. And of course, she gets trapped. And that was really troubling. Because I think, well, you I kept thinking we use, in addition to talking so much Shut up lady and get be smarter, you know, be smarter.

Phil Rice 12:58
That's because if she were older and experienced, she would know not to go in there. Exactly, she would have she retiring. No, that's a great point I hadn't thought about,

Ricky Grove 13:07
you would have used some sort of scanning technology to scan the interior of the cave, to see whether there were any organic forms in there that might threaten her, you know, or send a drone in or something like that. But anyway, that that wasn't what they chose to do. They chose to make her very simple in that, and that's the traditional quality. I wish that it had been a little more poetic, a little more risky and the way they did their shots. You know, we've seen some individual machine and film machinima films that had a similar nostalgic appeal for a typical sci fi situation that were very creative in the way they move the camera. There was very little camera movement in this by the way, you know, it was just medium shot close up, wide shot, medium shot close up wide shot. Now I understand that film language is what people like and what they understand. And it's blended made the story appealing, but it troubled me that the it seemed to be a lack of imaginative effort on their part, because Unreal, can certainly do some amazing things with it. And then the sort of piece de resistance was, as you pointed out, Phil, the sort of, oh, yeah, there's a monster that just didn't make it and share that, that shock that you should get from it. You know, the jumping cat syndrome, where you turn the corner and the single leaps at you and you knew she was going to escape it. So there was no real suspense in any of that. So those were the things that bothered me about it. But you know, those are things that only by taking time to look at it closely and watching it a couple of times that I get my overall experience was positive. I enjoyed watching it the first time I didn't think about those things the first time except for the monster, it was only on subsequent viewings, but I liked it. And I want to see more by that company and the director.

Phil Rice 15:10
Do you think that the the the lack of let's say innovative approach with the camera was was this creator inhibited by his own professional experience in that regard?

Ricky Grove 15:29
Well, that's a really good point.

Phil Rice 15:31
You get taught, this is the way it's done. And there are things that are possible in Unreal, like you said that that aren't necessarily possible with real world cameras. I don't know it just when you said that it made me think I wonder if it's one of those things where sometimes machinima creators are willing to be a little more daring. Sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't. But they're willing to experiment more there because they, for lack of a better phrase, they don't know any better. And maybe that helps sometimes, you know,

Ricky Grove 16:03
the problem in a commercial situation is that they don't have time to fail on shots, they have to get the shots, right. And so they're much more conservative on on the shots that they chose, right sets, then sets that I've been on, the director will often read the paper in between, while they're setting up the lighting. And we'll say, and we'll do the traditional close up mid shot, maybe a push in and a wide shot. And that's it, because they know that's what works. Those are the basics of storytelling. And they have to get the job done in five days or six days. However, there are individuals that I've worked with who they don't give a damn about that and they've thought it all through very carefully. And they have a crew that understands that's how they work. And so they reduce the risk of not being able to get a shot by being able to, they are the director to have discussed it with the people beforehand, and then setting up that shot and executing it clear cleanly. So I think it's a matter of choice. Okay, and also commercial exigency as well.

Phil Rice 17:19
Great pic Tracy.

Ricky Grove 17:20
Yeah. Really good trick.

Damien Valentine 17:23
Even though you beat me to it.

Phil Rice 17:25
Yeah. Um, you

Phil Rice 17:27
actually, if I'm going to do the generic outro should be Wow, that was a really great prick.

Ricky Grove 17:35
Yeah, really great. Brick Tracy. That's a

Phil Rice 17:37
Really great pick, insert, podcast or name here. We'll look forward to the next one. If you have any feedback, you know, any thoughts you'd like to share on the film that we just discussed. Please let us know through our website, Completely Machinima dot com. Look for the talk button or talk tab. You can send it to us by email or by other methods. We'd love to hear from you. And we will we as you have seen in prior episodes, we will share your feedback on the air. So we will. Yeah, let us know. And thank you guys. This was a great discussion. And I'm looking forward to next one. Thanks. Thanks, insert podcast here....