Completely Machinima Episode 54, February 2022 Machinima Films

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
film, machinima, game, characters, gta, movies, unreal, people, thought, called, matrix, video, watch, scenes, created, story, absolutely, phil, locations, photogrammetry

SPEAKERS
Damien Valentine, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood, Phil Rice

Tracy Harwood 00:13
Hello and welcome to the February 2022 films discussion episode of The And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast. I'm one of the podcasts regular hosts. I'm Tracy Harwood and I'm joined today by Ricky Grove. Hello, Phil Rice, yellow, and Damian Valentine. Hello. And now we've got a really interesting selection of films to discuss this month. And don't forget you can watch the films using the links we'll post on our website at Completelymachinima.com

Ricky Grove 00:44
I'm excited.

Damien Valentine 00:47
Always your favourite bit, isn't it?

Tracy Harwood 00:49
Yes, its all have our favourite bits isn't it? Yeah, yeah, don't forget another thing you can do is send us your films, we won't promise to review them, but we'll certainly consider them. We try and select the best films each month and also vary what we're looking at. So I'll start this episode off with with actually two films that I found. One I think we'll be a little bit familiar with so the first one that I wanted to share with you guys is Evil Imps, Shino and The Witch an Animal Crossing machinima which was released on the 24th of December. Now this is set in a Japanese School of Witchcraft, in has shades of Harry Potter with a kind of Moaning Myrtle type character, haunting the school crossed with a kind of Scooby Doo adventure story. And the ending has some really nice twists, which I won't spoil for those of you that are going to watch it. I think the music in the soundscape are really well done. And I'm sure we've kind of commented on the way that Evil Imp creates or generates the the voices using these kinds of squeaks and burbles rather than natural words. I think we've commented on that before. So it's overlaid with texts. But this isn't really that burdensome for me. And it's an it's done well enough to sort of read and take the character actions, all in, which sometimes I think isn't the case with some of the films that use text. And I think what's also quite fun is that the subscribe and watch call to action, at the end of the video is also characterised with that same sort of burbly voices, which I think it's really kind of a nice little touch. Anyway, what what did you guys think to that one?

Ricky Grove 02:38
Absolutely flawless. This, in our new section in discussion, the question came up the difference between machinima and animation. If you wanted to answer the question with a film, this would be the film. You will not find a film like this in the traditional animated world, because there were so many things in it that people would say, well, that's not professional. That doesn't. Why can't you have real people speaking real voices? Why can't you do that they animation is the they're always doing the same movement all the time. You can't have that? Well, you can. And that's the beauty of machinima is that you take this game that wasn't intended to tell these kinds of stories, and tell a completely beautiful story. That is not only interesting and strange and beautiful, but moving as well. These silly little characters that I ordinarily wouldn't pay any attention to whatsoever. Suddenly, I'm in tears watching it. Absolutely be. How is it possible? Here's my question. How is it possible that a simple game machinima with limited animations can move you? It's machinima. And it's the story in the style of the film. Absolutely great film, how it the film reflects many of the Japanese mode of storytelling, which is an interesting I'm a big fan of Japanese cinema and Japanese animation. So I recognise immediately, because one of the things it does is it puts you the viewer in making moral choices between the difference in caring and hurting other people. Japanese themes in their films are always about that the community versus the individual. Why don't a great film! I think it's my favourite film I've seen so far. It's just marvellous.

Phil Rice 04:37
Yeah, it's my favourite of Evil Imps films, and I've watched quite a few of them. It's definitely my favourite of all the pics that we're going to talk about today. And it's it's one of the best machinima movies I've seen in a long, long time. Absolutely extraordinary. In spite of the limited environment it's created and it's beautiful. Yeah, beautifully done. Wonderful shot selection. The story is just fantastic. I mean, at times almost almost disturbing, you know, but in a way that still keeps you engaged doesn't make you want to pull away and draws you closer like, oh, wow, you know that you know what I'm talking about? I want to spoil anything, but I'll do this is that Tracy, you mentioned the Harry Potter vibe, which he added the Moaning Myrtle thing is very evident there. I would have described it as Harry Potter meets Soylent Green. Yeah. Which once you see it, you'll understand what I mean. Yeah, there's, there's, there's a point where there's this reveal of Oh, wow. And then you're right, Ricky, that, that, that choice that it not just puts the character through that they have to make, once they they're given that knowledge, but we're right there with them. Yep. wondering the same thing. And gee, what do you do here? What would you know it Oh, it's just just delightful. And I think the only if I had to nitpick, the only thing that I wish that they would do differently, is slightly more pitch or tonal variation between the voices, you know, because it doesn't matter for sake of clarity, because it's like you said, it's really just filling sound, it gives it a wonderful international quality. I'm hoping that what Evil Imp does is provide subtitles in multiple languages, because that's, that's taking full advantage of what they've done here. They've made a story that could be understood by anyone. Yeah, just need a little translation on the subtitles. That's the brilliance of either a silent movie with no speaking, or one with the title this way where the the audio of the speaking isn't important. But what I found is there were times when there were multiple characters on the screen, and there's a voice, it took effort and engagement to know who was speaking, you know, in the same way that I have the same issue with with some of Hemingway's writing when he's portraying a conversation, and he doesn't use the traditional, you know, blah, blah, blah, comma, Sally said, such as a answered Hank doesn't do the Sally said or answered Hank, it's just one person's line that another person's line and another person's line. And if you haven't chosen to really engage with the novel, as you're reading, and hearing that conversation, as you read, you can easily get lost. Yeah, good point to the same. And that's not a you know, I'm not saying that. That's, that's not a criticism of Hemingway. But I think that because my ears are engaged, that it would be, it would be helpful to at least know for sure who was speaking by just a little bit different than yes, that can be done just with a pitch correction. Honestly,

Ricky Grove 08:04
it's more of a craft issue. Slight craft. Adjust it,

Phil Rice 08:07
though. But that's that's nitpicking. And that's it. I mean, it is. Just wonderful. Yeah. All the way around.

Damien Valentine 08:16
I pretty enjoyed it as well. Start with the speech, the sound of the speech, that is the sound the characters make in the game,

Phil Rice 08:26
or that is from the game. Okay. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 08:29
So it's not normally a game I would play when the pandemic started, I bought myself a Switch. And a lot of people were saying, this is a really great relaxing game. So I played the game. And it was one of the things that watching the video. So this is, I don't know how he actually did this. I know, I've seen the films before. This is another one where there are shots in it, I can see how he did it. And then the other shots for I have no idea because as far as I know, with the game, you can't do those things. So I have no idea how he pulled it off, which is a testament to him as a filmmaker, because he's managed to take this game and do something with it, that it wasn't designed for, but more ways than just telling this this kind of darker story. And he's actually done things with the game camera that you can't really do.

Ricky Grove 09:16
Well, yeah.

Damien Valentine 09:18
And I want to address that, because that was one of the first things that jumped out at me beyond just the story and the way it looked, which is all it shows the characters perfectly and design the environment perfectly, which is one of the things that you do in the game is a bit like The Sims as before you can actually customise how your game world looks. So he's obviously using that to his advantage to tell his stories and all the different videos he's made. And this is obviously one of them.

Phil Rice 09:45
I'm relieved to hear that. Yeah, based on based on what my criticism was, you know, I'm like really relieved that that's it's not a production oversight on his part. It's just, that's one limit. He hasn't figured out how to surmount yet, either. I certainly respect that

Damien Valentine 10:01
there's a multiplayer mode in the game, and you can text chat. So you make your character, you type in what you want to say. But it will make your character make that sort of squeaky gibberish noise. And very slightly based on the letters that you've written. Not. And it's really exciting to see you can't really understand it, but it doesn't make the noises that your character makes, but depends on what lessons you've actually written.

Phil Rice 10:28
That's interesting. Yeah, especially. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 10:31
Wow. Wow.

Tracy Harwood 10:32
Very interesting. Well, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, really good ice cream pick. Excellent. Well, my second one is completely different from that. And it's a wholly different type of content, it's simply called GTA 5 Versus The Matrix Awakens: Rage versus Unreal Engine 5, basically, released on 16th of December. So it's literally just picking up on The Matrix Awakens Experience release. And all it is it's simply a comparison of content from these two worlds. Now, last month, we talked about the incredible detail that Unreal has put into The Matrix Awakens Experience, which, let's remember is not a game. However, the comparison I think, is truly outstanding, and actually just highlights what an incredible amount of detail has gone into not just The Matrix Awakens, but also into GTA. But especially The Matrix. Now that this this film goes head to head with content, so you, you know, you see comparison of vehicles, of buildings, of people, of streetscapes and of kind of what you can do with each of them. I don't know, if you've had a look at the whole thing, guys, but what did you think of it?

Ricky Grove 11:49
I did? Yes.

Phil Rice 11:51
I found it fascinating. And some of it is just that, I mean, GTA 5 is not a not a young game anymore, you know, so some of is just that the needle has moved that far. Yeah, to what our computers can, can can handle. And in some of the, in some of the cases where, you know, the up close look at The Matrix versus GTA 5. And it's, you know, on the surface, it's like, well has kind of embarrassing, you know, that it's but the, the compromises that have had to be made to rather cleverly solve some problems of the limitation of the engine they're working with is actually there's, there's a level of respect to be paid for that too, and I'm talking about on the GTA 5 side. Yeah. Okay. So okay, so when under scrutiny, and compared to what can be done 10 years later, that's, that's, that's pretty crazy. But you know, pretty clever on on Rockstar's part to have I mean, if you look at GTA 5 versus some of the detail levels in Red Dead Redemption 2, there's a stark difference there already. So yeah, it's it's, but it was it was very interesting comparison, since they're both urban environments and things like that. Well, I think I was wowed by The Matrix footage. It's really amazing

Ricky Grove 13:08
that I think the filmmaker was pretty fair. In his talk about GTA 5. He says, well, then now he actually I think there was one thing that he found them sort of equal at his I recall, but it was pretty good. But But my problem with it, and I found that a fascinating idea, and I liked it. But about halfway through the film. He had one of his characters come up, and there was a woman standing on the sidewalk. And the character came up and just smashed the woman to the ground. just smashed her right down to the ground. And then there was a big yuck, yuck. And then he went on. Just ruined the whole rest of the film for me. Just ruined it.

Damien Valentine 13:52
And I realised unnecessary place. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 13:55
I went back and I looked at some of his other films, and there is a kind of game boy, hey, let's go out and smash things up. kind of attitude. No, that doesn't take anything away from the fact that it's a valuable, a valuable comparison between the two and I liked it for that. But I just found that unnecessary. And it just bothered me all the way through the rest of the film. And don't do that. Don't do that.

Damien Valentine 14:23
That point. Well, one of the technical things that stood out to me was, it was during the segment where he's showing how the cars in a distance rendered in GTA and in The Matrix. So in GTA, they have these 2d images of cars driving around on the roads, and that they would fade into 3d objects. And obviously, that's a way to make it look like the streets in the distance are really busy without slowing the game down. Yeah, The Matrix. They have actual real cars, three miles in the distance as well. They're not just pixels, not just sprites, but they also use I think he's trying to make a dig at Cyberpunk. Yes. 2017

Phil Rice 15:02
if you saw that TV I did. Cyberpunk. Yeah. The thing is funny.

Damien Valentine 15:08
Yeah, the thing about it, it made it The Matrix standard even more. Because Cyberpunk is only a year, there's only a year difference between The Matrix and Cyberpunk's release. And Cyberpunk, still using the GTA approach. That's obviously the approach that most games are still going to take. So the fact that The Matrix can have full 3d models of cars so far off in the distance is another way to show just how powerful this platform is that they've created.

Tracy Harwood 15:34
Yeah, it's not a game. Remember that Matrix Awakens is not a game. That's what I said

Damien Valentine 15:39
platform. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 15:40
I know. I know. But it you know, that's it's from a from a machinima creators point of view. Who cares, but it's right. It's, I think, really interesting.

Ricky Grove 15:50
But, you know, I'd like to suggest that we keep our eyes you know, part of our thinking about Matrix Awakens, all the way through the rest of the year to see how it progresses. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 16:00
Absolutely.

Damien Valentine 16:01
I still hope that we get a PC version, so we can actually try it ourselves.

Phil Rice 16:05
Yes. Cool.

Tracy Harwood 16:07
Let's let's create a push for it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. So Damien. Now you've got two films for us this week as well, although both with a similar theme.

Damien Valentine 16:20
Yeah, I think people might start to suspect I'm a Star Wars fan. Oh.

Damien Valentine 16:31
I chose the first thing to talk about is Malik, an Old Republic Story. And this is the one I found first, and it's it's a, it's a creator, I've been following for a little while, because he just creates some very impressive videos, its Unreal Cinema. He's kind of in the process of taking the story of the Star Wars video game Knights in the Old Republic, which is a very old game now. So the graphic is very dated, he's taking the story, and recreating it as a film using Unreal 5. And so he's taken part in the plot element to create this, which is kind of a bit of the backstory for for the game. He's using Reallusion's Character Creator to create the human looking faces, as Darth Revan has a mask, so I'm assuming Character Creater was not used for him. And then he's got motion capture for this lightsaber duel between Darth Malak and Darth Revan. And rendered out with Unreal 5. And I was it's one of these videos which really blown away by the quality of it and how smooth the characters, you know how the fight sequence was done in the sparks flying off the lightsabers as they were clashing. And then of course, you see the Reallusion bit where you got the human faces and no accreted category. So in that little detail, and how well they're rendered in Unreal, and I thought, yeah, this is gonna be my pick for the, for the month. So I submitted this one first. So what did you guys think of this one, before we move on to the second one?

Tracy Harwood 18:09
Well, I was really impressed by the, the fight scene memory, because obviously, you know, not being stalls not that you are, I don't know anything about the, you know, the different backstories and stuff. So, it took me a minute to realise that the first part was, was something else other than the fighting and fight scenes, basically, a memory or whatever. But what struck me about that fight scene was the was not just the choreography of it, but the observation of power, which was, I thought, surprisingly tangible in the performance between those fighting characters. That, you know, how do you perform power that was definitely in there. And it was also in the reveal and I don't know whether it was the faces or whether it was the soundscape or whether it was just the the mood that you know, there was just something invisible that created that for me, which was I thought, absolutely fascinating. Yeah. Extra something. Yeah. Something beyond beyond really, I thought it was it was it was very well done. And then the reveal, and the reveal for the you know why there was this synthesised voice, which was part of that narrative design, which I think probably is one of the things that contributed to that sense of power. Which I which I also thought was was very well done, so I thought it was a really impressive short. Another impressive Star Wars Show. I mean, I didn't know we could get any better than last week's I think this one was probably right, you know, the the one that we saw last week. For me anyway, I think like I said, the soundscape and the voice acting were really good. But I thought the other thing that made this interesting was the Disney style cinematic aesthetic that they clearly tried to adopt in the intro and the outro. Which kind of made you feel that this was more than perhaps what it is it made you feel that it wasn't an indie studio that created this. Yeah. I thought was, again, another interesting thing that I hadn't really seen done as well as this before. It was just a five minutes film. But there was a lot portrayed in it more than you might imagine. So it's worth a look at this one

Ricky Grove 20:45
thing I agree with you I felt the same way. I was really quite impressed with the how everything looked. The reveal was actually shocking to me. Yeah. I won't, we won't reveal what it is. But it was really startling. I think perhaps two things came to mind. One was that the filmmakers, storytelling, visual storytelling skills needed a little bit of polishing. Who was the guy that the main character was fighting with? I didn't know is it something in the game that you need to know about? Or he could have done better in telling that particular story. There was an occasional jerky animation that could have been edited a little bit better. So it didn't take you out. But overall, I was drawn into the story I was excited by I was shocked by it. It was really a lot of fun. I really respected it.

Phil Rice 21:48
Yeah, I had the same. I played Knights of the Old Republic. So I recognised the characters, but I was able to kind of, as I was watching step back and think well, let's assume I haven't. And, and yeah, that there's some incompleteness I would say, to the narrative structure of it, if you don't have that foreknowledge, which I think is since it's I mean by its title, it's it's being put there as a standalone short of sorts, you know, yeah, it says it's from this world or whatever. But, you know, if this were part if this were like a scene from a larger picture, then I probably wouldn't feel comfortable making that judgement call because while there's stuff that came before will see that would illuminate those those questions about who is who. Who am I supposed to be rooting for here? So I think that that, yeah, that there's some weaknesses in in the narrative because of that, I think a little bit too much assumption that the viewer is going to know the world and maybe even be familiar with the outcome. And this is more of just elaborating on exactly how this came to be. Right. Um, but I will say that for in large part the the visuals that were they were jaw dropping. Yeah. Oh, I couldn't resist.

Damien Valentine 23:22
Really, how are we supposed to top that?

Tracy Harwood 23:25
Well, it's your turn Damien. You go.

Tracy Harwood 23:28
Alright, so... And the second star word was short today is First Day.

Ricky Grove 23:41
Wait a second. Is this another Star Wars?

Tracy Harwood 23:43
Oh, my God. Yes.

Damien Valentine 23:45
Yeah, I chose two Star Wars films. Well, I those Malak first and then I came across First Day, and I was laughing my way through this one. And I thought I can't I'd already posted Malak in the group and I thought you've probably already all watched it by now. So I can't see I don't want to do this one. You I want to change it to this one. So I just added it on. Especially a stormtrooper thing given guard duty, and it's his first day as a stormtrooper and he's got this excitement is really excited about this new job and he thinks he's gonna be the big hero for the Empire and all this kind of stuff. And he's just guarding this doorway. And this other trooper next to him is completely unimpressed by his excitement, because he's obviously more experienced on duty, he's guarded doorways and had all these kind of duties before hundreds of times he just, he doesn't really care. And he doesn't see why this other guy so excited. And he's got kind of got this interaction between these two characters, and I was just highly entertained, by the way it was written. And the way it was animated as well. Again, it's made with Unreal 5 or rendered with Unreal 5, so it looks just as good as the revenue the Malak film. And that's why how do I choose between two films that I've only posted one. I really kind of like this one more, but so I ended up posting both of so what do you guys think of first day?

Ricky Grove 25:08
It was excellent. This is a superb film. It shows how machinima made and Unreal can compete with the best the classic machinima. It had that marvellous sense of humour that so many of the classic machinima has stuff that Paul Marino did in the ILL Clan. Yeah. Ring of that for me, too. Yeah, yeah. Just, it was just so funny. And I enjoyed. Perhaps the joke went on a bit too long, maybe. But it was super funny. And one of the things I really, really liked was the background. And the odd little things that would come up in front of them. Yeah. And then the punch line at the end was just hilarious. We won't reveal what it is. But as shocking as a Malak was, this was is equally funny. Yeah. At the very end, the performances had that energy of the ILL Clan. It was just a really enjoyable film. I liked it a lot.

Tracy Harwood 26:07
Yeah. Well, I did too. I mean, I see. I thought it was shades of Red versus Blue here.

Phil Rice 26:14
Totally invoked that for me, yeah. It did feel

Tracy Harwood 26:16
as though did it? So yeah, it was just sort of like the Church versus kind of, you know, one of the other. One of the other characters there in that Red versus Blue Episode One I stuff

Ricky Grove 26:27
With a problem with Red versus Blue is that they tend to do a go off and these philosophical, yeah, nature, these these, these non sequiturs. And I didn't get that feeling from this

Tracy Harwood 26:38
at all. No, I completely agree with you. But it just had that kind of characterization and that sort of riffing off each other. And not in terms of the content, but the way it was done was just very similar. But I thought it was quite interesting that a comment that they put in the description of it was that it was done as a workflow test for a series that they're making. And I'm wondering, Damien, do you know any more about that than what they're doing?

Damien Valentine 27:03
With no idea? I think it's a case of let's subscribe to their channel and keep an eye on them. See what they come up with.

Ricky Grove 27:11
They keep making movies like this I'm in. That's great.

Damien Valentine 27:16
The channel is called AFK - The Webseries, so I'm assuming it's going to be a similar kind of theme. Yeah. I don't know if it's gonna be Star Wars, specifically, but similar kind of tone with the kind of humour and storytelling.

Phil Rice 27:32
So yeah, I think, you know, that's very smart. production wise, you can really crank stuff out with this. So the, the writing was decent, you know, there were some good fan service in there. As far as, you know, Star Warsy jokes, they didn't linger on any of those too long. So if you're not a, you know, total Star Wars nerd, you wouldn't be thrown off by it. But if you were a little reward for you there, that's a clever bounce. I think they did well with that. Some of the writing was a little bit, and I won't get into specifics, but a little bit on the nose, some of the humour that I kind of, I don't know. It's so funny that Ricky says, you know, about Red versus Blue, and they get all philosophical and funny thing is, when I'm watching this, I was thinking, I kind of wish they'd go a little nonsense. really did like had that thought. So it's just a matter of that's just a matter of differing tastes. But yeah, this is a good sign. I hope they do produce more of this. I hope they keep it simple. Because as a producer, I know, that's the best way to be able to crank out more content if you want to and you know. If you look at this versus let's say, well, one that we're going to be looking at here in my picks in just a moment, but also the Half Life Alyx film, Half Peeps. Yeah, yeah. He actually took to Twitter this week or last week. I can't remember which, kind of lamenting the fact that man you know, for the amount of viewership that we're getting versus the amount of effort we have to put in to make this. I sometimes wonder if this is worth it. Yeah. Which what serious machinima and filmmaker has not had those thoughts. Right? That's their... Half Peeps, if you're listening, man, or woman, you are not alone. No, you are not alone. That's a very common thing. And I don't have an easy answer for you either. Like I don't know what to tell you. It is it's it's truly a labour of love sometimes. And you know, I look at this the most recent release that I did, and boy, oh boy, how long are the days since my, you know, six and a half million views for for bathroom jokes. You know, and here we got OBIT which I'm like, bleeding on a piece of paper for and it's you know, 350 people, but you have to kind of keep it in a little perspective here of if I think locally, what could I do that 350 people nearby me would pay attention to? I would think that was a pretty big deal. Right? You know, yeah, the internet has totally changed our understanding of numbers. Yes. And especially when, you know, Beyonce can release some auto tunes track and get a billion views for shaking it, you know. And here, we're, we're slaving away on craft like this. And but you know, it's tough man, you get you get, you get focused on the views thing. And much of the time, it can get really depressing. If you look at it that way. You know, the truth is, you know, any attention is good. So,

Ricky Grove 30:49
well, you know, I agree with you. And I think that's, that's something that is, is hard. Because you have to sort of make decisions as an artist, do you want to make things that are popular? Or do you want to make things that are important to you and that are fun, and gets a modest audience? Right, I think there's a shift in your thinking if you'd want to be popular, because then you have to go through that whole marketing thing again, where you go, well, what is popular, if you had perhaps put in bathroom jokes and OBIT you may have had more views, but I would have just destroyed the movie. Yes. So it's a balancing act. And it's not an easy choice to make. And I don't condemn the person who decides to try to be more popular, you know, I think that's fine. But I'm really in it because of its passion. And it's fun. And it's interest. It's for movies like Malak, you know, that I want to watch or write or Shino and the Witch. Yes. You know, and that's why we're here is we're trying to tell everybody about it to get more viewers.

Phil Rice 32:01
Yes. Well, and for mine personally, for OBIT Yeah, I'm very much at a sense of peace with that. The 350 number only gets in my head, if I start adopting it through that, you know, YouTuber, you're

Tracy Harwood 32:17
gonna have to become more of an influencer? Phil. Right.

Phil Rice 32:20
Right. You know, but I do look at it as Oh, my gosh, I made a 10 minute, cinematic quality piece about something very personal to me. Rewind 25 years before any of this stuff was around, I would have never been able to do that, you know. So I'm, I'm very grateful that the tech exists to where I could just on my own, sit here in an office and just work on that a bit of time and have that to show. So that's, it's tough, man. It's not it's not easy to decide which which side of the fence you're on on that. But anyway, that's this movie, assuming that they want to make more of it. It's very smart of them, have made it where it's not hard to do, you know. And I get the impression that, that, compared to other projects that we've seen, this has got some pretty simple parts and pieces. And that's, that's gonna pay off I think,

Ricky Grove 33:13
yeah. Well, we recommend it. Yeah, we hope you people will watch it.

Tracy Harwood 33:17
Great movie picks, Damian. Yeah, Ricky, what have you got for us this month?

Ricky Grove 33:24
Well as usual, I had a half a dozen movies, but I don't want to belabour the point. I picked something that was a little different than what I normally pick, it isn't a story driven movie, it's more of a combination of Let's Play and tech demo. It's a company called Dimension. And they focus on recreating real environments using photogrammetry. And creating the landscapes in Unreal, that means they go to a real location, they take high res digital photos, they stitch those together as the textures for models. And then they take those models and they put them in Unreal, and then do some adjustments to lighting there. And then they do a sort of slow fly fly through in different locations. What they're doing, it's actually a VR, it's in virtual reality, the fly through an Unreal, it's perfect for them. But they've gone to very classic locations around the world that have remarkable landscape. And they've created the digital imagery, took it to Unreal, and then did the fly through. And it's absolutely gorgeous. And it has a kind of meditative quality that I really liked about it. But it also shows the possibilities of future virtual production. It made me think that here's a company that wants to do an adaptation of say a fantasy novel and they can't afford to ship everything to New Zealand. So they hire a company like Dimension and they bring all the New Zealand locations to them in the studio. And they put it on Unreal. And the actors react to the real environments in Unreal, and they've saved a tonne of money. And it looks almost the same. If you if you are very, very observant, you could see some tiny flaws here and there as you do the fly through. But mostly most people are not going to be looking at the environment that closely because it's a it's that's why it's called a background. It's behind the foreground of the story. So I really liked it. And I hope to follow Dimension more, as the year goes on. What did you guys think,

Phil Rice 35:45
For me was really fascinating about this Ricky's is, is not something that's actually shown in the film, and that is trying to get my head around how they captured, assuming that this is a relatively authentic rendering of this real location, how they captured that. And I mean, the tech they cite in the description is literally called Reality Capture. And I'm picturing like, this guy walking around with one of the, you know, the Google car 360 cameras on his head on his head, I don't know, man, how does that work? It's just amazing. Somehow they did a fly through or with a drone, or a person taking a camera around on a gimbal or something. And it's capturing we've seen people use photo, is it photogrammetry? Is that what it's called? That's it, where, where we've seen them do that for objects, there's some fascinating stuff, you can see people doing that and bringing something right into Blender with all this detail. And it's amazing. The idea of doing that basically in some kind of a real time capture of a whole environment, everything within view of the eye, that's capturing it, and then rendering that into usable 3d. You know, space and background and prop, props to some degree. Wow, man. Wow. Yeah, the fact that that's even possible, I found that I was, the video is beautiful. Maybe in my meditative state. That's where I was going with it is, how did they make this and as my eyes start crossing, I'm not even watching anymore. I'm just, Oh, I really want to learn more about this thing, how it works, because it's just

Ricky Grove 37:31
there is a there is a link in the video that takes you to a page. And it's not a full technical explanation, explanations more generalised.

Phil Rice 37:40
I went there to try and find out more. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 37:43
yeah. All that in the show notes.

Damien Valentine 37:45
I had a very similar reaction to you, Phil, is how did they do this? Who also watched it? I looked up the places that they recreated, to try and find photos to compare with what was in the video? Oh, and is accurate? Yeah. Wow, completely accurate. I looked at some of the way the rocks are positioned. And it wasn't just they had a big rock in the same place. It was the same rock the same shape of it. And I guess the smaller ones probably moved, because then it shifted around from people walking through there. But the big stuff that was all identical. But it was. Yeah. And

Phil Rice 38:19
now I'm assuming some of the foliage was probably added with with some kind of a tool afterwards because it's hard to imagine that they're capturing a flapping palm branch. Yeah, that's fine. The fact is amazing.

Damien Valentine 38:34
Is the rocks are focused on because I thought those aren't going to change much trees gonna change because the leaves fall off and so on. But when I look, I thought that rocks in exactly the same place. And it's the exact same shape and it was the same in all of the environments. It wasn't just one one off from that amazing. So yeah, I have no idea how they made that work. But it's really impressive.

Tracy Harwood 38:56
I have to say, I I've been to some of the locations shown in this. Oh, really I have and you know, the the location on the Isle of Skye. To be there. It's like being in another world. And to see that rendered out with the rain and the weather unfolding around I mean, you can barely walk anywhere on Skye on a sunny day. It's usually in rain clouds or you know that the Old Man of Store is almost always in, in cloud. So so to see it as it was, that was beautiful and stunning. And but it's the weather that made it astonishing as well. The fact that I could see the the water glistening on the rock and what have you. And I actually kind of thought sort of reflecting back on my memory of being in some of those places. It's like, you know, what they've created is like being a tourist, but having the opportunity to see things that you wouldn't actually see, when you are actually in the physical space. Which is just a kind of really interesting observation. Yeah, because I think the thing is I'm unlike five foot two. And what you see what you have seen, there is a fly through, I don't know, some of it must be by drone sort of height, you're never gonna see that as you as you walk through not only, not only because of the the smoothness of the flight of the, of the perspective, and you know, the angles, that you're looking at things as you're kind of going through, and that and the height that you're going through, but also, because of the sheer physical exertion its taken to get you to that point. So you don't just don't see it. So I you know, these are these are stunning. These are not, you know, they're not just beautifully rendered environments. But I'd say they've got to his historical significance too, to them. I felt you weren't just viewing that as a human would, you know, when when you go around that space. That is not what you see. I think what you're seeing there is either a butterfly or an insect flight path, which is, I mean, that's, that's incredible, isn't it to sort of see something rendered to that level of detail and have that ability to perceive it in that in that way. So I think that adds something to reality, actually,

Phil Rice 41:29
To be able to be able to use it without spoiling it. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. You know, imagine dragging a film crew there, you probably couldn't, you wouldn't be able to government wouldn't let you or you weren't able to physically. And then the environmental impact of that, you know, in the fact that you could could capture some of those locations and actually making use of them. Yeah, without destroying them. Wonderful. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 41:53
And And ladies and gentlemen, this is machinima, absalutely machinima

Damien Valentine 42:00
The other aspect that Tracy has got me thinking about it is, if I don't know what the restrictions are for those particular locations, if they were, if they did a video, this is Stonehenge where you can't go up to the rocks because they're protected. This is a way you can get right up close to the rocks virtually and see all the detail in them. And like Phil said, there was an episode of Doctor Who that was filmed about 10 years ago, that was used Stonehenge as its location. And he had very strict instructions, they were not allowed to touch the rocks, the actors even brushed against them. So the actors had to be extremely careful as they were moving around and have to be very careful where they place the equipment and all that kind of stuff. If they used something like this, they could have done whatever they wanted to

Phil Rice 42:41
want to use technology

Ricky Grove 42:44
to smash them up with their cars, blown them up with their guns. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 42:51
I think one of them just smacked down

Phil Rice 42:53
that female role. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 42:56
I think the other thing that makes this this memorable too, is the way that they've used the music to come along. I mean, that's equally evocative of the kind of stunning-ness of what is being seen as the fact that you're being you know, you're you're being immersed in an amazing quality, classic soundscape for all. And it's very different. And it's very evocative for each of the different sort of scenes that

Ricky Grove 43:24
point, it's well put together aesthetically,

Tracy Harwood 43:28
it smacks of being truly professionally done, actually really beautiful.

Ricky Grove 43:31
I'd like to see a future in which we could use this photogrammetry technique in a cheaper version and go to personal locations, like urban or rural locations that you want to tell stories in, and then have that as a background for your story. So, for example, in LA, there's the we have loads these very interesting canals, it'd be fun to do photogrammetry of the canals and have some scenes set there. Obviously, the tech the technology is not cheap enough to be able for me to, to do that, at least, to my knowledge, but I'd like to see a future in which that is possible.

Tracy Harwood 44:11
You know, a few years ago, the tech is is cheap. I don't know whether it still is still available, actually. But you could create point clouds on your mobile phone. And colleagues, and I've done this where we created a copy of a real retail environment in which we wanted to illustrate something or other we, you know, we rendered it out. I think it was done in I think the the virtual assets were done in Unity, but they use the point cloud that we generated in the real environment in order to map the whole thing. So it was as close as it could be to a real store.

Ricky Grove 44:49
I think that technology is Apple's LIDAR technology scanning.

Tracy Harwood 44:54
Yeah. Did he see

Phil Rice 44:57
that as well? I didn't have very good results, but I did not didn't follow the pretty explicit instructions they have about how to keep things level and all that. I'm just going around with my phone. And yeah, it looks like something out of a Salvador Dali. But you know, it was fun to play with.

Tracy Harwood 45:14
Yeah. And if you if you really get into it you can appear in more than one position is standing around so right stand there and then as you scan to another place a right run around there and then when you turn around, you've got people in multiple different business. silly things.

Ricky Grove 45:33
Well, I'm glad you guys liked it. I sure do. Great.

Tracy Harwood 45:36
Phil, so you've also got two films for us this week?

Phil Rice 45:40
I do well, I mean, one and then a bonus one. The first one is there's a it's called Terminator 2 GTA 5 film. And it basically, the filmmaker is, I believe, a Russian guy, Mikhail Kramer. And he's working on a shot by shot recreation of James Cameron's Terminator 2. And it's pretty faithful to the original and astounding that he's doing all of this in GTA 5. Yeah, yeah. Unusual type of pick for me, because I don't really, I don't generally encourage people to just go recreate other people's work. But I also recognise that as a, a way of holding up your skills, it's a nice way to kind of subdivide the skills, you know, you don't have to worry about coming up with the story or the script, or the audio even in this case. And you can focus on honing these other skills and stuff. And this guy does a very good job with it. I haven't done a side by side like timing. But I've watched Terminator 2, an embarrassing number of times over the years. And it seems like it's pretty faithful to the original, and it may even actually be using, I'm pretty sure it's using the audio from the original film, which is a great way to make sure that the timing is the same. So yeah. Anyway, I was I was pretty impressed with it. Mainly because, you know, if I saw someone do this in Unreal too, or Unreal Engine, I would probably my response would probably be that's a shame. You know? What a waste of time, you know, but the fact that it's a GTA 5. Again, not, as we mentioned earlier, it's not a brand new game. And the the visual, the fidelity of the image and his ability to recreate a lot of the same motions and scenes and movements and stuff. It's it's quite impressive. Purely from that point of view. What did you guys think?

Ricky Grove 47:50
Well, you know, I appreciate and I acknowledge the effort that went into making it. And you've clarified the reason why you chose the film and I, I can see it, it's a way of sharpening your skills. And that makes sense to me. But I wish he would have not chosen GTA 5, but I wish he would have done it in The Movies. Because the thing is, is that it lacked style. It was sort of generic to me, without the trappings of the original motion picture. It's sort of, it's really an exercise and as an exercise. It didn't really involve me very much in it. Again, I admired it and that but I was distant from it. Had it

Phil Rice 48:34
I can't stop picturing a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger walking with the walk animation from The Movies game. That's fantastic.

Ricky Grove 48:43
Yeah, what would add

Phil Rice 48:45
money to see that?

Damien Valentine 48:46
Yeah. There you go. Take out copies of The Movies now and see what we can do. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 48:54
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't. I was thinking about The Movies because Ben covered it so well, in his history article, this last month in January, because he talked about the beginning of The Movies and what people were doing with it. And there was this period of time two or three years in which The Movies was everywhere. I mean, he had the largest amount of content of any any machinima engine ever. But it just appeared to me that it would be funnier and more entertaining if it was shot in The Movies. But I see your point and, and I felt like that it just didn't involve me very much.

Tracy Harwood 49:32
Do you do want to

Damien Valentine 49:35
like you feel I've watched the original film an embarrassing number of times. So I think it's one of those films where you've seen it even heard about it for a while. When you watch it again. You're so familiar with how it's supposed to sound. So I didn't detect any breaks in the audio apart from the opening theme where they replaced it with a fan take of the opening music. Yeah,

Phil Rice 49:59
which they probably I assume they did to keep it from getting detected by YouTube's music detector. Yeah, yeah.

Damien Valentine 50:08
But the actual scenes, the actual scenes, the audio was identical from what I can remember. And I was impressed by... you know the background characters kind of look similar to the way they did like in the bar. But the actual main characters, you got the Schwarzenegger Terminator, and you've got the T 1000. They look just like they do. Yeah. And they've got the emotions for them. Again, I guess, I don't know, if they were able to add more animation to the game, or if they're just using the animations in the game to try and recreate.

Phil Rice 50:43
I think somebody probably modded those characters specifically for use in GTA five. What a shame. Yeah, with some custom animations.

Tracy Harwood 50:52
What a shame because the legal action is gonna take place is probably going to mean that's not a good, good way to go with this one, then.

Ricky Grove 51:00
Yeah, I agree with you Epic needs to sue these people. We need to get put our foot down on this sort of creative effort. And you mean

Phil Rice 51:14
that that would really be crossing the line suing shooting modders of someone else's video game. That's right. That's how bad it's gotten. That's it. Thanks, Obama.

Ricky Grove 51:27
Excuse me, Damien. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Damien Valentine 51:29
Well, it's just got the end of the video, I thought, I want to watch part two. And then of course, I saw it's only released a few days ago. So part two hasn't been released yet. Part one. So it made me want to go back and watch the original for an embarrassing number of times plus one.

Tracy Harwood 51:47
Yeah, well, I'm really glad you said what you said about it Phil as well, because I had to ask myself, why the hell would you want to make this like this? What I mean, it's an iconic film made in a game? Why? Why? Why would you do that? So yeah, I'm glad you answered that question.

Phil Rice 52:06
Honestly, and honestly, that still is my question about it. The fact that it appears his intention is to do that for the whole movie. I still have I don't care what what honing you're doing? Why? Why do that? I don't know. I like I don't have a good answer for that, to do this scene, or this set of scenes, as the exercise. Yeah, brilliant. Now, move on to another one, you know, yeah, on some different different skills. So maybe, I mean, who knows, maybe this, this director has a very special relationship with that film, it means something, you know, a lot to him. And, and that's why he wants to do this tribute to it, I don't know,

Tracy Harwood 52:52
But there was, there's one technical thing I picked up on, maybe you guys would be much more sensitive to this than I am. And that was in terms of the sound quality. So irrespective of the video itself, you know, the image side of it, the sound moved from being binaural to being really flat. And I think the guy's got to watch the, you know, because clearly what he's doing with really flat sound to me was when he was listening when he was using the film, you know, the film audio, and but I think he also interspersed it with some, some music that he downloaded from somewhere else. And that got much more of a rich richness to it, it was definitely, definitely hearing both, you know, both ears at different times, and all that sort of moves around in your head. But the film stuff just didn't.

Ricky Grove 53:46
Well, it's probably because he didn't spend any time on mixing the two together, okay? Because that's a, that's an effort, you have to go to make sure that they're within the same range, that same tone, or they're all going to be mono, you don't go from Omana to a stereo and then back again. Yeah, that's all distracting. He just didn't seem to put any effort

Tracy Harwood 54:06
into that side. Which is shame, because of all of these films, really, you know, they're not just visual, are they are also... It's, it's the auditory side of it. That so yes, compelling as well. Yeah. And that to me was, was a bit, you know, irrespective of the why question. That was the bit that I felt just didn't work.

Ricky Grove 54:27
Yeah. You know, the thing that I think is interesting also, or I'd like to try to make it interesting is that when you when you cut when you're doing an homage to something like that, if you add an extra element of satire to it, which an adaptation in The Movies would, because then you're sort of kidding the film, that sort of in the spirit of machinima, because we love to do that sort of thing that parody it. But he's not he's actually trying to do the film seriously, you know what I mean? And that comes back to the Phil's question as well why, you know, if it's just a technical exercise, you've done it, but if you're not going to satirise it, or if you're not going to say something, why you like it so much, then it's sort of a self... it serves him It doesn't serve the viewers.

Phil Rice 55:23
Yeah. And we've if we look at the the classic era of machinima and we can we can find a couple examples where people have undertaken this very exercise. Hugh and Strange Company very kind of very famously did their their Matrix. Oh, yeah, ever, whatever. very primitive by comparison engine. That was, yeah, somebody did one in the early 2000s that was Jack Nicklaus. Yeah, the courtroom scene from a few good men. Yeah. Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. Yeah, "you can't handle the truth".

Tracy Harwood 55:56
That was a Few Good GMen

Phil Rice 55:58
but they didn't try to recreate the whole movie. No. Yeah. And I would have seen that would have been kind of silly. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 56:04
Yeah, I was. I was really mad about that. A Few Good GMen thing because it won an award at one of the Machinima festivals. And I kept arguing well, how can how can it not win an award because it's got Yeah, performance by Jack Nicholson. Indeed, I mean, you're competing, Jack Nicholson is competing against all of these other machinima actors.

Tracy Harwood 56:26
He was brilliant.

Ricky Grove 56:28
Yeah. So I believe he

Phil Rice 56:31
agreed to do you know,

Ricky Grove 56:35
famously unapproachable, really, and everybody just looked at me like, I'm gonna accept that.

Damien Valentine 56:42
A couple of times, I've actually recreated movie scenes as well. Way back I did. One minute second from the Wrath of Khan in The Movies. Yeah. So I wanted to come here, it was now, someone at a contest to recreate one minute of any film you want, using The Movies just to see if it's possible. Now, there's no real prize. It's just, uh, let's see if we can do this. Because, you know, Lionhead said you can recreate any movie you want with our software, so that someone said, Well, we're gonna take you up on that challenge and see what we can do. And then more recently, there was the lip sync contest that Reallusion did right at the scene from the Empire Strikes. But I can't I wouldn't want to recreate either of those movies in their entirety. It's just, I picked the Wrath of Khan, because I just watched it and it's fresh in my mind, as I said, could seem to do. And then

Phil Rice 57:33
you really wanted to see Ricardo Montalban. Movie storm. Yeah.

57:38
Yeah.

Damien Valentine 57:43
I've actually found an animation of him folding his arms, like, doesn't the film really cartoony kind of?

Ricky Grove 57:51
So I have a question for our viewers. Okay. What do you think about doing adaptations using the audio of it now? Or last year, I did a trailer with one of our filmmakers of the Town That Dreaded Sundown, I think it was. And yeah, he added to it, and he did a really good job. And I was very impressed with it. But this one, I'm not so much. What are you one of our viewers think? Is that a good way to spend your time as a machinima filmmaker? You can contact us at talk at Completelymachinima.com and let us know.

Phil Rice 58:22
Absolutely. And speaking of adaptations, oh. My final pick is a live action, satirical adaptation of Red Dead Redemption 2. Wow. Called well, it's that they did a bunch of shorts in this theme, and then put them together in this video, which is kind of an omnibus or the suit a supercut as they call it. If you've ever played Red Dead Redemption 2 or even if you haven't, you if you've played it, you will completely get every joke and reference in here because it is, it is exactly that absurd. The group that made it is called Viva Le Dirt League. I believe that they're New Zealanders. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a comedy troupe and they do all sorts of stuff. A lot of the content is gaming related, actually, where I stumbled upon them in the first time was they did a they do a series of videos that supposedly take place in a computer store, most notably with a computer repair desk. And as a guy in that line of work, I found those videos just super funny and then it turns out what do you know people who spend a lot of time around computers are also gamers. So I didn't didn't never never occurred to me that that would be the case but yeah, I so they do a lot of gaming related funny videos and the Red Dead ones just just absolutely cracked me That's my closing recommendation.

Tracy Harwood 1:00:02
I actually thought they were farmers because like they got on very well with those animals I thought, yeah. Brilliantly observed. I loved it

Damien Valentine 1:00:19
videos for a while I just got knocked out and they were very entertaining. Yes. Especially the gaming the fancy d&d, the role

Phil Rice 1:00:27
playing game once they do, yes, yes. Very good. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 1:00:30
Yeah, I thought it was very witty and the absurd situations that they found themselves in were almost like Beckett watching Beckett. And one scene where he kept doing the Quick Draw. He couldn't stop or was very, very funny. And I also want to praise you, Phil for taking so much time and your deep research to find this film. That's not really a machinima film, but it's a film and, and you know, you've managed to, to pick a film. So thank you for that Phil.

Tracy Harwood 1:01:06
Now now, guys. Well, on that note, I think unfortunately, that is it for this episode. We've got plenty more films we can tell you about but not today. We hope you've enjoyed the coverage of the films this month. Don't forget, you can give us some feedback. Be great to hear what you thought in response to Ricky's question there. And you can contact us on all the usual social channels, or directly on the addresses that you can find on our website Completelymachinima.com. If you've got a film you'd like us to consider don't forget to send us the links.

Ricky Grove 1:01:44
Right. And remember, we have a new YouTube channel. We'll be doing versions of this podcast with the video. So keep your eyes open for that if you'd like to look at the video.

Tracy Harwood 1:01:56
Thanks for listening and look forward to seeing you next time.

Ricky Grove 1:01:57
Thanks everyone, bye.