Ricky Grove 00:10
Welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima Podcast. I'm smiling because I'm still laughing at Phil's pick last week for the Half Life 2 HEV Suit by Zapper770. Yeah. Anyway, we're here with Tracy's pick this week Still Here: A chilling dystopian tale of world devastated by climate crisis and wealth inequality by Film Shortage, directed by Guido Ekker. We're up by the way, where we're here with myself, Ricky, and Tracy and Damien and Phil Rice. So Tracy, tell us a little bit about your chick your pick, and why you chose it.

Tracy Harwood 00:51
Absolutely. Sure. Okay, so it's by Guido Ekker, and it's on the film, the Film Shortage channel. Okay, and which I want to sort of highlight that in particular, let me just talk a little bit about Ekker first of all. Ekker is a director and a VFX supervisor at the panics, which is an Amsterdam based studio working on film production for advertising, broadcast, retail and music industries. The studio lists 3d animation as an area of special specialism as well as live action. And Ekker says he had particularly wanted to tell new stories, using emergent technologies, which he sort of says helping keeps up with the fast, fast moving pace of the of the current technical landscape of film. And I understand that this particular film was originally conceived as a live action short, but due to the pandemic was instead created fully with virtual tools, which include, as I understand it, Blender, and also Kitbash3D, I think, I'm not too sure on exactly how it's been made. But the reason I picked it wasn't, wasn't just because it's an interesting film. It's also be because it deals with a really emotive and currently highly politicised topic in quite a creative way. And the other reason is because of the method of distribution that he's selected for it, which is through the Film Shortage channel on YouTube. Now, I think these two points are actually connected, if you'll bear with me a bit. So I think what he's trying to do here is give himself greater viewing numbers for the film rather than a sort of a traditional film distribution strategy that he might have adopted as a as a, as a kind of a director. But, but also, when I looked at his profile, he's actually not active as a director on YouTube himself. And more importantly, the studio that he works for, which is also attributed in, in this in this film, as part of the production side of things, is primarily concerned with developing major brand marketing materials. So he probably doesn't want to lay the politics on too thickly given that marketing is all about consumption, which is hardly sustainable over over on his sort of studio's main channel, which appears basically to be on Vimeo. Now to the film, so it's a why that's relevant. So the film itself is about a man apparently wandering around this kind of dystopian landscape in which this kind of wealthy elite control access to the surviving remnants of nature. In fact, we kind of discover that he's an informant, and his role is to rat on people growing their own plants. So he's led basically an armed force to this kind of hidden environment, where resistance fighters are growing plants, and he's using his ability to gain access, which results in this kind of den of iniquity being destroyed by the armed forces for which he then receives an appropriate reward. And whereas whereas I think, currently in our our world that might be representative of say, you know, how you might close down a meth lab or a cannabis farm. In this world, it's a place where plants are being grown simply for their oxygen presumably so that you know, anyone can be anyone in the resistance force can be given access to these sorts of goods. So what I think's going on here is it's kind of interesting tension throughout this film between the this kind of class based system of access this kind of green agenda, and the language of bias that we see in our current everyday media, and this guy's voice in the in the film is, is clearly a black person. And the images that you're seeing are those of those sort of accessing the plants. ordinarily, if you like, are clearly white, insofar as we can tell, and the police in this film are oppressive thugs. And the messages about the rate of extinction of the planet's natural environment is really avert. In fact, the whole short basically ends up being a call to action, as it states, the world's wealthiest countries should change their stance for the interests of the planet. And furthermore, Ekker describes his inspiration for the film as being his experience of watching the news, travelling and basically David Attenborough documentaries. He says, what he's tried to portray is the generational differences in views about global warming, where young people see a future of being consumed in toxic clouds and the widening wealth gap in societies as the climate crisis bites where the elite have found a way to live in the poor simply survive. So I think unusually, a film with a deeper message, using some quite stereotypical tropes to achieve it, and clearly, from a professional crew, that almost seemed to want to distance distance themselves from it in some way. Having said that, overall, beyond the message, I thought it was pretty well made, I thought it was, I thought it was, you know, well edited more heavy, I love the darkness to it, the atmosphere I really enjoyed. I thought the way that the main characters breathing was driving the storytelling device was was was very good. I also thought that the glow of colour representing the natural entity was, was a really interesting way to do it. And that kind of representation of a plant in a birdcage. Also quite an interesting way of sort of exploring the, the concepts in the film, I thought the voice acting was really good. I really liked the fight scene at the end. And, you know, gotta say it did actually deliver a more serious message, but in a very creative way. I'd like to come back to that point when you've had all your say on it. But what did you guys think?

Damien Valentine 07:32
I thought it was very effective at making its points, because he obviously has that climate change is a big problem. And he was pointing out the people he sees responsible for it as being the wealthy elite in their businesses, and the governments and all of that, who aren't taking it quite as seriously as they should be. And I think he's projecting what he sees happening in, you know, a century or so or maybe the sooner of what happens, if nothing changes, because those very same people, or at least their descendants, or successes, or whatever, we'll be doing exactly what they're doing in this film, they'll be controlling everything, and everyone else will just have to make do with whatever they can get. And you've got this black and white world that represents the devastation caused by climate change. And you only get a glimpse of colour around the last remaining remnants of nature, which is the trees, you get to see through a window, there's some guy in a desk, and he's just wearing normal clothes, I'm gonna make the point that everyone outside or anywhere doesn't, because obviously, that that environment has been so badly damaged, you have to wear suits of environment suits and a helmet to breathe. So you see a guy in a window is the only person you see not wearing any kind of protection gear, sat at a desk, he's wearing a business suit, and he's got some trees behind him. And that's the only other colours in he's obviously representing sort of wealthy elite who have access to he can. He lives in a way of life that he can just sit in a room with all these trees around him where anyone else is lucky to have even a tiny little tweak basically in a in a in a jar, which is that would be considered wealth for most people. And you've got this guy in this, that kind of lifestyle, and I think he's told this story and you're right, he does have a point at the end where he says this is a call to action to try and things need to change so we don't have this fate. My perspective is if the world was that bad that we wouldn't be anyone that's alive at all. But obviously that is not an effective story for the rest.

Ricky Grove 09:50
Be pretty grim. Yes. Everybody's dead. No story. Thank you.

Damien Valentine 09:56
I'll do that sometime. But yeah, you He's trying to convey that this is something that could happen if we don't change things. And that's the whole focus of the film. He doesn't know we are the graphics are stunning. The black and white style works really well to portray this bleak world. And I really liked how you got smoke in the background and shots of the sky, and it's not any way you really want to live. And he makes that decision he tells that shows the world where it's like, very well. So I put it's an excellent film. And I'm glad you chose Tracy, I'd say it's probably my favourite at the moment because I don't want to pick my own. That's my thoughts on it.

Phil Rice 10:39
All right, so this is the territory of science fiction, isn't it? You know, this is it's to extrapolate out what may happen in the future, based on certain parameters, you know, it's, it's what science fiction is best at. Visually, like, as far as a film goes, and visually sound, the acting, I don't have any criticism at all, it's, it's just wonderfully executed. Not a huge fan of preachy even on important subjects like this, and I feel like some of the some of the narration a little bit, too on the nose, if you will, you know, we had a chance to do something, and we did nothing. So we deserve it's just like, okay, man, you know, the film was already saying that, like it properly crafted, the film could have said that without it being some guy pointing a finger at you should have done something, you know. So I don't know, that kind of turns me off generally I think. I think there's a lot of that even in David Attenborough documentaries nowadays, it's like seems like everything you flip on is somebody you should do something. But the film was crafted wonderfully well, other than that, and it is an important topic. And you know, this, I think, visually, and even the whole sci fi thing that they've set up with, with, you know, oxygen being a commodity now. And if you think about when, when people are in an oxygen deprived environment, even factoring out the suits, they're going to be weaker, as a populace. Right, so easier to control. So it really, it's an effective imagery, that that would be something that's held back, we've seen it done in some Hollywood films, where water is the thing and this takes it even further. It's no, it's clean air is the the controlled, monetized commodity, but just wonderful stuff. They're wonderful metaphors and all that. And it just if it weren't for the narration, just being a little bit overbearing. It's not that what he was saying that I thought, no, you're wrong, it's that you could have said that with the film. Without the narration, I feel like how exactly well, that's another story. So I think, other than that, my only criticism to film isn't really of the film, it's more of the call to action. Because it's so vague, you know, to if you're going to deliver a call to action, be specific, you know, I think that that's more effective than just saying something has to change. You know, we got to do things to nations of the world, you need to do better. What does that mean? You know, that's what leaders of nations and political parties and everybody is, is really arguing about? It's not whether or not something should be done. It's what, what do we do? And he doesn't really even attempt to answer that here. Maybe it's just more than the scope of what a short film can do. But I would have been intrigued if he had a specific idea to contribute to the conversation instead of just no more this so but that's not really a criticism of the film that and that's that's I don't want to wade into politics at all. It's it's distasteful to me and to our viewers to I'm sure so but just generally speaking, all that build up in this world and just okay, I'm sold man this this looks like it sucks. So what do we do something else? Not enough. So I don't know. I'm not trying to be flippant. But that's that's that's that's a critique of the messaging not not the film so just wonderfully crafted. I mean, I haven't seen a film with a look quite like this. Not just in the world of, you know, 3d animation and machinima, but even in Hollywood films that are dystopian and stuff, this is very unique looking and I want to say noir, but it's, there's nothing about the film that's really necessarily noir, but the look of it is the visual that stark, black and white and you like, like you guys have all mentioned that the, the way that that lets the colour when it's present really raise to the foreground is just wonderful artistry. Just wonderfully done. So yeah, it's it's good. The narrator I think. I'm not perfect with accents, but I think it's like Jamaican, sounding. And yeah, definitely sounded like it was a African American, or, you know, a black actor. I guess African Americans. You got two people on the vodcasts from the UK, and I'm gonna say African Americans. But yeah, it's I think the subtlety with which Tracy you call attention to it? There's a subtle race message that's never articulated. Yeah. I would love to see some of the other messages of this movie done that artfully I think it's more effective, you know, what I'm saying that the way that they handled race in this and the, the, the distrust of law enforcement that these are, like you said, they're hot topics, but he doesn't really ever point a finger at it and put on the nose. You know, it's, and I felt like those messages were stronger as a result, so I would have liked to see more of that. Because when he executed that, when the filmmaker executed that he did it so well. Yeah, like really, really good. You know, it left you thinking about those things. And nobody ever said it. That's amazing. That's what film is good at. So anyway, that's my thoughts.

Ricky Grove 17:00
I'm you. Looking at my notes here, you covered three quarters of what I was gonna say I run along with you. Whenever a film or a play or a story or a poem becomes polemical I run screaming to the exits. Because it's just my personal choice I, I don't like to be preached at, I would rather be in a position to draw my own conclusions from the subtlety or the story. It's when the polemic message becomes more important than the actual story you're telling. And I, although I didn't think of it, I caught that racial issue. And you're absolutely right, had the rest of the film, uh, used to show us what racism and exceptionalism and class stratification rather than telling us that this is the case, and the fault lies in the narration. If you got rid of most of the narration and let the story play itself, I think you would have drawn those conclusions. Like for example, I remember a shot. And you're right, the Tracy the look and feel the look is just beautiful. It's a wonderful, dour 1984 kind of look to it. That is just very unique. And very, it's

Phil Rice 18:29
a great comparison.

Ricky Grove 18:30
Yeah. Very effective. Very, very moody, very emotional response to it. And then suddenly, this narration that comes on just says you see, they're all there with their stuff, their rich air, and I've done we already see that, in fact, there was a scene in which he crosses in front of a, an area where there was an elevated park with walls, and there was a rich person dining in it. Just that visual image, you

Phil Rice 19:00
need to say nothing. Yeah, that to say it was way more powerful the statement

Ricky Grove 19:04
Exactly. So the the clue as to why they chose to go this way is in the title of the film. The subtitle is a chilling dystopian tale of worlds devastated by climate crisis and wealth inequality. Why say that? That's what the you know what

Phil Rice 19:27
I mean? So as if we wouldn't get that.

Ricky Grove 19:30
Yeah, exactly. That they have to tell us. And then the source of my irritation with that is it it assumes you don't already know that. It assumes you don't already feel that way about it. So it's got to teach you about these issues. And I think that makes less than the film. It becomes a film that is has a gorgeous wrapping like a package and just beautifully wrapped in inside as a generic present. Because they don't come up with specific things to do in. So I was really bothered by that and it kept me the call to action. Again, you're right, it wasn't detailed enough. If you're going to make a movie in which the message is more important than the story, then you better have a good message. Because it's a message that's on everybody's minds today. So it's not as if people haven't thought about it. But when you make the final message ambiguous and generalised, you just throw your hands up in the air, like what I did at the end of the film. It's a cut down this, this movie has so much potential and has so much pot possible that and why mess it up with a heavy hand and polemic approach of all things. So as frustrated as I was, I still admired much of the craft. And how it looked. It was very impressive. I almost wanted to re edit the film myself and ration out, and then watch it and see what it would be

Damien Valentine 21:09
like Blade Runner diversity without the narration. Is that diverse? Yes.

Ricky Grove 21:13
Yeah, that's the best one. But anyway, I still think it was a very good choice, especially a marvellous contrast to the other films that we have shown this month. And I think there's lots to say, that's very positive about the film.

Phil Rice 21:29
Yeah, absolutely. I want I didn't really talk about the story. So I just want to make a quick comment on that. I thought this, I was so caught up in in some distractions of the stuff I talked about that I noticed the narration and kind of feeling reached out and stuff that the the story twist, really caught me off guard, like, when it was revealed what was really going on. I liked that that was like really well done. It's like it like there was nothing that telegraphed that, that that's what the main actors intent. main character's intent was, until we were right upon it. It's like, oh, wow, that's what Whoa, that was really nicely done. And I would love to experience that. That, you know, without the preach, without the preach, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 22:24
I completely I honestly, I, I completely agree with both of you. But what I was gonna say to you, all of you, in fact, what I was gonna say to you as the, you know, the your point about the call to action? I would do you remember Alex Chan's film French Democracy? Because this kind of got me thinking about what are the modern day political films that we're going to see being made with machinima? This to me is it there, the call to action surely has to be what other people do with something like this. And I agree, you know, I think you can take out all of that narration, you would still get the sense of a really powerful set of imagery that's that you call this kind of speculative future, it's kind of positioned as a near future with a, with a kind of a warning message. It's for others to react to what that message is. And I think the creative ideas in this kind of political thing not, you know, notwithstanding the fact that they blew it a little bit by preaching out you, this this kind of cease and desist type. message is, is not as good as a creative execution, like the visuals that we saw in this at all. And it kind of made me think, is this the kind of virtual extinction rebellion type content that we're going to see coming through? Now? I don't know. These are these to me that this this type of film is, is the kind of future of activist content creation, subliminal? Well, this was this was overt, more subliminal type messaging I can well foresee is the type of content that comes through. And it was an Alex Chan that actually made his film a political film, it was it was others that turned it into a political message around him. And I wonder if this is the sort of thing that this might be except for these, the fact that these guys have got advertising and marketing chops primarily. have, you know, deliberately forced the message through by over egging it basically.

Phil Rice 24:42
Well, I think, like, it turns out that film description, I do wonder, like, did somebody else write that? But the fact that it's so heavily embedded in the film itself, this clearly is not an external message at all. It's, it's, it's, it's in your face. And yeah, there's there. I think we are going to see more content like this, I think largely because this is not an this is not a simple issue. Present, that the issues that lead to this futuristic world that he's portraying are not simple. They don't have simple solutions. So as much as I'm critical about them not being more specific, with a call to action, it's also a matter of, well, nobody really knows what to do. Not really, we're talking about global scale. And even the people that have the power to make stuff happen on a global scale, they don't know what to do. They don't really know everyone's still kind of guessing there's this general sense of, you know, we'll throw this stuff in a different bin, that'll that'll fix it. No, no. And we've gotten ourselves into way bigger mess than that. So I'm sympathetic with the ambiguity of the call to action, because I don't have the answer, either. You know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't know what to put there. But nobody does. So yeah, it does, there still needs to be attention called to, hey, this threats here, and it's real. And I get that. But I think that may be why. Another reason why it just would have been more effective without the preaching, because there's if there's anything worse than being preached as being preached by somebody who doesn't know what to do, you know, I'm gonna tell you to do something. You know, there's so

Damien Valentine 26:37
there's a TV show called The Orville, and it starts off, it's like a Star Trek parody. And it's Seth MacFarlane, I don't necessarily find him. Is that funny. But then it very quickly evolved into the show where they're not afraid to ask tough questions about society and episode three, they go straight into trans rights. And they present it in a way that the writer of the TV show know this is an important subject. But they also know they're not smart enough to solve it. They just want people to think about it. And so they'll tell a story around whatever the issue is, and they have all kinds of things throughout the series. But they don't always answer it in a way. So like Star Trek, the producers of the show have the very strict rules that you can ask tough questions, but you must always have an answer to it. And that means that they don't cover some issues, because there are no answers to it yet, because no one knows of it. And

Ricky Grove 27:35
television format, they can't expand on the complexities of the issue.

Damien Valentine 27:40
Yeah. But I think The Orville works in a way that I know we're going away from the film we're talking about, but they, they know that they can't solve it. So they'll make people think about it. And so this is something that needs to be solved. And the characters notice something they need to work on. But they don't have the answers yet. And I think that's a good way to do it. So maybe that's something that would work in any kind of film that is raising issue, like climate change, okay? The filmmaker may not have the answers to it. But do it in a way that gets people thinking about it. Because someone watching it may think, well, actually, if we do this, then that would maybe make things a bit better. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 28:19
Well, it's still an active theme in science fiction. I'm reading a science fiction novel that was just published called Infinity Gate by M R Carey that has the same background, a dystopian future, a scientist who's working on a very important project, and they become so narrow focus, that everything is falling apart around them, the whole environment is falling apart. And yet, they never there's no polemical message in it. It's not as if the lead character is saying and the Russia did this. And they've caused this problem, you know, it's not analysed, it is just observing it, that that's what's happening, leaving the audience or the reader to make their own conclusions. So it's still a very that theme in science fiction, still very present and I agree with you, Trish, I think we're going to see more of that.

Phil Rice 29:13
And I think that's good, too. I mean, if there's anything that we should be doing, about a problem that we don't know, the solution to, it's thinking more about it. So, yeah, any anything that's going to keep us thinking about it, because that's ultimately going to be where the solution comes from, is thinking about it and talking about it. Because I'm not going to think of everything that you will, you know, I mean, that's, I don't know, some of Roddenberry's stuff in Star Trek was it kind of went a little bit on the preachy side, but I think his best stuff was where they were more subtle with it more artful with it, just bringing it up to get people to think about it. I mean, some of the influence that Star Trek had on, on attitudes about race, it still has not been fully understood. It's amazing how progressive he was, without just barely pushing it to where, you know, because people weren't ready to be liberal minded about those things in the 60s, they just weren't, you know, and I feel like he contributed to that conversation in a helpful way. Yeah, that that stuff needs to happen, for sure. So

Tracy Harwood 30:27
Thanks, great comments. Really enjoyed that. Thank you.

Ricky Grove 30:29
Thank you. Great pick. I want to say again, I'm so happy to be in this podcast, because we all come up with the most interesting and unusual films that produce lots of debate and questing and in thoughtful responses and ideas about them. It's what keeps me coming back to the show each month. So thank you for your picks. To close out if you have a comment, or you disagree, we think I'm a fool for not enjoying being preached out in my face, send a message to talk at Competely Machinima.com We also have very good show notes that Tracy puts together at our main website Completely Machinima.com. Well, that's it for May. Thank you. We'll have a whole new slate of stuff next month, and possibly in the future, a special project that it's going to be mysterious. And we're going to say an unnamed benefactor may be doing something that's quite interesting and unique for machinima and machinima history, history. So that's it for our show. Thank you, Tracy, Damien and Phil. I'm Ricky Grove and we'll see you next month.