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

Phil Rice 00:19
Hello everyone and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima, real time filmmaking and related technologies. I'm one of your hosts Phil Rice and with me is Tracy Harwood and Ricky Grove and Damien, Damien Valentine.

Damien Valentine 00:43
I don't think I can stop Ricky just. Hi, everyone.

Phil Rice 00:48
So we're here to talk about films, which I think our favourite favourite point of the month. Yes. So I'm going to kick things off with one that we kind of made some passing references to in our News episode earlier this month. And that is, this is a video showing video game maps size comparison. And there was something in the discussion of one of the episodes from last month that got me thinking about this. And I just went hunting YouTube for something to show what the, you know, we were talking about Red Dead Redemption Two, and, you know, these games and just these bigger and bigger worlds and how remarkable they are. And so, I was, I just figured everything's on YouTube now. So somebody must have put together something, to compare them side by side. And I found one where, you know, nice visual representation of these different game worlds. And it's astounding. Now, the one in there that I figured was going to be in there, but it's kind of a cheat, and that is, Minecraft is in there. Minecraft, if you don't know, is a procedurally generated world that technically has no limit. I mean, you keep walking in one direction, it's going to keep creating world. So to rank that one in size is a little iffy. But there's some other entries in there that are just fascinating. And Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption Two while impressive is far from the largest world out there. And this was a 2021 video. So there, it doesn't include Elden Ring, I don't believe and Elden ring is quite sizable itself. So very good. There's, there's, I just found it fascinating. Because it starts fairly small. works its way up in order of size and pretty impressive. What did what did you guys think we really needed jumped out to you in particular?

Ricky Grove 02:50
Loved it. I just thought it was really well done. What did they make it in? It looked like something like a 3d Studio Max. Kind of

Phil Rice 02:57
yeah, probably something along those lines.

Ricky Grove 03:01
But he has a standard render, that it's really nicely done. The it will move from one map and then the map will unfold and show you the size of the map. And then it'll say what it is. And it was fascinating to look at the progression from two metres or two kilometres, all the way up to this sort of surprise ending. Yeah, because about halfway through, you start going well, is this really going to go anywhere? Oh Boy, it sure does. finally get to the last two, you're just like, your mind reminds me of a short film called Powers of Seven. Did you ever see that? Well, I think so. They started in close on a person on a beach with a towel. And then they they pull back and pull back and pull back and pull back all the way into the solar system. I have a minute. And it reminded me of that in some ways. But anyway, the the effect is, is great because you learn stuff. But also you you're you sort of catch some of the maps and you've all played that map. That's really interesting. I didn't have any idea. And then I'm playing a lot of Elden Ring now. So I was thinking well, where does that fit into the size of it even though it's not machinima. Well, I thought it was very entertaining and very informative. And that's not an easy thing to do is to make an informative video entertaining at the same time. It was great. I really enjoyed it. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 04:27
I missed it. I really enjoyed it as well. I mean, some of those as game maps, they're truly astonishing scale. I know. I mean, I couldn't get my head around that. That reminded me vaguely you know, when you were just talking about some Power of Seven. I was thinking Carl Sagan little blue dot kind of thing, you know, sort of zooming out from earth Yeah, absolutely incredible sort of size of it. But then it kind of got me thinking a little bit about procedurally generated worlds and where this where these tech kind of technologies have evolved. And I thought what was what was interesting with the way that that presentation unfolded was really what it's what it's a commentary on is not just the scale, but also the advancement of the technologies behind it over the last few years. Because that's really what you're looking at, you know, the the sort of the jumps in the years that these games were released, right. And the contemporary ones being, you know, kind of massive scale because the technology, the procedurally generating technologies, AI and whatnot, allows them to continue on ad infinitum. And I guess, really, what you're looking at isn't really now, massive processing power, but but the advancement in the way that AI generates the content in itself. So that's really where the, you know, the next level of this sort of stuff will come from it's, it's the, it's the variations of it, that will will be advanced, not necessarily the scale of it, because it was thinking from a game point of view, how much of a sized map, do you actually need to play a game? Right? How much are you actually going to interact with and socialise in or how much of it you're actually going to use the filmmaking

Ricky Grove 06:31
up front surprised, you know, one of the things about playing Elden Ring now, and I'm, what 140 hours into it, it's, it's, it's the first game, and over a decade, it's actually made it hard for me to get my other work done. Because I keep thinking in terms of alternate worlds, I did this for 10 minutes, then I can go back and play Elden Ring for an hour, you know, and I may interacting with the Elden Ring community, especially if YouTube gamers to get guides because the the game is very difficult. And one of the things that they talk about is that the the game construction from software has been making a series of games like this has really succeeded and making it a game of exploration. If you want to follow the main track, you could probably do it and get it done in 40 hours, 50 hours, you know, although I have to say there's some speed runs in which people have done it 20 minutes. It's like mind boggles. But what they really encourage, and then they reward is exploration. So as you're riding around on this horse, you have this really cool horse, you find something that looks interesting, and you go explore it. And then they give you benefits for exploring that world in terms of new weapons, new powers, new spells, new money to be able to buy other things, plants to be able to combine and stuff. So I think the pleasure of the open world is pure exploration. In many ways, I think of it as a kind of reading experience where you were the author takes you away, like a fantasy novel, where he takes you all around different. I mean, if that cut it down, that 600 page novel would be 100 pages if they just did the basic plot. But you really go all sorts of different places in different worlds, to experience the environments to see the different characters. One thing I'm going to do after I finish the run of this, which I can't believe I'm actually going to, I have a feeling I'm gonna actually finish it a Dark Souls game I've never been able to in the past, is that I'm going to do the second run through as a virtual photographer, because the photography mod allows you to turn off your threat to other characters. So you can go through the world without any of the monsters attacking you or anything, and just take photographs. And that's what I want to do and film sections, you know. So once I know where everything is, I'm going to be able to go and say, Oh, well, I wanted to do a series of photographs on graveyards. You know where I'm going to take these moody pictures because you can adjust the daytime lights and everything and then take these pictures of graveyards. I think that's another factor in exploration of open world games is the ability to make art pieces of the mind not just machinima, but virtual photography is interesting as well. So that's my comment on that.

Damien Valentine 09:38
I watched the video and still have quite a few games on there that I didn't realise had such big game worlds in them. So that was quite a surprise to discover that and it's interesting to watch how it all progressed and then of course, as you get towards the end, and especially the last two game reveals I know, I spent a lot of time playing one of those last few games. Would it be a spoiler to say what it is?

Ricky Grove 10:10
Yeah, I think it would be. Okay. No, I wouldn't. What

Damien Valentine 10:14
is this guy? It's the second largest game, well, I see that so that when you watch it, you see it. And I just looked up to see how much of that game world has been explored. It's an online game. So this is explored by every player. It's all been combined into one so far 0.05% of the game. Oh, it's been released seven years ago to get that far, well, I don't think the game will still be around long enough for the whole game world to be, you know, for everyone to see everything. And I've spent a lot of time exploring in that in that game. And I went just a short distance in the scale of the game. But it still took me a week of game time to actually make that journey. Wow. So

Tracy Harwood 11:03
you're never going to conquer that if you don't have enough hours left? Yeah,

Phil Rice 11:10
one of the things that got me thinking about was, you know, a lot of the games represented in this video are basically hand tooled open worlds, if I can use that expression. So thinking about Red Dead Redemption Two, for example, you know, all these locations you can go to and characters you can interact with, but that was all it was created and put there for you to explore around in. There's nothing procedurally generated about that world, per se. All the terrain is defined all the characters, there's some random elements, for sure, but it's within some confines. And you see how much how many actors. How many lines of voiceover that they had to pre record for that, and all of that. And it's like, you know, that's, that's only scalable to a certain degree, because these things cost a lot, you know, to hire good quality actors to recite these lines, and, and all the models and things are hand created. So where it's really interesting is is this AI stuff that we've been talking about. That entering into it, you know, Minecraft that we mentioned is procedurally generated world, there's at least one other game in there in the in the upper tier of the size ones that's also got some procedurally generated things, too. But you can't procedurally generate those hand tools, handcrafted experience when John Marsden runs into this particular character that's in trouble needs help with this or whatever. Not convincingly. You can't just proceed to procedurally generate that yet. And I think if if we're talking about a procedurally generated story, that to me is where the next frontier is where and probably Where's what was the game company? Tracy, we talked about a few episodes ago that Quantic Dream is that yes, quantec Quantic Dream. And basically, the the, the impression that they've given with this new Star Wars universe game that they're working on is essentially a open ended story type of thing. That's, to me, that's the most interesting part of it is, you know, I mean, Ricky you're, we've been discussing our love of books and novels and stuff like that, it's really hard for me to imagine an AI being capable of generating something anywhere near as engaging as the kind of characterizations that can happen in written literature by a person, you know. And, frankly, there's, there's tools that are out there now that are being promoted, marketed where this article was written by a by an AI, did you know that you know, and it's marketing text, whatever? You can, you can still tell.

Tracy Harwood 13:54
I think it'll be a real challenge.

Phil Rice 13:56
Okay, so it passes grammerly. But you can still tell, you know, soltera, there's no, you know, it just so, but it's impressive what they can do so, yeah, I don't know, that's, that's gonna be an interesting challenge, because it's, it could just be the limitations in my mind, but it's really hard for me to imagine injecting that well, it's creativity, isn't it? The creativity? Yeah, from an AI. We're seeing AI is used in art Tracy, you know, and it has the look of creativity. But I feel like story and character is a very different palette to work with, than colour and shape or sound or music, like the some of the AI generated music that we've seen and heard out there. The story there's such complexity to to character development to story. I probably sound really dumb to doubt the capabilities of that given what's happened in the past few years, but I'm reserving reserving judgement on it.

Tracy Harwood 15:12
I think when you've got assets that are procedurally generated, one of the biggest challenges is going to be doing what Ricky just says he's going to do, which is go back through the game, having already played the game, when it's learned about how you play that game, and then try to find the places that you were in before, because it won't take you there. It will take you somewhere else, depending on how advanced you have got in your run through the game.

Damien Valentine 15:43
Might be the same, but the way the trees and the encounters. Yeah.

Phil Rice 15:47
Okay. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 15:48
I think that's going to be your biggest challenge with machinima creators, then trying to recreate what they have found in that environment.

Ricky Grove 15:59
Go ahead, go ahead with you know what the AI programmer would say to that. You just need to have a bigger database. Right? Yeah, give me an infinite database, and I'll have the AI create anything. So you want to have the human element, then put mistakes in it, put writing that has mistakes in it writing that has bad writing in the middle of it with genius writing, and then they'll they'll, they'll put that together. It's all about the database. Now, I agree with you, I'm still dubious about it. But that's what a, an AI programmer would say, give me a bigger database.

Phil Rice 16:38
Well, and bring coming back to Minecraft again, they've come up with an interesting way to address that Tracy, and that is the, the algorithm that generates these literally infinite number of worlds for Minecraft has a seed. A seed, as you know, it's a string of text, and you put that seed in and regenerate the world in the same version of the game, it will be identical. The entire world the entire, you know, however, however big they are just gigantic, it'll be exactly the same. That's amazing. So maybe maybe something like that, even for, let's say it's an Elden Ring like game where it's much more story based, and that kind of thing, that when Ricky starts a single player experience there, it generates a seed. So if he wants to go back and play it, and have the same set of encounters, he could put that seed in, when he starts a new single player game, if he doesn't, it's going to generate a new random seed. And maybe certain elements of the plot are fixed, but everything else is random. Same thing with the terrain. So yeah, I think there's some possibilities there. But getting it to, to craft that story and character stuff. That seems to me like it would be particularly hard. But then again, what they've done so far is, is really, really hard for someone like me so

Ricky Grove 18:01
much, you know, AI has had such a dramatic impact and all sorts of different fields unrelated to entertainment. And so much money and profit has been made from them, that as soon as you get all that money, you put it back into development, and you get hundreds, if not hundreds of 1000s of people researching and pushing it like at Nvidia than an areas we don't even know about, say American military, secret service, things that that isn't aren't being published. Yet. You're gonna have breakthroughs. like there's no tomorrow, you know, yeah, that's true. All the profit and all of the effort being put in to making it a success. And getting I think you're right or techniques.

Phil Rice 18:48
Now Tracy your film to me is a interesting kind of counterpoint here because the thing that struck me the most about it was the wonderful characterizations. So yeah, why don't you tell us about your pick?

Tracy Harwood 19:05
Absolutely. Yeah. Now this is called Blu by Teflon Sega Meta Saga, Episode Four. It's actually shot in Unreal Engine 4.27. Yeah, well, four point 27 point, whatever it was 7.2 point whatever I don't know do Sure. But engine four anyway, by Xanadu, otherwise known as Corey Strassberger and it was released on the 9th of March this year. Now, you may recall we first saw Xanadu's work a year ago with baby outlaw spoof music video which we also showcased in our live stream, okay, in November as one as the highlights of last year. Now, this is obviously the fourth episode in this Blu character series and actually, I also recommend the earlier episodes too, because it's a you know, it's episodic. And is, is closely linked. So you can't really pick up too much about what's going on in this episode 4 unless you've seen the other episodes. But I have to say this is 20 minutes long, and the others are a couple of minutes and then four or five minutes and seven or eight or nine minutes. So it's kind of building up a little bit. He's clearly getting very excited about his series. In, in this Blu character series, so I think what you've got here is a lot of contemporary culture in jokes to do with Unreal Engine, to do with meta humans. And things like for example, you know, the metaverse, Musk and his missions to Mars. Alexa, IKEA. I have to say this, this guy for me, this Xanadu, he's got one of the most incredibly creative and vivid imaginations I had seen for quite some time for me, and this is probably one of the most original series I've seen in machinima in recent years. But but also what I like about it, and it's not necessarily in this episode, but in episode three for example, he made reference to some other really interesting works that we've seen in the last few months as well. Do you remember the one I think Ricky this is your pic actually called Salad Mug: Dynamo Dream by Ian Hubert's, right. He's also making reference to that as well. Anyway, by episode four Blu this character has inculcated a 2d, anime singer Teflon Sega into this story world now, this particular character emerged in 2018 and has amassed as simply astonishing viewing figures on Instagram and YouTube. But today, it hasn't actually revealed an identity. Now in 2019, Teflon Sega. The other character the pink character in this was one of the most listened to artists on SoundCloud. So actually signing this character up to Blu or Xanadu metaverse saga is a bit of a coup, I'd say. And the saga itself is really all about Blu on this epic journey to create his vision of a Metaverse and the plot is basically his record of attempts to do this through a blog from outer space. And in this particular episode, he and his sidekick attempt to meet with Teflon Sega who is describing as Blu's first Metaverse friend. And in this particular episode, what you see is him getting sidetracked by something that vaguely resembles what I can really only describe as a Jabba the Hutt type character. And this kind of epic battle with interestingly, I think lots of physics being transcended. And the story leaves us with a bit of a cliffhanger for the next episode. I thought it was really quite well done. It didn't really leave me wanting to criticise it too much, because I just really enjoyed it. And I, I'd love to hear what you guys think about it.

Damien Valentine 23:29
I also really enjoyed it. And it's the kind of thing I really enjoy. I really like the humour in it as well, especially on the Jabba the Hutt so bounty hunter character, and he was bounty hunting, not to get money but to get followers because he was live streaming, what he was doing that was so unique in sort of science fiction and sort of the bounty hunter character type. But you know, that entertain me, but the way it was made as well, with Unreal, it doesn't look like you are used to talking about other videos you've seen made in Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous and all these other sci fi games. And it doesn't look like that it looks like a real properly animated feature, even though it's similar kind of space adventure to what we've seen previously, it it really stands out and I need to go back and watch the previous episodes and I want to see what's going to happen next. It's going to be a series that I think I'm going to keep following as he recently upsets

Phil Rice 24:33
me to me to definitely. I was I was hooked instantly. It it is it has it has kind of a freshness that the feeling that it gave me was similar to the first time that I saw the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. In terms of this, this is just way out. There's no characters that seem to have anything really to do with Earth as far as I can tell it just out there, all these different creatures of races and different different looks and everything is just, it's just wonderful. And then yeah, there's a zanyness to it with the humour. I didn't really I didn't catch any fourth wall moments but self awareness. Like you mentioned, Tracy, some of those references are very, I don't know what the term is for that when when you're making references to the, you know, so those things that shouldn't technically be in that universe. They're not anachronisms. It's something along that line anyway. Yeah, I I just enjoyed it a lot. And I do I want to go back and watch the other the other episodes and it just was was well made. I mean, it certainly isn't. I don't think intended to be something deep or serious. It's just a lot of fun. And beautifully made, and very unpredictable for me, like I, I had no idea what was going to come next. And I like that. TV doesn't do that to me very often. Not only it doesn't to anybody anymore very often. So any taste of that is is a plus. Ricky, what do you think?

Ricky Grove 26:18
I'm gonna be a downer to this happy praise party. Sorry. Objectively, I understand why you all liked it. It's beautifully made. Technically, it's really great, especially textures and animation. It looks like a professional video. However, it's just not my personal style. That hipster vibe is a turn off that self conscious tripsy kind of dialogue and self aware and all those things that you guys liked. I just hate it. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't believe the story for a second. And although Tracy, you talked about it being original, it's really not. It's just a rework of the Guardians in the Galaxy scenario, with a little character constantly complaining and older guy going my, chatterbox, you know, all that stuff. It's just, it was unoriginal for me. It was obviously, a kind of parody of all of that stuff, including the music, which was just awful. It was so over, done and over. It was so orchestrated, it's the kind of it's kind of pandering to keep knock off Guardians of the Galaxy that just just annoyed the hell out of me all the way through. One of the things I it's also interesting is that it has connections to current hard sci fi tropes. In writing. There's a lot of very funny, thrown together unusual characters, and have them go on these wacky adventures in literature and literature. And those I avoid like the plague because they're just so they're just silly to me. I don't I don't buy them. I can't make that and it's probably personal. But I can't make that suspension of disbelief to get into the story. And I start and because I can't do that I blame the filmmaker for it. And then I started looking at problems and I let slimey dialogue, the stupid vocal, the lack of energy in vocal characterizations the the cliche stereotype characters, the villain, the Jabba the Hutt reference which use find appealing I find appalling you know, because it's a cliche it's a stereotype if you want to create do something new then create a new variation on that don't just recreate the thing itself but that said I understand completely why it's so popular why you guys like it and I think it's nothing that will appeal to a wide variety of people, just not me!

Phil Rice 29:18
When one other thing you guys focus on putting the flames out on that I will one other funny thing that i i found strange was so one of the plot points is he's got this you know there's all this talk about this energy drink that he's you know, been working on. And right in the middle of the video an ad comes on to YouTube for a company called Psycho Pharma. A real company Psycho Pharma, ror this energy drink that's gonna blow your mind and like I mean talking about it and all this dizziness. It was so weird like I had to look down and make sure is this really an ad? Or is this part of all that fun? And if it is just an ad? Who's the clever one behind that? Because was it the film? From what I understand filmmakers really don't get to choose what ads show up. They can choose whether or not ads show up and maybe have some indication of where and the film it breaks for but I don't think they get to pick their advertisers. Yeah, so So but then do advertisers get to pick their videos? Very specific like that? I wasn't aware that that's the case either. I always thought it was more of you choose a category perhaps or you know, you put in certain search terms and then they'll match your ad up videos on that. Whatever it was bizarre coincidence, because there's the character talking about this energy drink. It's gonna blow. Yeah. And then some guy comes on Psycho Pharma. You know, this thing is gonna blow your mind and make you it was the zaniest ad I've ever seen. And I thought it was part of the the film at first, but it wasn't.

Tracy Harwood 31:00
Yeah, I did find that the you know, the way that these longer videos are monetized so annoying ads, everything I hate about the ads? Yeah, I guess you know, when you're, when you're making stuff like this, I suppose you have to fund it in some way. Right. And clearly, you know, one of the things that Cory Strassberger is doing is also making tutorial videos. Because another thing I came across was a quite an interesting little video of him in GameSpot. Game Spot Trader, I think it was explaining what his workflow is and what his ambition is for the for the series, which I think is really quite quite interesting as well. But I guess we're never going to agree on everything.

Ricky Grove 31:52
Congratulations for deflecting my flame thrower criticism, you guys have done a really good job. But as a reminder, I hated the xxxxx thing.

Phil Rice 32:03
This is probably an awkward time to bring this up. But it's time for a quick word from our sponsor for this episode, Blu at Teflon Sega

Ricky Grove 32:22
It was rhetorical. It wasn't real, it was rhetorical.

Phil Rice 32:26
Alright, Damien, you've got a fan, fan fiction or fan made... Damien!

Damien Valentine 32:35
So we talked a lot about Star Trek Online. Last month, the whole the chips from the game have been taken into the Star Trek Picard TV series. So I started thinking what machinima has been made with Star Trek Online because it's, it's been around for a long time. And I know there's lots of creative fans out there. So I had a look. And I didn't actually find a lot. But I came across this video. And the backstory to it was the TV series Star Trek Discovery was released five years ago now. And Season One ended with a cliffhanger with the Enterprise showing up. So season two is about the Enterprise. It's Captain Pike, he was the captain of the Enterprise in the very first pilot episode of the original size, right. And obviously, they changed the Captain Kirk console. And I'm not going to explain that now. You can look that up. But he was the captain of the still the captain of the Enterprise when he shows up in discovery, he temporarily becomes the captain of Discovery. And he was very popular with the fans that he stole the show, a lot of people said, So when, when the season ended, he went back to the Enterprise. And there was a huge fan outcry saying we want more Captain Pike Do you want to see him as the captain of the Enterprise. And we weren't series about that. And this video I found was this guy had created what he thought the opening credit sequence would be of a Captain Pike TV show. And so he uses the version of the Enterprise, discovery led put into the game. And it shows him flying it around like they do in the original series and the next generation and so on. And then he's put the names of the cast members in and he's got some music in. And while the reason I chose this is because that fan campaign was actually successful. Starting this month is this series Star Trek Strange New Worlds, which is about Captain Pike as a captain of Enterprise. It is made entirely because of the fan outcry after seeing him in the show. And I don't know specifically if this particular video was seen by the studio, but it's a part of this fan campaign and I thought it's very interesting to see what the fans can do to make something like this happened, and this was a part of it. And I'm actually looking forward to comparing this video with the actual opening credits sequences are going to see in Yeah. So by the time this by the time, our listeners and viewers listening to this, the show will already be out, it starts on the fifth May. So you're gonna go and check it out for yourself. So what do you guys think?

Ricky Grove 35:24
Well, you'll have to report back to us and let us know what the comparison is.

Damien Valentine 35:28
I'll do that for next month.

Ricky Grove 35:30
I liked it, I thought it was very enjoyable was interesting. Music was a little bit generic. And I think he could have had a few more various shots than then the ship just flying by in various angles. I think that becomes a little bit generic. But I think the overall feel of it, the look of it. It was pleasant. It was enjoyable. I thought it made me want to find out more of about It. It was good.

Tracy Harwood 36:00
Well, you know what, I

Phil Rice 36:01
feel like it's just a big, it's just a big rip off of Guardians of the Galaxy all.

Ricky Grove 36:10
Star Trek, it's not Guardians of Galaxy.

Phil Rice 36:13
So I honestly. I'm glad that you told us the the story behind the film, because I'm not plugged into Star Trek culture at all. Really, I love the films and the original TV show. But I mean, I, I certainly am not master of that universe at all in terms of the various you know, there's so much Star Trek content, official and unofficial, that, that I don't have have much access to. So I found your story behind the film much more interesting than the film, honestly. Because yeah, there's a lot of repetition and a lot of just just kind of basic, basic shots. And actually, when I was watching it, I was thinking, oh, man, I hope there's a good story behind this, because because it just didn't really do anything for me. And now I feel like I in retrospect, appreciate it much, much more. Understanding its its context. It's a cool story.

Tracy Harwood 37:08
I had just the same response. When I first watched it, I was thinking, well, you really have to know a lot about Star Trek movies to make anything of it at all. And I didn't. Because what it is, for me, it's a film about the credits of a movie, other than the movie itself, which I actually thought was kind of intriguing. So I then did a little bit of background on it. And basically what it's doing is just floating ideas about how the film could be developed using game footage as a bit of a concept board. So maybe that's a different type of machinima than we've seen before.

Ricky Grove 37:53
Yeah, yeah. It could have been more successful if they would have cut in when they introduced the names of characters, if they would have cut in shots of those characters and action or something. Excuse me for interrupting. Yeah, no, no,

Tracy Harwood 38:06
do they exist? Or did they? Because they're in. One of the things I looked up was the timing for this. So this was released on the first of July 2019. And as far as I could tell it, Damian, y'all, y'all know, I'm sure y'all know this. It was something like eight months later, when it was announced that Pike was going to be made. And then another several months after that, before actors was signed, and then months after that, before filming started. And the question I've kind of got is because there's, you know, there's hundreds of comments on here about it, is do you think this was really made by the people that were positing the idea of should we make a Star Trek like, as a way of thinking about you know, whether or not they should make it do you see this as a tool for whetting the appetite and testing the ground for new strands of stories?

Phil Rice 39:10
You know, before Damian answers that, I just like to say if they didn't do that, that's a brilliant idea. For someone else to do Yeah, you want to talk about a an amazing use for machinima is if Yeah, if you're at some, you know, movie, or movie or TV production house and you're wanting to know to kind of litmus test the fan base on something. What better way Oh, my goodness with what you can do with machinima to just floated out there, because there's all kinds of fan made content like this out there. Before the Obi Wan series existed on Disney Plus, there was all kinds of people making trailers for what it could look like. And it's, it was goofy because like some of them had like clips from Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting, which made no sense whatsoever. But it's Ewan McGregor. It's Obi Wan right, you know. So, yeah, that would be very interesting if that ended up being the case that it was an official source kind of like the king, you know, donning the Yeah, the the cape and going down on amongst the people to see what they really think type of thing.

Tracy Harwood 40:12
Market testing previz type thing. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 40:15
yeah, we Yeah, that's a really interesting idea.

Damien Valentine 40:18
In this particular case, I don't think that's what happened. Because if you go to his channel, he's got so many videos about Star Trek Online, although they might have said, well, he's a popular creator for Star Trek. Yeah, what is? Yeah. And ask him to do it. Yeah, unlikely, but it's still possible that that's something that could happen. But he has a lot of other videos where every time they release a new ship, the game he will do a video, which is more or less like this credit video where you see it's flying around, and it doesn't have the credits. And they can be a little bit too long, in my view, but I thought this one worked really well, because it was actually doing something more than just showing off a ship model. But yeah, he could have would be a good way to do this. How it could say, Well, what a great way to do a concept because the game has assets there. So we'd have to generate anything, but pretty good. And just hire a popular creator to do this test video.

Phil Rice 41:13
And someone who's already got eyes on their stuff. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 41:17
You're a big Hollywood producer. machinima can help you promote your series. Yes,

Tracy Harwood 41:24
Pre promote.

Ricky Grove 41:26
Yes.

Phil Rice 41:27
Well, if you've noticed, all of our film picks so far this month have been Guardians of the Galaxy ripoffs, and Ricky your's is no exception. Why don't you tell us all about it.

Ricky Grove 41:36
This one does the most successful job of ripping off Guardians of the Galaxy. My film choice is boy 180 degrees away from the original film. It's one reason why I like these film sessions with you guys is because the range of choices are just so fascinating because they reflect our personalities and, and we gives us so much to talk about my choice is a it's a film called, It's Just a Virtual Kiss by Juan Poyuan. And the last name is hard to, I'm not sure I'll get the pronunciation but it's Poyuan. I'm gonna say Po Yan. I found this on Vimeo. Juan has half a dozen experimental film shot and different games, this one shot in World of Warcraft. And it's a film that is very much part of the documentary tradition. If there's a specific kind of documentary film called the personal essay film, where a person will explore a theme or an idea that has particular personal resonance to them. And they'll use the documentary to find out what comes to mind is a film called Sherman's March, where it was done back in the 80s were a documentary filmmaker who has a bit of a lethario went back and traced Sherman's March at Lana march to the sea. But in each of the different cities, he visited girlfriend, a former girlfriend, and they would have these encounters which would either be very positive, or very bad. And his exploration for was using Sherman as a metaphor to find out about himself and his relationship to women. So it was it's a personal essay film, and it's something that is kind of missing in mainstream film or Netflix or, or even in machinima, I think you'll find it in Second Life quite a bit, where people will explore that kind of thing. But in general, it's not there. And what he was trying to explore is a virtual kiss that he got from a female avatar in World of Warcraft, who gave him a peck on the cheek. And he was just trying to find like that, because it was a whole mixture of things and doing it. He couldn't, he couldn't discover for his feelings and or realistic narrative. Wherever she is the characters, he sets up counter shots, realistic counter shots, he had to use a kind of experimental approach, in which he puts the camera through the heads of the character so that you see the sort of eerie inside of the characters. And that becomes a kind of metaphor for the internal nature of his feelings. It's a strange film, it's not for everybody. Um, what did you guys think of it?

Damien Valentine 44:52
I thought it was very interesting the way he is kind of this whole theme of loneliness and isolation, which I think goes very well with Tracy's news piece from last week's episode about virtual worlds using the news for social occasions. Yeah, we'll see, World of Warcraft would be part of that because an online virtual environment and so he's he's had his kiss from this other player. And he's trying to figure out how he feels about that and it ends with this, I'm not gonna say what ends, but it's just this bleak thoughts he has, and it just stops, there's no answer, yes. So uplifting, or maybe it could get better or whatever, it just stops. And that's it. And that kind of made me jump back a bit as it happens. And because I didn't expect that, and it's not as bad, maybe jump back, it's just, that's not a, it's not an easy thing to answer. And that's why he hasn't included that as an answer, because he doesn't have the answer. And I think there's a very interesting way to explore his thoughts and feelings about this subject, which is obviously something a lot of people have to have been dealing with over the last few years.

Tracy Harwood 46:02
I think, you know, from my point of view, I look, I looked this person up. And what I discovered is that he's a student at the National Taipei University of Arts in the composite media group, working in mixed media, including World of Warcraft, which I think is a really, really interesting thing, to sort of see that game world is actually included, as part of the the mixed media that he's working with. Now, Poyuan as to how I pronounced that he's using the game to create a scene about a memory, as you kind of just said, it's, it's seemingly a real memory of a virtual kiss. And the narration, I think, is really beautiful. But I, I kind of got the distinct impression of it, not as narration, but as a poem. And the visuals to me seem to seem to be his attempt to portray the connection between the mind or the spirit of the character, and what was happening to the character from a sort of third person perspective. And really, what was important in it for me then was was the perspectives, which became the central thing that he was actually trying to portray this connection between these, these perspectives, this sort of connection between the inner body and the outer body in order to demonstrate what virtual presence might be. So when I was looking at, at, you know, at who he was, Poyuan describes his work as attempting to create ways of viewing and presenting new perspectives and ways of thinking to reflect on and to question what he describes as the meta setup behind the post Internet era. I had to think, really quite hard about what that actually meant. I guess, really, that's the point of it, the fact that you have to think about it. And in the end, I think, I think I felt that the images are really what he's what he's trying to do is to present digital masks, and that the main emphasis isn't on the memory at all. But the words that that memory evoked. So so he was he was really doing this as kind of an artistic statement. And that's why to me, it was very experimental, but actually really very effective and thought provoking. Because it's really quite hard to evaluate it or understand what it's doing without actually looking more about who he is as an artist himself. And that was frustrating if you're just looking at the video, because it's not anywhere near the description of the video at all. But it's on his personal website. Fascinating. I thought really, overall, it was quite a spiritual piece. And kind of reflecting on it. I think he actually achieved what he felt set out to do as an artist, in terms of his statement of what it was he was about. So I thought it was a really intriguing selection. And thank you Ricky for sharing it with us. It was it was one of the more interesting pieces I've seen for some time. Well, thank

Ricky Grove 49:51
you for your comments on a very fascinating I hadn't thought of it in that way. Phil, what was your take

Phil Rice 49:59
the Yeah, I felt, I find that this film is it's hard to I have trouble articulating what was said to me from the film, but I feel like I was spoken to, I think spiritual is is a good term for it, Tracy that it was clear to me what was said, which is why I'm not sure how experimental it was because most experimental films, leave a guy like me going, what the hell was going on here? But I got it. Like the message wasn't ambiguous to me. And yet, I don't know if I can grasp it and articulate and pin down what was being said it was much on a much more intuitive level. And you guys have hit on all the points of it of the, you know, basically just trying to make sense of this. This experience this feeling and you know, I think that sometimes when an unexpected thing like that happens, even outside of a Metaverse context, you're left thinking, what just happened here, you know. And so on top of that, which would have happened if it had just been someone who was sitting next to at a bar, and all of a sudden, there was a kiss, and then and then they part and, you know, you can't stop thinking about and what does this mean? And what what just happened there? Really, you know, and who is she? Who am I? What is this? Now, on top of that, multiply all these layers of what that happening in a virtual space feels like? So two avatars controlled by two real world, people that maybe have never occupied the same meat space at all. All right, it just makes your head want to explode. Yeah, so yeah, what do you make of what is affection?

Ricky Grove 51:52
The meanings within the metaverse? What is it? He was pointing out? Yeah,

Phil Rice 51:56
you know, yeah. Oh, it's so I, I greatly appreciate the film because I, because it gave me that whatever it is, it's something that I feel like could be talked about for a very long time without ever really specifically pinning things down. Right. And that, to me, is good art. You know, that's,

Ricky Grove 52:17
that's the key. And I think you brought up exactly, and we don't have a lot of time to discuss it. I don't want to belabour the issue. But ambiguity is what you're talking about. Yeah, the possibility of multiple choices of meanings and things. Now that's been accepted in art, the painting arts and in music for forever, really, essentially, since the turn of the century and modernism came in, but not so much in popular media is like film, and television, which machinima tends to reflect. So the question is, why is experimental film worth exploring? Is something that machinima can do? I personally think it is, it's worth doing it. If just for variety, if just for doing something different. You know, in America culture in particular, Europe has a much more relaxed attitude towards the experiment and the sexual, but we like things to be generic, we'd like things to be predictable. We'd like that realistic, we know in law and order that they're going to do the the lawyers in the second part, you know, they don't like experiment because they don't like ambiguity, because the person watching it just wants to be entertained. And I think I accept that I in fact, I There are a lot of entertaining shows that I like to watch. But personally, I oftentimes find that experimental films, touches on things that the mainstream machinima and mainstream film can't even get close to. Things that are juxtaposed, that you just can't quite get to any other way, by experimenting with form and sound and that and well. What are your guys thoughts on basically the experimental and in film and machinima?

Tracy Harwood 54:06
Do you want me to start, please? Okay, well, I kind of went into this in a little bit of detail, as you can expect. And I kind of guess a technical definition might be that it's, it's about being it's about content that's independent, or I avant gone or creative work that kind of encompasses abstract or video art or documentary, poetry, music, whatever, performance and so on. And it's a format that challenges convention in some way that presents alternatives to traditional approaches and methods of working in a sense, therefore, I kind of came to the conclusion that surely all machinima is experimental, because it's about methods of working. Probably one of the greatest challenges, I think has always been to position machinima within other genres of creative practice. However, I think real time and performative filmmaking has found its own feet now. And in fact, the methods used in machinima are continually influencing mainstream cinema, visual effects and editing and receive hundreds of 1000s of films made using the techniques. And these are made in both in or by both indie and professional creative teams. Now, one of the things that seems to differentiate experimental from mainstream seems to have been the commercial trail. And does that still apply here with machinima? I think probably not. But I think what's interesting is that the more experimental artists are finding new ways to express themselves through the through 3d, real time rendered environments. And those pieces are increasingly being shown in contemporary art galleries just like Poyuan that we were just talking about, that's an art gallery piece, I would suggest. And they're being shown in galleries across the world, and also being sold online in virtual markets. And now maybe what we've got here is that machinima has become inverted in the commercial sense. It's a commercial model, which you're going to question? I know, you're going to question why I say that, but I think it's become inverted. And as to the experimental methodology, well, it's something that's continually being reinvented, as new tool sets and pipelines are being developed. And virtually every month here on the show, we talk about something new that's come out. You know, that that's kind of different, that can change the way that we can create stuff. And so so maybe experimental, isn't really so much about the method is about the outcome per se, which I think is really what Ricky's point was. So quite simply, that notion of what experimental is, is probably most of all about community identity and personal preference. And community, I mean, in the sense of how readily that work is accepted or situated within a body of work, and personal preference, in the sense of how familiar are you with what it is you see, to Phil's point. Now, I go back, and reflected a little bit on the experimental category that we put in the 2007, European Machinima Film Festival. And, you know, at the time, we really had no other way to think about some of the pieces that were emerging. And we needed to think about how we were going to support their submission to that festival. We had something like 127 submissions to the festival. And these experimental films that we saw, they were they were unlike nothing we'd seen before. And that category of experimental machinima just kind of fell out of our ruminations about how the work was evolving, if you like, and there were a number of pieces that were submitted into that category. And that that fitted that description they could go into, you know, when people submitted to us, they could put any category they liked on it, but we would recategorize it if we thought it stood a better chance in a different category. So experimental category was one of those that kind of, you know, there were a few that we put into it. It was Tom Jantol's work Cirque du Machinima if you remember that piece kokuka long, yeah. Which one that category. But it wasn't an isolated piece at all. And if you remember the following year 2008 there was this really interesting film by a French studio calling themselves Le Rich Dwyane Diway, I think it was something like that. Called Shiva Shane Nocturne the Night Ride. But that category that it was awarded in, was actually for sound design, not experimental. In fact, there wasn't an experimental category in the 2008 machinima festival as far as I can go. And then of course, we we talked at some length in our Second Life episode in February about Lainy Voom's Push. And there's, I think clearly this kind of real movement in that virtual environment, Second Life focusing on experimental, creative works and spaces. And all of the pieces that we're talking about here, all of them were released at a time, when they were quite different in terms of what they were portraying to pretty much any other type of work that we'd seen across the Machinima genres generally. So I guess reflecting on the piece by Poyuan that we that we've just reviewed, it's something quite different to but it's fundamentally building on an artist statement where the game is integrated into that statement. And this is more of an accepted practice these days. And one I guess that feeds into from game culture generally. And I guess you're more likely to see that kind of stuff. Somewhere like the Milan Machinima Film Festival, they probably are on our show, necessarily, I would have thought. But still, I come back to the question, which is, where do we find these pieces? I think it remains a very interesting question. And particularly so because this environment that we're looking at and reviewing monthly is kind of an increasingly crowded online environment where discoverability is one of the biggest challenges that artists face when they put work out. And that we face on we're trying to review stuff. So questions, really, of where it's placed, how it's placed, how it is communicated, are all massively challenging. considerations, I think, beyond I think we're looking at stuff beyond animation, film and digital art festivals, in terms of what we're seeing. And I would suggest I would, I would try to, you know, try to encourage how we might think about how we go forward with this, really, I think what we need is an internet scale AI that can synthesise film based works, because most of it doesn't do that. It's just using image base, but film based works. And I can well see a time when Captain Google or maybe Open AI, we'll figure out a way that we can scan animated type works, and bring it on because I think we definitely need to find more of these more creative works, because these algorithms are just not helping us discover this kind of fascinating work

Ricky Grove 1:02:49
really great points Tracy, really great, as usual,

Damien Valentine 1:02:51
pretty hard to top that I was just thinking about this particular film. It's made of work in World of Warcraft. And it's not what you'd expect a World of Warcraft video to me. It's normally an adventure. Or it's one of those in joke kind of videos, you know, the guy was poking fun at the game. So an experimental film to me would be where you take a platform like World of Warcraft in this example, and do something that you don't expect to explore a theme that you isn't really related to the platform itself. Like, I guess this one is a little bit of a sort of virtual kiss thing, but it's the the feelings afterwards, you don't really associate with the game. And you associate the interactions of key players interacting with each other, but the way he felt about it afterwards is not what you'd expect to be explored in World of Warcraft video. And just in a way that's not using traditional cinematography or camera work or filmmaking styles, because like, you wouldn't normally expect a camera to actually go through the character model, for example, and not on purpose. No. Yeah, cuz the blooper reels, he's using it to explore his own feelings because he puts the camera inside himself because he's got these internal feelings and it kind of carries across that way, which is in traditional filmmaking. But you wouldn't do that. But then you wouldn't get the same feeling for

Ricky Grove 1:04:27
the actor. Actor in live if you tried to go through their head,

Damien Valentine 1:04:32
but you in World of Warcraft I think you just killed Phil as well. If you think it would matter

Tracy Harwood 1:04:45
with some of them, though, I guess it would be fine.

Ricky Grove 1:04:49
Yeah, you'd like to hit him in the head with the camera.

Damien Valentine 1:04:53
In this video, his character is sat down, as he's thinking about it. If you just had the camera pointing at him As you sat down, okay, you might look miserable. But you're not getting that this is an internal feeling that the camerawork portrays. And I think doing things like that helped make something experimental where I don't think anything I do would be considered experimental because I have a very strict very situational filmmakers styles. But I don't think I could tell this particular story to anything like this the the way this guy has done. Yeah. And I think that's what makes experiment was doing something's different than unexpected. And exploring themes that aren't normally explored. That's my contribution. Thank you.

Phil Rice 1:05:41
Yeah, it's Tracy covered a lot of what I was going to focus on, as far as the, you know, when we're talking about a film being experimental, are we talking about the process that was used to make it or are we talking about the end result that the viewer watches? It's often both I think, you know, Jackson Pollock, completely experimental process, and at for his time, completely experimental result, you know, so, John Cage composer, John Cage, you know, the alternate tuning pianos and, and really bizarre, wonderfully bizarre stuff that he did on overtime. One called, I believe it's called Two Minutes. 27 seconds.

Tracy Harwood 1:06:23
Yeah. Find out what I'm talking about.

Phil Rice 1:06:26
Right. Yeah. I won't get into discussion on that. But listeners, if you're not familiar with that, Google John Cage, the silent performance, it'll make you it'll just make your head sore. It's a it's an amazing idea. Amazingly, executed anyway. So yeah, is it about process or the end result? And frankly, I don't know, the distinction matters? Because it's kind of hard to think of an experimental film that didn't have some experimental procedure to it at some point, you know, right. Yeah. I remember Ricky telling me about one of Stan Brakhage's famous works, where he actually glued pieces of leaves and insect wings to the actual film, you know? And yeah, the end result is just something bizarre to look at. But that process also is what? Well, how do you even think of something like

Ricky Grove 1:07:22
that? That's right. I've even Yeah,

Phil Rice 1:07:24
yeah. So I guess really, that your I was the whole point I was going to focus on was that that divide? I don't think there is a divide. I think if if an experimental approach is taken to film, that's, that's what you're going to get? You know, there are degrees, of course, but I do think they're worth watching. I also think that just like any artwork, that's more abstract in nature, be it music or or visual arts, it's a harder sell with the general public. Yeah, just is I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I think that's just the way it is. So someone who's going to go that direction? I think most established artists who, who go in an experimental direction, they know that or they damn well should, because then your priorities become different, you know, maybe in some good ways, you know, it's not going to lead to most likely not going to lead to success that's measurable commercially. It's not going to lead to, you know, multi million view counts or sponsorships, or that's not the world, that's not the art world of experimental work. So you must embark on it for a very different reason. Often, as I think this film, reasons of the heart, reasons that maybe are hard to hard to talk about, hard to identify in a way better than, than this medium, you know, so. And yeah, the world needs that. For sure. Even though the it feels like it doesn't make make much of a crater when it lands, you know. But I still think it's very important. And I think that, okay, the crater is not as wide but it's deeper, you know, the people that it does touch. It's, it touches them in a deeper way. And there's value in that just not value that our, our world of commerce and economy really acknowledges. But it's worthwhile.

Ricky Grove 1:09:40
Thank you. Those are all thoughtful, thoughtful responses to this. Thank you. I want to close the this particular discussion with two observations. One is live live action film has a much harder time with abstraction and experiment, whereas animation oftentimes is you can use abstraction and experiment and much more. I mean, look at bugs Roadrunner isn't is an experimental film. That's a strange setup. So the very form of of animation allows for experiment in ways that are more acceptable, all right off the bat. And secondly, to places where you can find experimental films, some animation, some machinima, Vimeo is the place where lots of good experimental manipulation is, and also a site that isn't known very much. It's called Ubu.com. And it's a source of experimental animation, movies. Music, it's an excellent source. And it's all downloadable, all free. It's a good place if you want to find out more about it.

Phil Rice 1:10:48
But around a while has Yes. You I think you told me about the years ago and I, I haven't I haven't been back in a while I'm going to, I'm going to check that out. Again, a lot

Ricky Grove 1:11:01
of experimental music there to Phil. You find some really a new very cool interviews, music, visual arts, all kinds of stuff.

Damien Valentine 1:11:10
Of course, the earth thing as writers of animation has saved for live action for abstract. So you don't have to worry about killing your actors when you want to put the camera to.

Ricky Grove 1:11:20
That's it.

Phil Rice 1:11:25
All right. Well, that wraps up our film discussion for this month. I enjoyed this very much. I'm almost sad that it's over. But I look forward to our next one for sure. Yes, yes. And so we'll we will sign off for now. I mentioned in last episode I mentioned again, we'd love your feedback. So if you've got a thought on one of these films that we discussed, or just a thought about the show in general, we'd love to hear from you and make you part of the conversation. So you can go to Completelymachinima.com and check out the talk section of our website.

Ricky Grove 1:11:55
Right let us know whether I'm an idiot for not liking blue Teflon Saga for okay or any idea. Well, I knew that you thought that I want to hear from the listener. Okay, absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 1:12:09
Great show guys really enjoyed that.

Phil Rice 1:12:12
You too. Me too. Thank you to Tracy, Ricky and Damian was we'll talk to you soon.