Phil Rice 00:18
Hello and welcome to the Completely Machinima Podcast. I'm here with my co hosts Damien Valentine, Ricky Grove and Tracy Harwood. I am Phil Rice. And today we're talking about what I from the thumbnail, I thought was maybe some kind of World of Warcraft video. But it turns out it's just World of Warcraft ish. Tracy, tell us about the talkie orcs?

Tracy Harwood 00:45
Absolutely. Well, yes Talky Orcs by AFK The Webseries released on the 24th of September this year. So it's Christmas, Happy Christmas. And my pick is for those of you looking for a light bit of entertainment, not Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. But that other story where the orcs start to figure things out for themselves as they take a break from raiding Elven villages and have a bit of fun on the side. So the guys that make this series AFK AFK, the webstores they are a New Zealand based collective, we shown you some of their work before, but usually it's in the guise of Star Wars shorts. Now this has been made in Unreal Engine using Reallusion's Character Creator. And in this film, what we've got our two warriors, Bolgo and Ragnar, who are learning this new language, corn, I think is what you might call it. There's this kind of dominance of voice acting here, but some really good lip sync as these characters try this new language by mouthing the words they're unfamiliar with, which I think is a particularly interesting part of this thing to look at too. And that's because these guys, what I think they're trying to do is practice using lip sync, because most of the other stuff they do, uses characters that have helmets on [so they don't have to worry about] it exactly as [the Red versus Blue syndrome]. It is indeed. But here they're trying to push the boundaries a little bit of what of what they do. So it's got a little bit of tomfoolery too in it, which I think is everything you would expect from these creators, they've got some really great, a really interesting fun way of looking at the world. I think with pretty much everything that they do. It makes me laugh every time and as Phil says in the intro, it's got an almost Warcraft like look to it. And not just a look but also the movement that you might think of with that particular game. But there's a little bit more slickness to it, obviously because of the the engine that it's used in the in the creative process. And there's a really nice little fight scene at the end, which shows you some of the different effects whether the scene is shot in rain. But overall, I think the humour is as orc-ish as one might expect for this time of year.

Ricky Grove 03:23
What did you guys think? Oh, god, that was funny. I enjoyed this episode so much. I forgot to look for any flaws that might appear. So I'm completely at a loss. I've got your back when, when when it's my turn. Thank you and the entertainment value was just so high. It's very much in spirit of the old machinima satirical tone, you know, jumping into a game and and telling the story of people who are supernumeraries, you know, not the epic and heroic people and how funny they are. The writing is terrific. The acting is terrific. Maybe a slight little grit, the humour tends to be more macho and masculine. You know, it might appeal more to men than it will to women because if you think around the notion of testicles, and over and over again, it's a slam jam on the head with that but still, I just I just thought it was a magnificent thing. And again, another film that shows how Unreal Engine five is the premiere tool for creating machinima. The craft it was just flawless the lip sync. Usually I find some problems with lip sync, not here. That was just perfect. Great, great choice. My favourite of all of the films that we are looking at this month.

Phil Rice 04:46
Some of the best lip sync I think I've ever seen in in this thing we do. It's it's absolutely top notch and Tracy you're right with the especially with the challenge that they had of, they're trying to sound out sometimes subtle differences between words and phrases. And, yeah, I mean, the, this would not have worked with poor lip sync or imprecise lip sync. I mean, this is this is not just phonemes it's its mouth shape between phonemes I mean, it's it's fluid and amazingly done. I'm, I'm interested to know what the process was there. I have to assume that some sort of capture but it looked, it's so fine tuned that they must have really spent quite a bit of time just making sure that those mouths were just right with the sound. The you know, the, the story, which I won't give away, because there's kind of a surprise to the ending of it. It's certainly not a new comedic idea. I've you know, we've seen it done before. But this was very well executed, the human or with. The humour was juvenile. So naturally, I loved it. I loved it. Yeah, just very enjoyable. My one criticism if there is one is the soundscape was rather empty. Overall. During the big battle scene, there were a lot of, you know, the sword swishing, and clashing and things like that, but there was no, foley, of any kind for these are one of them in particular, it's kind of a big, bulky character, and they're wearing this leather and bone armour of some kind, or whatever. And there's just, there's no movement sounds whatsoever. Very little ambient sound going on. So as a sound guy, I, I found that distracting. That did jump out to me that simply because I found myself watching it thinking this wouldn't have been that hard to do sound for you know, you don't need, you don't need a special Foley kit of any kind just put on a leather jacket, move around a little bit or something and just just record it live for each character and I pan a little left and right, you're done. But I don't think that it's because the filmmakers were lazy. I think it's one of those things that it doesn't occur to you until someone points it out. You know, and I can't tell you how many techniques that I've learned making films over the years that I didn't do or think about until somebody pointed it out. And said, How come this or, you know, I noticed this. Todd Stallkamp, if you still listen to the show, you told me close to 15 years ago, boy, that sure is a lot of crossfades. In one of my films, which I won't name. I never edit without thinking about that now, because I hadn't thought about it. I had just, I just dragged the clips over each other on the timeline and let them crossfade wasn't even thinking about what that was communicating. So you know, not every film that's made is going to get, you know, featured on the show and talked about like this, but my advice for anyone in this craft is find somebody who's going to tell it to you straight like that. Somebody detail oriented, who's going to notice things like that, who ideally knows what they're talking about, like my friend Todd did. But will say that because that's that's going to be the best education for filmmaking that you can have is someone pointing out to you things that you didn't think about

Ricky Grove 08:59
And who might have a modicum of tact

Tracy Harwood 09:07
yeah,

Phil Rice 09:09
Sometimes, well sometimes sometimes attacked, you know, CJ Ambrosia, do you still listen to the show, CJ. I still remember when Bloodspell was screened. You before you knew that I did the sound we were in the same chat room and you said why is the soundscape so muddy? And then after I had tried to ask him more questions about what do you mean he realised that that he was critiquing me his friend and he didn't realise it so that he backed off but I gotta tell you, I think I thought about that on every subsequent episode of Bloodspell. paid close attention to that. So you know, two pieces of advice the first find someone who will tell you they tell you straight and second grow thicker skin. Be willing to receive criticism. I'm somebody who gets very defensive when left to my own devices, very defensive for criticism. It's a horrible quality. It's a horrible personality trait for somebody that's trying to create quality things. So my advice to you is my advice to me get over it. And you will get better. You know, from listening to people, even tactless ones like like Ricky.

Ricky Grove 10:29
Oh, no, I've always, I'm perfectly tactful. Okay, no, not.

Phil Rice 10:34
So anyway, great film overall, could have used a little bit more sound to to increase the immersion. But one of the things you're doing right, oh, my goodness, amazing. Great work. Damien, what do you think?

Damien Valentine 10:47
Well, first, I'm gonna say some of the feedback I had for my film was the complete opposite of what Phil did with your crossfades. And one was, I didn't have enough fades. So of course, my natural instinct was to put loads of fades in, before I released it lasts too much. So you kinda have to get that balance of figuring out what is the right amount of whatever the feedback is. Right. But as for this film, it reminded me a lot of the World of Warcraft videos that we've seen a lot of over the years, obviously, because it's got so Warcraft looking characters. And it's got that the same kind of humour that we saw in those videos. And I I enjoyed the humour, I can be juvenile as well, sometimes. I thought the animation of the York characters as stunning especially the lip sync was commented on at all on

Phil Rice 11:45
this animation at all. No, none of that.

Tracy Harwood 11:52
I saw a bit knuckle dragging, though, that's what made me think of, you know, the movement from the game.

Ricky Grove 11:59
Well, you got Orcs, you got to have knuckle there. Absolutely. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 12:03
I need to go back and watch the video again closely. So I can learn to do that myself in my own videos. There's a lot of work into that. And I thought, that's something I need to go back and analyse carefully to try and learn from, which is, from my perspective, I feel like that's a huge compliment is that I need to learn what they did. Because Tracy's right, normally, they have helmets on their characters in their previous video. So this is a huge step forward. And they've obviously spent a lot of time figuring it out. And it was very successful. So yeah, this is an excellent video. It's good pick a lot to learn from. Thank you.

Tracy Harwood 12:44
Absolutely.

Ricky Grove 12:46
You included two other films and you're you always come up with more than one. Oh, I've got some I don't plan on discussing them here but I did want to mention them and we'll put them in and links Unreal Earth the Unreal Engine five short film by the Blender Bender. Not as entertaining as the Talky Orcs but very good. And then Beckoning by Sara Zivkovic. A wonderful trailer. So I hope those who are interested in interesting films will check out those links as well.

Tracy Harwood 13:18
We've got some fabulous pics in in the projects update on the blog. But, you know, we just can't talk about them all. I'd love to talk about more all day, but I don't think we've got enough hours in the day.

Ricky Grove 13:32
No, we don't.

Phil Rice 13:34
Anyway, happy Christmas with that one. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. That's it for this episode, and we'll see you next time. Bye