Phil Rice 00:07
Afternoon and welcome to And Now For Something Completely machinima, the podcast about machinima and virtual production and related technologies. I'm joined here by my co hosts Damien Valentine and Tracy Harwood. in absentia is Ricky Grove. He'll be back with us next week. We're excited to have him back. So we're going to talk about a film that we actually we had to arm wrestle over to decide who would get to make it their pick. It came up. Thank you YouTube algorithm for delivering this up to me. And I came over to our little message board to post this film, and found that somebody had already posted it there. It's fairly recent released. So we all stumbled upon it at the same time, I guess. And so I had to beg and plead. And thankfully, Tracy had another pick a very good one, which actually I had mentioned, when we were talking about Astartes Project that it would be interesting to compare these two side by side. So it may be that we'll end up referencing the Astartes Project review a little bit as we discussed this one, if I do end up bringing up that comparison, so if so be sure to check back three episodes, or so and find our review of Astartes Project. And yeah, you could, you could listen to that as well if you wanted to. So this film is called Patient Zero. The full title P Patient Zero - A Half Life Short. I'm terrible at attribution here. Who is this made by TheParryGod, P AR AR Y God not his first or only half life short. And frankly, all of the ones that I've seen quite impressive. But this this film is, it's something special. I'll kind of set the stage for it. So you've got a group of what looks like militarised police, some kind who are going to try and tell it without leaning on the Half Life lore if I can, because if you know, the Half Life lore, this will inst the setting will be instantly recognisable, you know, this scenario, you know, military police, they're storming some kind of a rundown civilian building, there are people civilians, huddled up there, quietly waiting, anticipating that, you know, these guys are going to find them. And they're all armed and ready to try and defend themselves. And the police zero in and there's a confrontation that takes place. It's just wonderfully done with there is some dialogue in this that helps helps drive the story. Frankly, it could have worked just as fine with with even less dialogue. But the dialogue that does happen, it fits it feels appropriate. And is relatively well acted. It was not everyone that did the voiceover was was well miked. So maybe this was one where the voiceover work was farmed out. And not everyone had great equipment or whatever we've we've, any of us who have made these movies, we've all seen that before it happens. But the the writing is good. And the the action sequence once the once it kicks into gear is quite extraordinary. And much of it I honestly don't know how they did it assuming that this was filmed primarily in the Half Life 2 engine things with regard to disruptive environments and that kind of thing. You know, holes being blown into walls and things like that. Maybe I just don't know much about how this engine worked. But it's pretty, pretty impressive looking. However those effects were achieved. And some really tasteful directorial decisions to there's one key moment when the action really kicks off where there's an explosion. And they don't actually show the explosion. They show right up to the last millisecond before it goes off. You know, that's what's happening. But then it's almost as if for that moment they put us into into the point of view of one of the people waking up after the explosion has happened, you know, it's like it's like we were blacked out as well. wonderfully done effect. I don't know I have a thing for tasteful choices like that, you know, because the obvious route is just show the explosion, and they probably could have done so rather well. which makes me think that that wasn't them working around a limitation of the engine, that was a deliberate choice by the director to let's do it this way for impact, and it works. Works really well. So I just absolutely loved this film. I feel like that that the scenario while it strikes the right balance with, if you know, the Half Life lore, fits right in there like a glove, like it's just, you instantly it fits. And if you don't, it works completely and utterly like it's immediately apparent. Before I hand it off to you guys, I'll mentioned some of the comments that I've made on Astartes Project that one of my, one of the things that confounded me was I wasn't sure where are these two sides stacked up? On I guess, a moral scale, if you would, good guys and bad guys type of thing, you know, typical, you know, the bad guy, black hat, good guy, white hat, cowboy thing, you know, those things are helpful sometimes to the audience. There was ambiguity with that in the Astartes Project. And as Damien ended up pointing out to me, there's ambiguity ambiguity about that, in that game universe, that nobody's really a good guy or a bad guy, it's more morally grey for everyone. Half Life, two worlds, not so much. Not really, you know, the half life two world, the world has been overtaken by an alien race. And it's a totalitarian disaster. very oppressive environment. And it's pretty clear, right from the get go. You know, if you have, if you don't know the half life two world, if you've read Orwell's 1984, it feels like something that could be set in that type of world where, you know, real people, if you will, free citizens are few and far between. I see are few and far between. And they're scared. Because they don't have the power. And they barely have scraped together what they can to defend themselves. But clear, they clearly they are at a disadvantage, a big, big disadvantage. And they're being hunted. So it's very easy to instantly relate to what's happening here. And I think that there's a strength in that doesn't mean every movie has to be that way. But when it is, it's I don't know, it's helpful. It's one less thing for me to occupy part of my brain trying to figure out instead, I can just focus on what's being laid out before me. So I love to that about this. I feel like that. In most regards, visually, this is indistinguishable from the level of animation that you'd see coming out of Lucasfilm Animation Studio, you know, for Bad Batch, or the latest clone war, you know, the the end of Clone Wars, where they really up to the visual game on it. And then now Bad Batch, they continue to push it forward. And this is right on that level, in my opinion. Someone who's a pro might have some nitpicks that they could find that I wouldn't see, but it's extraordinarily good. And the story is, is it's only a it's only a segment of a story. You know, there's there's not much that's wanting for the beginning of the story. You don't necessarily need much there. But there is a sense at the end of it, if there's more to tell, there's more to come here. This is just really a chapter. This is an event. Actually, the way that they characterise it with a little bit of subtitle, which I thought was nice, was setting it that, you know, this is before the uprising, which you don't even have to know what that means. You know, it's clearly there's totalitarianism, and something's going to happen. So this is a patient zero, I think, Tracy, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think patient zero is a metaphorical reference to this is where it starts. You know, this is this is this is? Well, I don't know where were in the Star Wars canonical, movies and shows Damien, does the rebellion really kick off? It feels like that. They've tried to do that a few different times. Andor, you know, the Andor series plays with that idea. Although it seems like it's already in motion there. I don't know that this is distilling it down to this is patient zero means it's the first. So this is exactly where that uprising that they referenced really briefly begins. It's all very intriguing, and it's a story that I would want to follow and, and see more of if there was more of it to tell. So what did you guys think?

Damien Valentine 09:56
I used to just said I would very much like to see another chapter of this to see where it's going. Initially, I watched it, I thought, I don't know HalfLife that well, but I recognise the, the soldier characters with the mask, because that's a very distinctive design. And I thought this is not made with HalfLife 2 as a game engine, because it that's looking at the background and things were happening, thinking, this is not something that that engine is capable of doing

Phil Rice 10:27
So it's not okay. Okay,

Damien Valentine 10:29
so I look in the description, the video says the Source 2 Filmmaker. And I think we've commented on before, that is a really difficult piece of software to learn how to use. So this team of people who made this have obviously spent huge amounts of time mastering Source 2 Filmmaker, and the end result is this film that we've just watched. And to

Phil Rice 10:55
interject real quick. Are you saying that? When they call it a Half Life Short, they're referring to the world of half life? Yes. And it's actually the engine? The same engine is half life, but it's not using the game?

Damien Valentine 11:09
Yeah, it's the filmmaker. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Which my understanding is you can use any Source engine assets in the Source 2 Filmmaker. But it's not something I wanted to take on because I've heard how difficult it is to use.

Phil Rice 11:24
Well, on they've they've got a custom character in there, don't they? I mean, isn't the main kind of bruiser guy, main soldier? Is that a character from the Half Life game? I've played through the whole thing? I don't ever remember seeing anything quite like that. It's very unique looking. He's kind of I don't know, he's kind of doughy looking like he's maybe not in the best physical shape under that uniform and stuff. It's really interesting. You don't, you don't see game characters like that very often, you know, all the Combine soldiers are very, you know, they take off their uniform, they're probably on the cover of Men's Health magazine. But they eat the vegetarian and all that. And this guy looks like he he loves some Doritos, and eats a few times a week. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I don't know if that's all just the bulk of the uniform. But anyway, sorry to distract,

Damien Valentine 12:15
guys. It's called listed software. So there's blender in the HL workshop to get some tomatoes for half life. So obviously, they took that original model and modified it to create their, okay. When I say hero character, I don't mean, he's a heroic character. I mean, like, he's a centre character in the story. Right. And the other soldiers are, you know, the background one, so just more uniform. So, you know, to make him stand out a bit more. And obviously, it works. Yeah, you know, the thing like the the nice, you know, shot when they go in the building, and the trees are blowing in the wind, and there's things, you know, leaves on the ground. And I thought, Yes, Half Life can't do that. Not not not not this. This is why I got very curious. Yeah, the action sequence, it's very easy to do an action sequence in a game engine is very hard to do one this well, yeah. Because, you know, obviously, games are designed for action, because, you know, that's the main purpose of, you know, running around shooting species on like Half Life. But to do it this well, and I need to go back and watch it again, because it's very inspiring the way they did it. And I know I've said this before, other films have impressed me in similar ways. You listen, and you want to learn how he did it, even if using a different platform, just to get an idea of this is you want to be this good. As it's kind of the highest compliment I can think of, is I like what you did I want to learn how to do it. So I can apply something similar to my own work. And actually seek was kind of inspired that and, and it's kind of it really sold this claustrophobic and dark atmosphere that the Half Life games, especially the second one has it feels right. So yeah, I was very impressed by it. So it's an excellent choice, Phil.

Phil Rice 14:15
I think I think the action sequence when it really kicks off, the action sequence in this is so good. I'm not confident that I even have the skill set to dissect it. You know what I'm saying much less reproduce it. But to actually even fully understand the decision making that went into this because it's so easy to just throw a bunch of action up on the screen, and it can be very disorienting to the viewer, you know, and you don't get that from this at all. I mean, it's just so it's so good, man. It's just so good. That there's so much chaos happening, and yet there's not a moment that you don't know what's going on. You know, that is really, really, really impressive. I mean, there's there's countless Hollywood movies that have action scenes that don't get anywhere near this in terms of quality, that that are completely disorienting or that just make no sense or, yes, it's just exceptional. So yeah, I don't even know if I agree this was worthy of study. But it's something that's so good that it's like, am I even qualified to be a student of this? That's what makes it makes me think, you know, it's like, i Wow, it's so far out there. And it is inspiring. Yeah. Tracy, what do you think?

Tracy Harwood 15:40
Yeah, well, if you both said it all, for me, really, but I have got fewer additional ones. I'll just sort of, say, the, you know, the kind of notes that I sort of made. I was I was blown away by this. It was gorgeous. Some amazing camera shots of the I think you call them combine, don't you think?

Phil Rice 16:01
Yeah, my soldiers I think are

Tracy Harwood 16:02
combined. So yeah, they're, they're all the grunts or whatever. And this accompanying kind of soldier. I mean, stunning detail in it, reading a building in which there's a group of people hiding, but you don't know what they're hiding from. Not other than the fact that being caught, but caught for what you don't ever find out. Which is I That, to me was the ambiguity that I really liked. In this story that we talked about ambiguity a lot this month, but that's where I quite liked that. Now, what I really liked about this was the camera angle throughout the way that that camera focus was used to tell the story. And, and the editing of it was was just brilliant. I think probably what I liked less about it was not being able to understand what soldier was saying, the call it vocoding synthetic voice thing. It was just too obscure for me to follow. couldn't make it out. But then again, I don't think the point of it was actually that you do follow it or make any sense of the words because what you got was the, you know, the sign language being used, and you completely understood what was going on from the sign language. But I found that vocoding stuff a little bit frustrating, because I wanted to know what he said, but I've just never got it. The bit that I really enjoyed them, the bit that really was outstanding, to me was the use of that drone. And the role that it played in taking you through the scene. It kind of was a colourful you know, it was it was a it was a point of contrast to a very grey and hazy kind of scene. And it was it was crystal in what it was showing you in the way that it was moving around. And just the pop of it on the screen was was just brilliantly well done, I thought. But also what it conveyed was the fact that you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. I mean, how did they do that? That was that was just so well done. That to me was the outstanding cinematic design of the whole film, the fact that you could feel that atmosphere by the fact that they got this other thing in there that just did the job for you. Really, really very smart. And then all the people I think one of them was Alyx. And I think from what I was reading about this is it kind of sat between a Half Life Alyx and one of the other storylines, I think, but I saw Alex was one of them, I thought I saw Alex is one of the characters and it was maybe five or six of these characters in there. And the bit like like you've already said, the interaction between them and the the unfolding of that, you know, that sort of battle scene was just so beautifully orchestrated and choreographed. And you just, you know, you've got you've got a complete sense of a team thing going on between them even though what you actually saw of them was not very much at all. And I thought that was great. How did they do that? That was that was my thought on that really like that sort of choreographic brilliance and you know the thing that you highlighted Phil whether you know whether the explosion went off and you you were sort of blown away and then you landed and and that deafening thickness you know that you kind of imagine when you've been blown up I ever have but that just was I mean what a little detail but but so well done. I mean so so everything in the sound design worked really really well for me. I guess if I'm being super critical the scene at the beginning where they focus on the mist and the and the wind that just went on a tiny bit too long. Just a tiny bit, I know there was a, I know what it was doing, it was kind of scene setting for the, for the actual raid part, but it just went on a little bit too long. And then there were sort of lots lots of a few gratuitous small animal shots, rodents and cats, and the detail of them was wonderful. But in the end, I wasn't really sure what they were meant to add. And in the end, they, they didn't really add very much. Because the real you know, the real sort of party piece of this was actually that choreographed, fight battle, I thought the outcome was really unexpected. Even that the hype of what the raid was going to be from that sort of extended introduction. I have to say, I, you know, just, you know, assuming that we know nothing about Half Life, when we're watching a film like this, I was never sure whose side I was supposed to be on, given where it started. And I think that's, you know, to the point that you made when we were talking about Astartes is as well, as you know, are these good guys? Are these bad guys? What are they? What are they doing? what's the, what's the story world here? Well, that's where it ended. I wasn't sure what the relationship was between these two factions, as they were portrayed in in this as a story not this as a game. That was that was my thought on this one. And then I will sort of say that the TheParryGod's attention to detail in the design of the characters, is actually I think, the most outstanding achievement here. I when I was looking, I was not at all surprised to see that he posts these models on his own accounts as well. So you can actually find pictures of these models on his Flickr account. And I've no doubt that if you go looking you can probably download them as as models and use them in your own stuff. No doubt you'd pay to do to do that. So he's a character creator, I think from what I've seen, but I really love this. I thought it was really really well done. I love that, that you know, that atmosphere that was created through this, and it was just a great film stood up really well. I thought brilliant.

Phil Rice 22:22
Yeah, it's interesting, the I feel like that for most of the, the way that these combine, soldiers are portrayed in the actual game. They're kind of portrayed like stormtroopers were in Star Wars originally where they're these basically unquestioning automatons, you know, that just they just follow orders. That's it, they don't really have personalities. That all changed. I think primarily, we're talking just canon in the first of the Star Wars sequels. Where you know, are is it Finn is revealed, he's a stormtrooper who's, who's questioning all this. And also, it's like all of a sudden, Stormtroopers. I think that there was some play with the idea of of Stormtroopers or just guys who have signed up for the, the military essentially, there's a lot of discussion of that that's happened in other Star Wars shows and in the comics, and things like that, but in terms of the real movies, that was never done before and all of a sudden, it's like you can't look at stormtroopers the same way anymore. You know, these are just people and I feel like that the way that the Combine soldiers were presented in the Half Life game for the most part, they were like stormtroopers were looked at before that happened but there's there's never been really a moment in the half life cannon that I know of where combine soldiers are revealed to just be regular Joe's. There's been a lot of fan fiction stuff that's done stuff with that stuff. That's you know, to the point of having to be comedic and red versus blue style conversations happening between them and stuff like that. But this film stand alone you really got a sense that these let's call them police officers or combat soldiers. They were humans you know, they were people they probably had someone to go home to at the end of the day kind of thing you know, so I get it Tracy that you know, even though having played the games there's just ingrained to me the calm guy combines the bad guys that you know the regular people that are good guys but no that's it's it's not really portrayed that simple and cut and dry in the short is it it's that these are guys just doing their job. You know, and you know, who knows why they're coming to get these these people that are holed up right now they look afraid and me And we're just going to assume that because they're not wearing masks that they're good, but can we really assume that? You know, did they just recently blow up a building? Or, you know, murder somebody, you know? And these are the police coming to put them down? So yeah, it's some of the assumptions, I think that I find it very easy to fall into with the story of the the totalitarian regime, and these people are, you know, the regular citizens? No, I think there's room in this story to interpret it. Other ways, like what you talked about Tracy, so it's, it's interesting. I liked a lot of the editing in this too. There's one shot in particular. And it's when it's the first time we get a glimpse of the people inside of the building the cameras following behind the soldiers as they're walking up, and then the camera tilts up, and just kind of slightly zooms in on a window up in the building. Yes. And then the next shot is inside that window looking out. And then the next shot is further into the interior of the room. And then the next shot is the people. Yeah, we've we've mentioned the phrase cinematic language so many times on this podcast, it should probably should probably rank in the top of Google search results for that is in textbook. Yeah. How do I get from here to there? And keep the audience with me, so they know exactly where this is? Yeah. Beautiful. Simple. And again, textbook, just just great, great stuff. So not every editing decision in this was that was that great. But a lot of more. And the overall sense. Like I said, especially when the chaos really goes down. The fact that it's not disorienting, that you still know where you are, you know, basically what's happened. That's a skill. It's a real skill. I think if I have it's hard to believe that I have any criticism of this film, from how I've gushed about it, but I do. I think the one thing that it lacks, that it lacks most is names. names for the characters. Even if we're only even if the filmmakers intention is this is the only short that's going to happen with these characters. So who cares what their names are? I do I do, you know, if, if it's? If it's Julie, and Steve, I want to know that, you know, because then it's, it changes the stakes a bit. And the thing that was a little I don't know, a little bit disappointing to me. And kind of humorous, too was these characters aren't named even, like, not only are they not named in the film, like their names aren't mentioned, and they don't refer to each other by name, you know, one of them is telling the other you know, shut up or be quiet whenever they don't say shut up, Dave. Or, you know, shut up, Lisa, it's, you know, don't worry, Stacy, it's gonna be okay. That would be a great way to introduce at least a little bit of names and to where these are individuals. These are real people with real lives, not just faces, but they aren't even named behind the scenes. And I know this because I because of what made me not have as much trouble Tracy on understanding the vocoder speak is because I cheated. I had subtitles turned on. Oh, did you? I tend to watch stuff that way because I watched it at a low volume and they happen to be on when this came up. So I got I got it like just fed right to me right there.

Tracy Harwood 28:47
Oh, what did he say? I

Phil Rice 28:48
don't know how to objectively evaluate could I understand him or not? Because I just read it. You know, I cheated. Well, there you go. But those subtitles are on. And the way that they did their subtitles is it's for most to them. It's character name, colon, and then the line. And the character names are let me just go through some of them here. See if you can configure out the pattern that they used to name characters. Rebel revolver. Rebel AK, okay, Rebel shotgun.

Damien Valentine 29:04
As someone who really hates them and characters I understand where they come in.

Phil Rice 29:30
Yeah, you can't it's behind the scenes thing, but it's like I don't know if it would be I think I would be embarrassed when it came time to do subtitles like Alright, I'm gonna come up with something at least to put in the subtitles.

Tracy Harwood 29:42
You know that aka that let it down a little bit because I thought it was very well done. I really. I honestly thought I heard names. Maybe. I don't know if I did or not.

Phil Rice 29:56
Yeah, the way they were presented. It was There was a human there was a humanity to the way they were characterised. I'm not I'm not taking anything away from that at all. But yeah, it appears that the characters didn't have names even like in, in behind the scenes. They don't have any names. And I think that that little detail would have just made something that's already probably my favourite film of this type that I've seen in in the past year. get sick would have made it even better.

Tracy Harwood 30:31
Question for you Phil. What was vocoders? vocoder? codings behind the scenes name, okay, let's

Phil Rice 30:38
see. It wasn't Steve. See,

Tracy Harwood 30:43
large man with drone or was he a man

Phil Rice 30:55
Okay, so that the the

Tracy Harwood 31:00
oh, you've got an okay.

Phil Rice 31:02
Spike wall.

Damien Valentine 31:04
Spike wall?

Phil Rice 31:05
Yeah. Okay. And Overwatch is the name given to the the kind of the public address system voice that broadcasted the building before they went in.

Damien Valentine 31:17
works as a name for that. Right.

Phil Rice 31:20
Right. Because who knows? It's probably an AI voice or something.

Tracy Harwood 31:26
Yeah, Spike wall, I think is the name of the character anyway, isn't it? Soldier?

Phil Rice 31:33
Oh, see? Here we go. The guy driving the truck CP driver. Combine patrol driver. Yeah. So anyway. And I don't mean to make fun or be unreasonable or whatever. But it's one of those things where I feel like it's a detail that that would have added to something that's already great. And made it even a little bit better. Even if the intent was to never make any more, you know, to not continue this story. It's a one off. But compared to the effort that went into all the other parts of the production and this to me, that seems like a small Yeah, small effort, but it I don't know, it matters. One last thing I'll mention to Tracy is the drone was very evocative to me as well. And not just for the the technical aspect of it. But I think the you know, that sense that I mentioned earlier that it's very clear who has the upper hand here in terms of power and technology and that to me, that was a great symbol of that of they've, they've got this tech that the people are going after, don't they? They can't hide, the people can not hide this thing will see them through walls through doors through everything. Which Yeah, which makes the outcome of this that much more impressive. And interesting that in spite of that huge disadvantage. And not without loss, but they did find a way to to have a victory of sorts in this battle. No, it's It's good story. It's good. It's a it's a great little film.

Damien Valentine 33:18
I really enjoyed it. Great. Yeah.

Phil Rice 33:23
I think that's it anyone have anything else to say about this one? That No, I

Damien Valentine 33:27
think we've covered it.

Phil Rice 33:28
I think the the the creator TheParryGod, that's what he is on. YouTube. Pa R ry quiet quite a bit more other quite a few other films. And in my personal opinion, this is the best that he's done. It's from about a month ago is all that's how long ago was released. But he's got it around half a dozen films. And they're great. They're they're really good. They're of this calibre, for sure. So if you liked this one, there's more, more to be seen. And it looks like he's continuing to to produce stuff. He's got a he does not have the Patreon. Oh, yes, he does. I thought he did. Yeah, he's got a Patreon. There's probably some additional exclusive content there for for supporters. He's got one of those buy me a coffee things too, if you wanted to show him support. But yeah, very, very interesting. work here. And I'm excited to see. See more. It looks like they're producing something about there. They're putting out a few shorts a year for the past couple of years. And that's, that's pretty impressive. To put out stuff of this quality on that kind of schedule is, that's impressive, so I'll be stumbled upon it.

Tracy Harwood 34:53
Sorry, go on. Yes. Oh, I can go keep going.

Damien Valentine 35:02
No, I gotta say I'm gonna check out the rest of his channel to see what else he's done because I really enjoyed that. And I want to see more

Tracy Harwood 35:10
on this as well. Yeah, yeah, I did. I I, yeah. Great film really good film really enjoyed it. I think this is the best one for me all month actually.

Phil Rice 35:22
All right, well, that should do it for this month. So I guess we'll we'll sign off and we'll look forward to our next episode where Ricky will be back with us. And, Tracy, Damien. Thank you again. And everyone have a great day. Bye