Ricky Grove 00:05
Welcome, everyone to And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast both the video for YouTube and the audio for our Rransistor. I'm here with my pals Phil Rice and Damien Valentine. Hey everyone, I'm Ricky Grove. Tracy couldn't be here today because she is at a festival, the Oberhausen Film Festival which runs between April 28 and May 1 By now she's finished it because this is our third week of May. But it was a major film festival to include a programme dedicated to machinima. It's the first of its kind that focuses on avant garde machinima. I'm looking forward to hearing Tracy give us a full report. So let's go jump right into the film now. Damien, this is your pick. Tell us about it.

Damien Valentine 00:56
Well, Ricky, in our first episode of this month, you were talking about your process of finding films, and mine seems to be I find things completely by accident.

Ricky Grove 01:06
A way to do it? Yeah.

Damien Valentine 01:10
I mean, I wasn't looking for I sat down to juice anything. Yeah, it was just it came up on the recommended video when I was watching something else. I thought that looks interesting. So I clicked it. And I started watching I was it's just really interesting. I looked down at the runtime. And I thought, am I gonna want to go through all of this, because I realised this is one of the longest films you've ever seen on the show. And I did, I sat down and watched all of it. And I just been thinking that usually we pick films that about, you know, five to 10 minutes long. And then I came across this one and completely ruined that.

Ricky Grove 01:46
Yes, you did.

Damien Valentine 01:50
There are times where I felt like the editing could have been a little bit tighter. But overall, I really enjoyed the story. And I really enjoyed the animation. And it was all made by one person using Unreal. And at the end of the, when the film is finished, there's a post credit scene, but it's not extra story. It's the director talking about how he made it. And that's worth you know, it's just a few minutes long, it's worth sitting down to listen to what he has to say as well, because he kind of goes into some of the details that should you know why he did it. And it's, it's interesting.

Ricky Grove 02:29
What's the story about.

Damien Valentine 02:31
So it's about two factions of robots. And one is a group of rebel robots. And these are the sort of hero characters and they're being pursued by this other army of robots. And there's the battle, and then they crash on this planet. And both, both sides crash, and they're trying to figure out how to survive, while also still continuing the conflicts between them, because they're not going to join forces to figure out how to survive, because they've got so much animosity between the two. And here, the hero robots basically want to escape and get away and enjoy the freedom and the rest of it, which I don't wanna go into too much. Because, you know, you have to sit down and watch it. But yeah, despite some flaws with everything, which I think could have been tighter, I think this was a really good film is really well made. And we will animate it, and this is gonna be my pick for this month. And I hope you guys didn't hate me too much, making you watch an hour and 20 minute long film. So what do you think?

Ricky Grove 03:35
Phil, do you want to start or do you want me to? You go ahead. Okay. Well, I think I've always had an issue with feature length machinima films. I've watched maybe what, a dozen or more over the last 20 years. And they all fail at being able to keep me engaged for the entire length of the film. And I'm not sure why that is. And I've been thinking about it off and on. And it's film gave me another opportunity to examine that experience. And I think in a way, what happens is, is that the level of a visual spectacle, the way the film looks, and the storytelling don't rise to a level that allows you to be engaged like say, in a Pixar film, or in one of the major oh, you know, they a lot of superhero films where they get a team of people together and they're doing stuff. They're edited so flawlessly. They're shown so flawlessly that you naturally keep even though the story plots and stories are cliches, you still are engaged with it. I don't think machinima even machinima made in Unreal, allows you to sustain that level of disbelief, suspended disbelief. Because that's what you do you suspend your disbelief and you say, Okay, I'm gonna get involved in this completely imaginary story. I lasted about 12 minutes into this film before I started this sputter. So I went ahead and I lasted about another 10 minutes. And then I went ahead and I lasted about five minutes. And then I went toward the end, and I lasted about two minutes. Now, some of that is me, okay, it's my own particular bent, because I tend to have a harder time with mainstream themes. And that's what this film is about. It tends to it's a commercial subject film, with a group of misfits that you root for fighting a group. It's almost like a Star Wars situation where you have these misfit group of people, and they're fighting this machine, this, this group of machines. So it's a, it's a theme, and it's a subject that I know already. And because it didn't do anything different from what I've seen before, it bored me at times. Now, I have to say, in spite of that, I have great admiration for anybody who sits down and makes a film like this, because the amount of effort and the amount of skill that has to go into putting this together is absolutely phenomenal. It's certainly beyond me. You know, here I am making all these judgments about the movie and I could never do something like that. I was very impressed with that. But I think it over emphasise, a lot of mainstream films do that it over emphasise spectacle. Huge big spectacle and plot, plot plot plot. Now, Phil you were talking about earlier, in our After War film, the first one we did about how you needed to have a character to focus in on boy this film certainly did that. It gave you exactly they gave you a series of fun and goofy kinds of characters to follow. I hope this film does well. I think it shows how Unreal can be a massive plus for machinima. I think it may have been a better to see as an episodic where you had 10 minute intervals. It broke it into 10 minute intervals because it just didn't sustain the interest for that long period of time. I think it's a phenomenal accomplishment. But it didn't have the imagination that some of our other films did After War in particular. And that was a problem. In additions. I think that the film lacks. Gosh, I don't know how to describe it. I think the filmmaker instead of calling Oh, no, no, I know what I want to say I'm sorry. Getting up at at the end. In that little piece that you were talking about Damien, where the filmmaker comes on. He calls him he calls it cinematic design. That's the name that he uses for his method of creating these films inside of Unreal. He didn't call it machinima. Now, that tells me something and I hope we can discuss this a little bit is that it didn't even occur to this person that what he's doing is machinima. Because he doesn't come out of a machinima background, like our last one, Sandstorm. That was a celebration of the game. This is a celebration of big time Hollywood movies with a kind of sentimental love for offbeat kinds of characters. So it's a very different world that this person is coming from and no wonder he didn't call it machinima because it wouldn't even occur to him to call it machinima. He calls us cinematic design. And that's a that was an interesting method. I hope he does some tutorials on on how we put together the film. But that was my reaction to it. It's an entirely personal reaction. I respect it. I admire it but it just didn't engage me. Phil what are your thoughts?

Phil Rice 09:34
Yeah, you know it's well known between us that i i do have more of a stomach for traditional and even very into sentimental stories or the you know, the Robert McKee formula. Doesn't doesn't rub me as wrong as it does you. But even so, this film was a struggle for me to get through too. And I've been scratching my head all week about why because it's not that I've, you know, I think for some people, people younger than me in particular, it's just a hard challenge to make feature films that will engage them at all. There's so awash in short form content, not just TikTok, but I mean, even even the typical YouTube video when it's narrative, it's short, you know, and that's, that's what they're, that's the attention span. That's, that's there. So even films that I have no trouble with, on big screen or feature length works, that I have no trouble with, my son does, like, it's hard to just keep him it has to be really, really engaging. It's just a different, different tolerance or different standard, I don't quite know how to put it, I'm still trying to figure it out, to be honest, but so I don't have that aversion to or general impatience with long form content. And I still had trouble with this. And I've been trying to figure out why it is to Ricky and, you know, what is the secret sauce that this is lacking? And I think you're onto something. I mean, definitely. You know, what, using Pixar as an example, like their work or not some of the narratives that they craft for their, especially those movies during that kind of peak time, the, you know, the Finding Nemo and Wall-E and all that were, supposedly all those movie ideas came to the guys over one lunch, just the general ideas. And then for the next 10 years, they developed and out and made them and those are just masterpieces of narrative. Yep. But I don't think it's the technical. You know, the Unreal look, that makes it lacking because I think of I don't know if you've seen there's, do you remember Dynamo Dream. It wasn't a feature length film. But Ian Hubert, I think his name is the filmmaker. He made it all in Unreal. There was one episode released, I want to say about a year ago. And it was it was set in this sci-fi universe of some kind. And it's basically ended up being about this girl who was going down into the city to sell cups of salad to people. And just it will excuse me. First time, you're in this position, I'm just really all over the place. But it gives this indication of this larger sci-fi world, but it's it's just like a 10 minute film, he just released a second episode. And it's like, there's nothing about the look of that it looks anything like Pixar or anything that's in most modern movies, either. But I could watch, I could easily watch a two hour movie of of that. Well, I don't think it's Yeah, I

Ricky Grove 13:04
don't know. I don't think. But this one doesn't. Yeah, that's

Phil Rice 13:08
I don't know if I, if I have that figured out. But your comments have kind of spurred some thoughts on it. I mean, I hate to beat a dead horse. But I really do think it comes down to narrative or even even at a lower level, ideas. I think that one of the challenges of making a feature is having enough ideas that are engaging to where you're not just jumping from one to the other and bridging the gap with filler, which you know, pick any B movie off of the off the shelf of like, you know, lesser, lesser known and less quality films, and that's ultimately off and a big part of it is that they had an idea, you know, a big gorilla escapes from, from the laboratory and runs into town. Or it's Bigfoot, but he uses chainsaws, you know, they call it suburban Sasquatch. But there's just not enough to the idea to fill out 90 minutes, but they make it 90 minutes or 75 minutes minimum, so that it's quite classified as a feature. This I don't sense. I'm not saying that there's anything that drastic here. This isn't b-movie quality narrative at all. I think that there's some stretching, and maybe some borderline repetition of scenes or ideas because there just wasn't quite enough detailed ideas flushed out to keep because I think that's, that's more important for engagement than the look.

Ricky Grove 14:40
I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. And I was thinking that you remember the Clear Skies series in Chisholm. Those were feature length films that captured your Yeah, that I stayed with. And I think the real reason is, is he came up with an original story that had unique characters that you cared about. And he developed the quick plotting and clear style so that the look in the animation didn't get in the way and the voice acting didn't get away if you're interested in the story, I think, perhaps, and I'm not sure, but I'd suggest that the director was so overwhelmed with having to deal with just the technicalities of Unreal and putting together a feature length film and Unreal, that perhaps he may have neglected some of this plot and character development

Phil Rice 15:38
Overwhelmed or mean it. It couldn't be that's just not his strong area. He's clearly got massive chops for this cinematic production, whatever he wants to call it, virtual production, machinima, whatever. That's why it is what it is. It's he's got massive chops there. He's certainly writing visually evocative scenes and characters and stuff. Just fantastic. So maybe it's a bit much to expect that somebody who's that good at those things, also a completely different skill set using a completely different part of the brain, which is not only crafting, but then fleshing out narrative, and or writing dialogue to help further that along. That's a big strength of the Clear Skies series is the way that dialogue was used. Well, I think there's no purely expositional dialogue in the Clear Skies series. There's no people that are just talking to fill you in on what's happening with the story. It is rather revealed by believable interactions between characters who have a relationship and that's the mark of great dialogue and great screenwriting doctrine. And I think that that may be the the area where that's he's not as strong in that he's competent. You know, there's a there's a B movie director by the name of Neil Breen, if you've ever heard of him who has made five feature length films? Um, that's impressive.

Ricky Grove 17:13
I'm Still Seeing Breen.

Phil Rice 17:15
Yeah, yeah, it's a funny funny coincidence on name but I mean, they're just abysmal. Just horrible. It's not that the guy has no skills at all. It's that he thinks that he has all the skills. Really, that is what it is. I mean, he is really thinks he is on a god. I

Ricky Grove 17:34
love those kinds of words. Yeah. Oh,

Phil Rice 17:36
he's hilarious. He's, he's he's done DVDs with behind the scenes, documentaries and stuff on himself. It's brilliant. I'll see if I can find some some links to it. So you'll just you'll absolutely love it. Now. I'm saying all that. I want to be very clear here. I do not get that Neil Breen arrogance sense from this guy at all, like not in any sense at all. Not not from his film, and definitely not from the what I thought was a very tasteful and humble personal message that he put at the end of the film. That that won me over some of the things that I might have been, you know, kind of frowning a bit with on the film itself. But I like this guy. He's a real guy he and and he doesn't seem full of himself at all. And it sounds like that his intent is everything that he's learned. He's he is indeed Ricky going to get the knowledge out there. So others can do the same. Yeah, that says a lot about a guy. Sure. That's an M Dot Strange kind of characteristic, you know, somebody who just, he's in it for helping other people, you know, so and I get that I get that vibe off this guy, obviously, I haven't ever sat down and had lunch with everything, but it just I don't get the sense that this was a an error of, of arrogance at all. Everyone has blind spots. I know I do. I don't know what they are, because I'm blind to them. But, you know, we all do. But, ya know, I think that there is something some kind of pixie dust or something that that this film could have used to keep engaging. And I think what it comes down to is narrative. I mean, the way the dialogue was done in this movie, there were many, too many moments where it was just pure exposition, or character after character after character, saying exactly what they feel and think. Which I understand that on the surface, it's like, well, that's valuable. We want to know what they say and think was like, Yeah, but that's not interesting. No, no. How about somebody who, who doesn't say what they really think somebody who lies or doesn't reveal what they really feel or think, and you get enough of a hint to where? Wow, that doesn't seem like they were being sincere there. Those nuances. I realise we're dealing with robots, but he's kind of already crossed the Rubicon on that these are robots that emote and feel and everything. So, you could do that. And I think that there's, you know, again, this comes down to, to narrative details of those are things that make make it interesting. Yeah. And we'll go for our time limit if I, if I go into any examples, but that would be a great topic sometime for the future. So let me just run down some of the thoughts that I had, again, the voice acting performances, the performances overall very, very good. There's some weak spots. But some of those actors are really strong one character that kind of bugged me was the I guess the lead bad guy robot with that chorus or flange effect on their voice. Yeah, like really heavily on their voice almost to the point where it was a strain to hear sometimes. And it just after a while, just my ears got tired of it. There's a reason why in, in popular music that every every recording studio in the world has a little rack effects unit where you can do that. But um, you know, it's only once in a you know, a couple of decades that Led Zeppelin will come along and record their voice with that on the song no quarter. But they don't do it on every single song. There's a reason for that is because it just grates on you is great. Yeah. So but hey, you know, live and learn. Foley is lacking in this a lot. There's a lot of people or characters, let's say that are moving around that it sure looks like their movements would make some noise, not just footsteps, which are also missing in key places, these big metallic clearly heavy, you know, humanoids walking on what are presumably metal floors of a spacecraft or, and there's no sound whatsoever, or they're moving, and it's like, there should be some noise for that. So fully would have elevated this, this storyline, the one that really stuck out to me was the robot that hovers the female voice robot that hovers with, it looks like a drone, basically. And it's basically elevated in the air by these fans that are running. And I think maybe in one scene, there's like a little bit of a hint of a sound from those. Have you ever heard a drone? It's loud. They're not quiet. Yeah. So I'm not saying that it needed to be that loud, because that would be annoying, but at least some sound when you clearly see the blades spinning and there's no sound. Even if the blades don't make sound the air does. So I don't know things like that. Some of the guns and explosions like punch just like in the Star Citizen movie we looked at last week. Unfortunately, this guy can't say that. It's the game engines fault. So I'm not sure what the reasons for that, but they just generally sounded kind of feeble and unthreatening. There's no reverb in the ships interior. And again, this is a big metallic structure, it's spaceship, there ought to be some sense of the room, when noises or talking are happening, but there's not it's a lot of it's very dry. For a sound guy that was very distracting for someone who doesn't understand the mechanics that is probably still distracting, because it just doesn't doesn't seem real. You know, so. And then ambient sounds within the ship. Within the interior. It's all this equipment, all these computers around clearly stuff is running, there's engines at times in the background and you don't hear any of that. There's times where it's just complete empty space. Now their score there are a lot of times, which I guess is okay, I guess. I guess if you're into the the John Williams approach to Star Wars where their score for almost every single moment of the movie, the tiniest moment as a big score, everything has to score. Yeah. And okay, if that's if the space opera style is what you're going for, then I guess that's okay. But there still should be some ambient sounds. Yeah, you're right. There are in in movies like that. So what else visuals, as I mentioned, are very, very good, at times, pro quality, the lighting and the just the very creative. Some of the characters and the robots, each having a different shape and personality. If the writing had been in alignment with that, and given them a little more personality to how they speak, and I don't just mean their accents, or their tone of voice. Yeah, you can make those different but I mean, in terms of, you know, how they relate to the world, then that would have that would have put the icing on that cake. So you know, we've talked to sometimes talk getting back to the script as my final thing we've talked sometimes about ambiguity in the past and how they're When there's too much ambiguity in a story, it throws you off if you lose engagement because well, I don't know what's happening, you know, I feel like that this script suffered from the opposite of that it could have used, it could have benefited from a little bit of ambiguity. And I mentioned before about there's a lot of times there's characters where they just, they speak, saying, here's exactly what the situation is, what do you think about that, and then the other, it's just, it just give my brain something to do here, you know, assume that I'm an intelligent person watching this and give me something to do. You know, let me fill in some gaps. There's an art to that. It's hard. I'm by no means the world's master of it or anything, but I recognise it and appreciate it for sure. Here's an example scene. So the sequence, I made this in my notes here, the sequence after they land in the ocean, they're taking on water, they vent the decks and stabilise. I picture that scene where everyone is doing their part working toward the goal. In the film that happens, and everyone as they're doing it, I'm going to tighten this brunch to make the the the ballast tanks, reef refill. And okay, now I'm going to do this too. It's like, Wouldn't it have been interesting to see that whole scene where everybody's just going about working towards the goal, no one really has to say anything. They're all members of the ship. They all know what they're doing. And we know what the problem is. They're in the frickin ocean. And there's, there's, we can see that they're sinking. And now they're doing these things and the ship rights, and it's like, that would give me something to do, you know, and I would be able to follow it just as easily. But instead, no, I've got to sit there and listen to somebody telling me what they're going to do and then do it. That kind of efficiency. I feel like could seriously could vault this film to, to yet another level? It's already. It's already very good. I mean, it's got some amazing production values. As we've all pointed out. I really admire the one man show. I don't know how. I don't know how somebody does that. You know? I mean, I do. But how do you do that and and actually live a life too. Yeah. It's like the an amazing, amazing amount of time and effort put into this, and this guy is definitely to be respected for that. And I'll watch for future work by him. But in hopes that if he doesn't have my hope is that is if he doesn't have the skill set to, to bring the level of craft to the narrative that he does to the visuals, that he'll partner with somebody who does. That's what they do in Hollywood. You know, I mean, great directors aren't always great writers. You know, they pair with someone who is, and great actors are not always great directors. You hire the best for the best. And, okay. It's not a situation where necessarily you can hire but you know, there are people who will get on board and who just loves doing this. There's 1000s of us, you know, who just love doing this. And it's, it's worthwhile to, to get people involved who have particular strengths and get them working together, you know, just like the team of robots did in the movie. You know, they all had strengths and work together. So yeah, that's my thought.

Ricky Grove 28:41
So, Damian, let's hear your rebuttal on everything that Phil just said.

Damien Valentine 28:47
Well, yeah, I can see the points you made. I get the impression this is I don't know if it's necessarily his first film, but it's one of his early projects. And he obviously has a he's, he's learning as he's going along. So I hope that his experience making this means that when he's working on his next project, which is, he's quite clear, in his little bit to the end, says he's, you know, he's going to keep on making things. I hope he learns and gets better. But I really enjoyed what he did here, even despite its flaws, and I'd like to see him continue to make more and to learn and to get better. He's one of those directors. He's definitely got a lot of potential to do some really great stuff. And he's just got to take that time to learn the missing steps, because he's so he knows a lot already. Yeah. And he's shown that but there's just the extra bits that are missing. And I've mentioned before some of those things have been tight, it still would have been a feature length film, just trim bits here and there. You've still been over an hour, which is to get that picture next classification. That would have been my feedback for him. But yeah, I really want to see what he does next. I think to

Phil Rice 30:05
Me too. Yeah. Yeah. This is his first film. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I challenge anybody to put forth their first film and have it even hold a candle to this, you know. So if it is, that's amazing. I think it may be the reason that it's warranted such detailed criticism is, could be taken as a compliment. Yeah, you know, we're criticising this like something that, yeah, we're criticising this, like something that was put out, you know, by Hollywood, in a sense. Well, that same standard? Maybe that's because, you know, it's in that in some areas, it's in that tier.

Ricky Grove 30:44
I agree. I think in that sense, the boom is a kind of audition for Hollywood, in a way. Because it, it may be that he stops making films in Unreal, because he's hired to do a film could be for a studio or an independent studio. Hey, more power to him. And that's fine. I mean, that's great. I know, if Hugh Hancock were around, it would be again, the epitome of his notion of one man making a major motion picture. You would think this film, he would have loved this film. Yeah. Although I suspect he would have had some of the same criticisms that that Phil had. As he was really good on creating stories and scripts. Yes, he was quite that was probably his

Phil Rice 31:35
biggest strength, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 31:38
Well, yeah. Richard, if you are listening to this, please make more. We want to see more of your work.

Ricky Grove 31:44
Indeed, absolutely. Do. We do and we admire the work that you already did, despite our detailed criticism. I thank you. Thank you guys for talking about this. And thank you for your pick. I thought it was an interesting pick. I think you should always be brave and pick the things that you want and not worry about whether the rest of us are going to react a certain way. Just pick the things that you want and we'll talk about it. Absolutely, yeah. So that's it. If you want to talk to us about this film where you disagree with us, or you think Phil has climbed up a tree and got to the end and sawing the tree, the limb off on the wrong end. Contact us at Talk at Completely Machinima.com. We have full show notes at completely machinima.com. And that's it. This is our third film, Tracy. We hope you're doing well. We're going to be back with one more film, which is a fascinating one for the month. And that's Tracy's pick. Well, that's it so long. We'll see you next time. Bye bye. Bye bye