Ricky Grove 00:41
We're back for a film review machinima. This is the Now For Something Completely Machinima Podcast. I'm Ricky Grove, your host. I'm here with my pals Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, and the always excellent Tracy Harwood. This week, we're going to be looking at Phil's pick, Phil always has some of the most interesting and very funny pics. And he has gone out on off on a limb sawed off the limb and fallen off. Phil, tell us about your pig.

Phil Rice 01:15
Yes, this this high, high spirited comedy. Not. Is called shelf life. This was first released 14 years ago. It is the name of the YouTube channel is on is Pixel Eyes Productions. But if I remember, right, this was essentially the work of one guy. One creator. There was there was some team involved. But in terms of driving it and whatnot, there was there was one key person behind it, I can't remember what his name was. But I remember distinctly when this came out, it's made in HalfLife 2 in the in the source at Source Engine of that time, and makes just terrific use of the type of facial animation and lip sync and all that that I mean, it really shows the full capabilities. This was a stunner at the time that it was released. Because a lot of people didn't either didn't know how to do that in Half Life 2, or it was just too labour intensive. It's a it's a story that that I think has a similar flavour to the film that we covered last week, in that there's a strangeness to it and an unnerving sense throughout it, almost almost like a mix of like Twilight Zone. And there's definitely a David Lynch kind of flavour here, maybe even a little bit of Kubrick. It's very odd and strange. And it's it's just delightful. The amount of detail and craftsmanship that that's involved. And I won't give anything away about the story, because it's one that's best experienced. It is in two parts. And I think that the reason that it was uploaded in two parts was because of some some file size limits that were in place or film duration limits that were in place at the time that was released. That was that was actually a thing, it's easy to take for granted. Now you can upload feature films now. But back then it wasn't the case. So he uploaded it into two parts. And so yeah, it's best to watch just what the story just picks up right where the first part left off just one right after the other. And it really stands out, I have no idea what became of Pixel Eye Productions after this. They were someone that I kept an eye on and kept hoping that they would make more they probably moved on to some to some kind of professional capacity in this, you know the world around either video games or virtual production or something like that. Because there's there's clearly some real skill involved here. But what did you guys think?

Tracy Harwood 04:12
Do you want me to go next? Yes, really, if I can, I can give you some of the backstory here, a little bit that I've managed to dig out. So it's another older machinima. And I remember this when it was released, and I remember the respect that the community had for it when it was released. And as I understood, it was made using content from Half Life two, but also content from Portal, Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, and obviously all sorts pre public release of Source Filmmaker. And also a bunch of mods were used to create it. And it was, it was produced and directed by James Spencer and John Sortland who were who became known as Pixel Eyes productions, and it was filmed inside Garry's Mod, and and filmed using Fraps. All the old stuff really basically, yeah, it made in a very traditional way. But it was at the time it was released it was submitted to a whole bunch of machinima accepting festivals in 2009. And Bitfilm Festival, which was in Germany. It came second to a film called The Orchard which was by a guy called Dan Ross. And it actually won the Jury Prize Award at the Machinima Expo in that year, which, I'm guessing Ricky, you run you? Did you both run that you you and Phil, do you remember what year was it? 2009.

Phil Rice 05:50
I know Ricky was involved with it, then I'm not sure if I still was or not a second.

Ricky Grove 05:55
I'm an old man. I don't deserve anything.

Tracy Harwood 05:58
Second, it'd be the second year of it at the Machinima Expo I think anyway, it won the jury's award that year in Machinima Expo. It won several awards at shoot. And it won Best machinima at cinnamon Nila Cinder Manila. And it was also an official selection at Dragon Con. So it's not a film that was that sort of went under the radar at all. It was one that was well recognised in what it's doing. Now, these guys they met in high school. And they were a two man production team, which began in 2007. Shelf Life itself came came to life in late 2008. And by early 2009, it had turned into this kind of dramatic story. So it was kind of an emergent thing that they they developed over a period of time. And it led to them being included, as they said in festivals, awards, led to them doing international travel, music, videos, and even national TV. Since then, John Sortland is now better known. He's actually a musician. I can't find a lot about what James Spencer ended up doing. He was a web developer. In 2013, John joined Danger Mouse and James Mercer's collaboration as a live drummer, bassist and keyboardist in Broken Bells that ultimately led to him joining The Shins in 2016. And that's where he still is, I believe The Shins. He'd earlier been a founding member of the Circus Tents, I think, which was featured in several skateboarding videos in the early 2000s. And that's where he gained his underground following in a punk scene. And since, you know, in 2013, he also did some animation for the Kroll Show. And most recently, he's been editing on a couple of podcasts stories, which were released in 2022. So he's active but I like I said, I couldn't find a lot out about what James Spencer is up to. You might actually be also interested to know I found a really old music video that Pixel Eyes did to EV Cane's, Yes, No, Maybe which they created an iClone to say that we're dabbling around with a few of these machinima techniques, and relatively new new tools, I suppose. Back in those days. The film itself that you write is two, there's two parts one film. It's really a wonderful piece of storytelling. I think it's it's an unfinished project, though, from what I can see. Just the two videos in the series, because it's it's it's of course, emulating how it was originally released. Do I remember it correctly that you couldn't upload anything more than 15 minutes?

Phil Rice 08:50
And it was a limited thing? Yeah, I

Ricky Grove 08:52
think you're right. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 08:54
So this would have been about 25 minutes. All in all, all told, I think something like that. Obviously, it's got a kind of a retro feel about it. But the story is really quite interesting and probably reminiscent of a couple of well troped sort of films can conflated together. One that comes to my mind is a bit Minority Report ish.

Phil Rice 09:17
Yeah, for sure.

Tracy Harwood 09:18
So the plot, I'll tell you a little bit about the plot, because, you know, it's fascinating. I think it's about this scientist going to present some of his research, he's being sought out by someone who's invented what this guy has theorised about, and then he gets caught up in some sort of happening, imaginary future happening, which is recorded, and something bizarre is kind of going on, but we never really find out what that is. It kind of that's where it ends. For me. I think you may have seen more into it, but I, I kind of felt there was a lot going on here. There's a lot of, I mean, there's some fabulous editing, pulling and pulling this together. It's a really tantalysing story, but you don't know where it's going. Which, which is a real shame. There's some fantastic music to this, I really loved the music to this, I don't I couldn't put my hand on where I had heard that music before, because it was created by John, it's got kind of got this sort of 90s upbeat sort of vibe to it. I couldn't, I just could not find where I'd heard it before. But I know I've heard it before, it might have been from the original viewing of it. If my memory goes up far back. Anyway, some some nine years ago, which was about five years after this had been released. Pixel Eyes was still trying to find a way to continue the story. They said they'd never given up on it. It's just that the rest of their life had basically gotten in the way. And at the time, they sort of said they needed new hardware, new software, new skills in order to continue. And of course, you know, fast forward to today, and that would still be the case. But I was thinking what on earth would they make this in today? Because they probably wouldn't do it in same way that it would have to be, wouldn't it? I would, I would say it would have to be an Unreal type environment that they would make it in. And the tools and the way that they made it just, you don't need to do all of that these days. It's just you just would make it in such a different way. But I think it's a real shame that they you know, they clearly had such an amazing, creative talent that they just never pushed the project on. I'd love to see if they could pick it up again, and what they might do with it. If they did, but I suspect this is one of those that sort of stopped at that point. And maybe they shouldn't pick it up again. I don't know. But that's that was my digging around on it.

11:57
Golly, thank you very much. That's wonderful information on that. Damien, what are your thoughts on this?

Damien Valentine 12:04
I thought this is one of those I said before about some of the older Half Life 2 films we've seen before is this has aged so well. And you've got a slightly stylized look to it. But the because of the amount of work they spent on animating it and doing the facial movements and the detail of the environment. This looks like they could have made it now. Because it's that good. And I thought it held up so well, from watching it. I don't remember much about what happened in the in the videos when we watched it before for the Michinima Expo. But I remember watching it and I remember being how impressed you were that back then. And I still am now because we've all heard the stories about how difficult it is to use half life to make machinima. And you know, this is a huge amount of work to do something like this. And they took the time to learn it. And they try to not just learn it, but to apply it to the story that they'd written and make sure it's the best film they could make with the technology they had available to them. Part of me is kind of curious, what would they do with, you know, Unreal, or iClone or something more than now, because I think it would just wipe the floor with anything else that people are making. Because if they put that amount of time and energy into production now as they did back then it would be very impressive. So if they are watching this, I hope they do find a way to continue the story in one of these newer platforms or need to tell a new story do whatever works. For two very talented people and because of that skill and the time they put into it, the film from 14 years ago has held up so well. That I hope that pleased should be. Yep.

Ricky Grove 14:01
You know, I have to apologise because I'm starting the early signs of senile senior dementia are happening because I have no recollection of this in the machinaplex. And I know and I again you know, I I regret my just a rash act when Machinima.com was going through all of their crazy shit. And I was angry at them and machinima I just deleted gigabytes and gigabytes of stuff. I'm sure I had contacted them and talked to them and I could have had something there but I just I got angry and I said that's it. I'm gone. So I regret doing that because we could have had some interesting stuff with them. I liked the film a lot. It's obviously the thing I liked most was the story and the writing. And I thought they were spot on it really had some odd and unusual stuff, especially early in the first episode where he arrives at this institute that he's been asked to come to, and he, there's this homeless guy there who gives him this odd interaction between them. It was just really well done. However, the perfectly crafted, however, I have to say it was a very traditional film, it fit all of the traditional TV, crafting structure, wide shot, medium shot close up over the shoulder shot over the shoulder shot. And I think everybody accepts that and they like it and it's easy to understand, but I would have liked a little more creative cinematography in it. It disappointed me a little bit but then again, the job of editing in the Half Life 2 engine is so immense and so difficult. The fact that they didn't have a lot of time to do creative cinematography is forgivable, certainly, for all of the large amount and they got so much right. So I think it's good terrific pick and it does hold up. Well, today just wished it would have been a little more creative. So sorry,

Phil Rice 16:24
they're calling Ricky. They're not happy with that. Oh, man. Hello. Yeah, I'm sorry.

16:34
I didn't answer. There we go. Oh, shit. Yeah, sorry about that. I take that back. It was extremely creative. Please don't sue me by. Luck, okay, back to the three of you guys. So that's it. We

Phil Rice 16:56
don't know why I was so convinced that this was a single creator, I must be confusing Pixel Eyes productions with maybe Sam Goldwater or something who did The Monad, which is part of the Michinimaplex collection. There were there were a few teams during this era that delved into HalfLife 2 or that whole engine, like in this case, like Tracy pointed out, they brought in content from the other Source engine games, because there was the beginnings of a pipeline to do so although frankly, this doesn't look like a mishmash at all. So how whatever they integrated was very, very good. Yeah, I thought for sure. This was a one one person crew that then disappeared. That's, that's somebody else's story out there. At some point, but it was a single project, and it was this amazing thing and then just gone. He's He's, he's gone for good. Yeah, so that's not them. They I'm glad to hear that. So yep. Yeah, it'd be nice if they returned to this at some point in another, another venue, because because that's, that's the gold to be mined from this one, for sure is the story. And it leaves you wanting more

18:02
It sure does. So if you have comments, folks listening to this, please send them to talk at Completelymachinima.com We also have show notes with links and little more background information at our blog got completely machinima.com. That's it for this week. We really I really enjoyed this episode, and we'll be back next week with Damien's really interesting pick. So we'll see you take care goodbye.