Phil Rice 00:10
Hey, welcome to a special episode of And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. So almost all of us that are involved with this show all of us really had been involved with this art form, observing it, commenting on it, making it for a long time, like a couple decades, I think it is now so. And over the course of those years, we have come across a number of just startlingly good pieces of work. And this is going to be, this is going back 15 years now, in 2007, 2008, or so basically, Ricky, and some fellow friends in the Machinima community came up with an idea of, you know, see figure 2007, 2008, this is the early days of YouTube. YouTube wasn't the, let's say, top tier platform that it is now. It we all kind of knew it was gonna be eventually, but it was clunky, there were upload limits. And in order to keep under those limits, you had to upload it very low quality. And then the commenting community on YouTube was really, really wild west, and, it just, and then, of course, they're trying to figure out how to make money. So there's ads and all these things, it just made the viewing experience unpleasant. And it was Ricky who first stepped forward and said, you know, we need a better solution, this content that these these good good films deserve a better way to view them than that. That's really how this all started. So they came up with a site called Machiniplex. Now, you know, of course, again, it's been 15 years ago, several years worth of films were accrued with the Machiniplex collection. And then ultimately, it just wasn't, wasn't financially feasible to keep that running. Interest in machinima kind of had a, you know, a drought period and it waned. You see, we see kind of the cusp of revival of it now. So when we shut down that website, by the time that it was time to close that down, I had been involved with it as well with my podcast called The Overcast, we had interviewed filmmakers and done premieres for their films in Second Life and things like that. So it was time to take the website down. And we had this archive of all those films. They were relatively low resolution by today's standards, but they were good renders. So I just archived them away. And they've been sitting in, you know, file storage for these many years. So this year, 2023, we have taken it upon ourselves a project to bring those, dust off that box and pull up those virtual VHS tapes of those classics and bring it back to life. So the process that I've undertaken here is taking all those original renders, AI upscaling them to 1080P, and then putting them onto Vimeo, or kind of long term preservation. So we have created a showcase on Vimeo, which there will be a URL in the description, I'm not going to read it because it's not a particularly pretty URL, or easy to remember. But it'll either be if it's not on screen right now. It'll be in the description of this video. But this showcase has about right around 30 films from that era. And these stretch from the very, very early days of machinima when they weren't even called that it was Quake movies. So 1997, 96, even I think is the earliest film all the way up through about 2008. These are, you know, I think widely considered, or were at the time widely considered to be the creme de la creme, really, really good stuff. And so we're basically wanting to put those out there to remind people, I think sometimes when people watch this show, and they hear us, giving criticism to current machinima a question that might come to their mind is well, what are you even comparing this to? You know, if you go out on YouTube, this is better than most of the stuff that people have just thrown together on YouTube. Yeah. But we've seen this stuff. And these these pieces of a variety of types, everything from comedy to action to drama, there's a love story. There's some that are just art for art's sake. There's some that are poetic. There's some that are adaptations of old stories from literature. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. This is what we compare it to. In our memories. We've seen this stuff when really machinima was at its first peak, in my opinion. And these films, a lot of them really, really hold up well, even today. Like you'd be hard pressed to create something as beautiful as some of these are even with all the improvements that have been in game engines and, and and the tools that are now readily at our disposal that we're not so at our disposal back when these were made. So what we're going to do in this episode is just, we're going to quickly mention, we've each picked one of those 30 films, as kind of our first pick of here's one that I want to call some attention to, we'd encourage you to watch all of them when you get a chance, we think you'll like them all. But these are the four that we picked. We may do this again, and maybe a few more times to call some more attention to these films. So I've been blabbing a lot here, but I'm gonna go ahead and kick it off. The film that I'm picking is one of the earliest machinima films ever done. This was made in Quake one, it's called Blahbalicious. And it is a kind of slightly absurdist comedy anthology of sorts. I don't know if I'm using the proper term for it, but it's it's not narrative driven. That's for sure. It's not just one story. It's it's segments of stories and kind of visual themes that get revisited. Most of which is intended to have a let's say a gamer, a gamer type of comedy. in mind, it's not sophisticated humour, for the most part. It's a lot of physical comedy. Anyway, when I saw this film, it would have been in 1996 or 1997. I was just absolutely enthralled and inspired. I don't think I would have gotten into making machinima. We're not for having seen this. Because it mixed this element of silly and, and funny and absurdity. That is at the heart of a lot of where my sense of humour really thrives. So that's that's my pick is Blahbalicious. It's made by it was made by two guys that I don't know very much about. They went by the names of Avatar and Wendigo. And Tracy was what was that team? Were they mentioned in the Machinima book that you wrote? Okay. Yeah. So if you haven't, if you haven't seen Tracy's machinima book, check it out. It is on Amazon. We've got a link on our website. And we'll make sure to include it here as well. But these guys are from machinima history, you know, and they didn't really they didn't start a channel or make a whole bunch of films or anything like that. It was it was they were active for a short period. I I suspect when they were college students, but I'm not sure. And then they've moved on with their lives. But this film has just stood the test of time for me personally. And I think for a lot of people who see it it's it's it's just got a very old school, original machinima type of quality to it. And yeah, so that's my pick Blahbalicious.

Tracy Harwood 08:41
You know, it's a real treat to watch these films again, film, thank you so much for for remastering them, because Thank you made them really, really fresh again. And you know what, this particular one, just watching this again, which by the way, the Wendigo and Avatar, that's these are characters called Brian Hess and Mackey McCandlish. And it was originally released in 1997. So it goes goes back a long way. But when I looked at this again, having not seen this for years and years and years, you know, it's got lots of 90s references in it. of yoga and workouts and Braveheart and suits for work and yeah, discos and politically incorrect references to fatness. I loved it. It's great. So it's a really good pic. Thank you.

Ricky Grove 09:34
I want to emphasise and reiterate Phil's comment about the film being inspiring. That was one thing with the community of machinima the early community was that brought everybody together as that they created films that inspired them to react or react to the film or create their own film. Every single one of these films would I think you can consider it to be an inspiration. And that leads me to my choice for a film which is Bot by Digital Yoke Productions. Now, I could pick any one of these 30 phones, and talk about it as a favourite. But I wanted to choose, I wanted to recommend bought, because it was a film that came and went very quickly. In fact, I would venture to say that 99% of the people listening, don't even remember this film, and the fellow that made it and God even with research, I can't remember the name of the person who made the film, it was a guy, and I corresponded with him, he was a game developer and was involved in the game industry. And he made, as far as I know, this only single film, and I wanted people to know about it and to watch it. Now, the quality of the film, when it was initially released was fantastic. But the copies that we've had down through the ages, even with Phil's AI upscaling still has a little bit of an issue. So try to imagine that when you watch the film of it being a bit higher quality, but it's essentially, it's a kind of science fiction story centred around robots and sentience. And you there's almost an Orwell's 1984 feeling to it, in which you have this overlord controlling these fighting robots. And they're all in a manufactured line. And until one day, one of the robots stops, and turns around to look at where they've come from. And this starts a whole story of this robot's sad and funny journey through being aware of what's going on to them, what's happening to them, and how they've been treated, and this manufactured world. And so you follow this robot, in escape, trying to escape the world to the outdoors. And I won't spoil it by telling you what happens at the end. But it produces a feeling it produced a feeling me when I first saw it, that was very emotional. Because I had such a strong empathy with the central robot, the robot, everything is very simple. But the camera work in it, especially for the title sequence. It winds around this sort of mechanistic structure with the titles and names being woven into the structure of the thing that the 3d cameras moving around. And the scale and the epic quality reminded me of Fritz Lang, it at some points where you have this massive that's one of the cool things about scientific theory, you get this massive epic scale of the small person, and the huge environment they're in. And, and the best thing about it is that the early days of machinima, it was hard to create, because humour was the driving force behind a great deal of modern Blahbalicious is a perfect example of it. Although it's a cut above many of the other films is it because that was the easiest thing that you could do. And people could understand quickly, well, BOT tried to do something different. It tried to bring a real drama that created an emotional reaction in viewers. And now we see that all the time. But in those early days, that kind of film wasn't around very much. And for that reason, when I rewatched, it again, I experienced the same emotional reaction to it, which told me this is the film that I need to recommend everyone. So that's my, my pick on it. Again, they're out of the 30. You could pick any number of them but BOT by digital yoke, I think would be well worth your time.

Tracy Harwood 10:30
And it was made in Unreal Tournament. I believe us. Yes. Thank you for matching. Yeah, as I understand it, it was also the runner up to I think the non interactive section of the Make Something Unreal Contest in 2005. Although I don't know exactly when this would have been made, but my guess would be 2003 2004 ish. I would have thought

Ricky Grove 14:37
that's my guess. Yes.

Phil Rice 14:39
I would venture to say I would venture to say that. Okay, 99% of the people haven't heard of it or haven't seen this film, I would say 97% of you maybe have never even heard of it. It really was one that it came and went and for a long period of time it was not available, not easily available to see it it this is pre YouTube years. So it wasn't streaming anywhere or anything like that. And it was it was a hard to find gem that people in the community knew about because it had gotten this attention with the award and stuff. But I mean, it was many years after it was made before I ever got to see it for the first time. So yeah, it's gonna be nice to have it available to see now.

Tracy Harwood 15:24
There is one thing I will say, I actually think that the AI has perhaps done this a favour because although it does look a little bit dated, the story is stunning. And the AI has given it really quite a contemporary feel, as well, and, you know, a lot of the aesthetics that you see where you've got, you know, animated AI. You know, productions looks very similar to that. And it's got that kind of feel to it. So maybe it will resonate with audiences in a way that it maybe never did over the years. Because otherwise one would assume it would have been out on the on the channels. There is another thing I'll say I I'm I think I'm correct in saying this and forgive me if I'm not, but I understand that the composer who created the original score to this Giampiero Scuderi passed away last year, which is really sad to have discovered given that this is really beautiful score, gorgeous score to it. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 16:30
I'm gonna have to admit now that this is the first time I've seen this film. And it does hold up. Because of the AI upscaling. It does not look like a film that was made a long time ago. Because like, for me, because I was watching it fresh, completely new. I thought that it held up really nicely, compared to some of the other more recent films that we've discussed over the course of the show. Oh, it's good. And I'm watching as well. So there's a couple of others that are on the list, which I haven't seen yet, ever. So I'm looking forward to diving in and Oh, that's

Ricky Grove 17:05
great. That's great. Good. Oh, by the way, one quick clarification. The person who came up with the idea for Machiniplex, with Jason Choi, who has a film that he did. And World of Warcraft. That which I think is your choice, Damien, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So we'll talk about him. But he came up with the original idea. And he approached me and Ingrid Moon to put it together. And we jumped into it. And but he was the person who came up with the first idea.

Phil Rice 17:39
Wasn't it that? Yeah, Ricky, wasn't it that he came up with it, and then it was you three. And wasn't that right around the time when he got hired by the game developer? Yes. Yeah. So that became a thing of, well, he just didn't have time for that anymore. Right to do it. And so you guys took it from there. And then we took it over? Yeah, some point. Yeah. You brought me in to be part of it, too. So yeah, I'd forgotten that it was originally originally Jason's. I'm glad you mentioned that. Sure.

Damien Valentine 18:09
Well, since we're talking about him, I might as well talk about his film. Edge of Remorse by Jason Choi. Every time I see lots of machinery, and most of it was comedy based. So I'd love to lot of these films I've seen. This was one of the first ones I ever saw that produced an emotional reaction that was not laughter. Ah, it's not a funny film. It's a very serious emotional film. And it provoked those kinds of emotions in me as I watched it, and it's made with World of Warcraft. Which its not a game I'm not familiar with. But you don't need to be to understand the story. Absolutely. There's no dialogue. Ricky, I believe you did the sound work for it.

Ricky Grove 18:57
I designed the sound Yes,

Damien Valentine 18:58
he did an excellent job with that. The story is really easy to understand what's going on between the two characters, and the way and it's sort of a flashback when the characters were kids, and how the adults also some of the characters switch between having armour on some just, they're just normal clothes, you can still tell the same character sometimes with early machinima films. If a character changes their outfit, they're not easy to recognise. Because it changes the outfit was the main way of doing it. But this film, you know, that's an important distinction there. But it's just so well crafted and it creates it makes me feel things that a machinima of a film had not done before. Watching it again. It brought those same feelings back that I experienced then and some more because obviously, I've had more life experiences and I understand things better. I got even more emotional reaction watching it again. And recently, so this is gonna be my pick for the show. And I remember thinking back then, if Jason can make a film makes you feel things, I want to be able to do that as well. Yeah, it's something to learn from and be inspired by. Every time I was writing a script, after watching it, I would remember this film. And I hope that I was able to learn some things from Jason in my own work.

Phil Rice 20:27
A quick making of note that I'll mention on Edge of Remorse is. So there was there was a lot of limitations on what kinds of animations and poses that you could get characters in world Warcraft to do within the game. Kind of comically limiting number of poses, in fact that Ricky and I used to joke about that there's basically this and this two poses is this. Jason was well aware of this. But he really liked the aesthetic of the game, but wanted to have animations that, like you said, Damien, that weren't going to just provoke laughter, that was a huge concern of his with this is if I'm going to do this. I don't want someone laughing at the story, you know. And so the solution he ended up coming up with was there was a tool that was around then where you could load up one of the characters from World of Warcraft, and pose them just to basically kind of look at the character from different angles. And I don't remember what the name of the thing was, it doesn't really matter. But it was still pose type stuff. So he made extensive use of that tool. And compositing was he was a master, he's a masterful compositor, just just seamless, beautiful. And, but he used that tool to get some of those, those poses that would have been next to impossible to pull off with actual gameplay so that I, I'm pretty sure that most of this film, even though it's completely made with World of Warcraft assets, and technically, with World of Warcraft rendering, I don't think there's any gameplay involved with this film at all because he wanted he wanted a level of precision with what would show up on screen and where that the game just wouldn't have offered. And yet, you look at it. And if you played World of Warcraft, probably most people who come at it from that point of view would go How did he do this? Well, that's how and masterful, masterful choice that I don't think I saw anyone else do. They probably did after this. But he was but I never saw anyone before him. Think to use the tools in that way to get it done. That's a very Tom Jantol kind of move. You know, just whatever works. That's what I'm going to do. That's what he did here is beautiful.

Damien Valentine 22:51
There's no artefacts from the compositing like sometimes you see like a black line around a character. None of that in this film.

Phil Rice 22:58
He's very, very

Damien Valentine 22:59
good when you got that until you said it. Because I was when I watched it again. For this. I just assumed he made it in the game. I did not Yeah, it's flawless. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 23:11
And hence why he won Best Visual Design at the Machinima Festival that year. November 2006.

Damien Valentine 23:20
Was it this film also in a World of Warcraft specific contest by Blizzard as well? Because it

Tracy Harwood 23:27
was Yeah, I think it was, but I can't remember which one it was.

Damien Valentine 23:30
Yeah, it was an official World of Warcraft machinima contest of some kind.

Tracy Harwood 23:35
And that escaped me but yes, you're right.

Ricky Grove 23:39
Well, I owe Jason Choi A big thank you because he was the person who opened the door to machinima for me on the original forums at Machinima.com before it became the YouTube Machinima.com He had a forum post that said I need I'm looking for actors and sound people to do a machinima and I had some time and so I answered it and he was local. So we got together at a at a deli and sat down and I liked him a lot so we started working on what became Only The Strong Survive I did the sound and acted in that and then he called me back to do Edge of Remorse sound for edge of remorse. Now Jason is a it was and I imagine still is a very detail oriented person and a demanding director. He's not one of those people that would just lets get it done and move on to the next thing. He wanted it to be just right. So I would and I I had a bit of a hard time with him for a while because I thought I was really talented as a sound designer because I had done sound design for the stage but I had never gotten cinematic sound design so Only The Strong Survive and was quite a learning process and I had grown quite a bit. So I would submit sound passes uncertainty scenes and he would say no, that's not right. And he'd give me specific notes. And I was like, well, that's just crazy. That makes sense that it's perfect. But I said, he's the director, you know, so I'd go back and change it. And every single time he was right, it made the scene better. It fix things, and added more subtlety to it. Blending the orchestral score, in a way I learned some of the elements of of basic sound mastery and mixing working with Jason on that, because he already had a great sense of it. So he taught me a lot of that stuff, maybe not necessarily the technical elements, but from a director's point of view, how to make things work better. So that film has a lot of meaning to me. Quite a few of those scenes were, were exacting and took hours and hours and hours to get it together. But I thank him for all of that because it made the film better, and it made me better as an artist. I was sorry that the machinima community lost him in a way because it very much like the brain drain that occurred but when many major machinima talents went on to professional work in the game industry, and hey, I can understand that. I mean, you got to make a living. And that's the best way to do it. You don't make a lot of money doing machinima if, if at all, but I was sorry to see his influence move out of machinima because he had the ability become a towering talent and influence in in machinima. And just a couple of films that he did are very, very strong and really like your pick, Jason. It's really good. I mean, Damien, thank you.

Phil Rice 26:44
Incidentally, Only The Strong Survive the film that is pivotal in Ricky's story and getting His start is also part of this collection. So

Tracy Harwood 26:56
yeah. My pick is the Snow Witch, which was created by Britannica dreams originally released in 2006. And refilm. Yeah, having been made in the October in Sims 2. And I believe both you and Phil worked on this film, actually, Ricky, I think you were on audio production. And Phil, I think was the witches voice I believe. Anyway, it's. Well, that's what the credits say.

Phil Rice 27:26
I think I think basically, Ricky pulled me in for an effect thing. I don't think so. So the voiceover when he was trying to achieve a certain effect on the witch's voice and couldn't figure it out. And between the two of us we did, I didn't even realise I was credited on the film. That's right. Yeah, it's 99% Ricky for sure.

Tracy Harwood 27:49
Fair enough. Well, okay, so for those of you that don't know this, this is a Japanese ghost story adapted from Hearn's Kwaidon. It's the story of these two wood cutters, an old man and his young apprentice, minnow, Kichi. One of them gets trapped in a snowstorm. And they're in a forest and they take refuge in this hut, during which they make a bargain, which later has some really serious consequences for them. It's a it's an absolutely beautiful fairytale traditional sort of fairy tale. And it was actually one of the most compelling machinimas that I've seen. You know, up to the point when I actually remember this being selected for the 2007 festival in Europe that I directed. The remastering, yes, it brings the the graphics up to date, but it's still a little glitchy. But none of that takes away from what an incredible piece of work this actually is. And I think that I think stood out for me on this was, was the narration, this beautiful, lyrical voice of Simon Taylor, who had no idea what happened to him. I don't know what he went on and did if he if he continued to work in acting or whatever, I have no idea. But the thing that I particularly remember about it, and why it's a particular choice for me is because it's it's, you know, this is this is a film that the BBC became particularly interested in, in as something that demonstrated as a creative form, machinima in the creative form that showed the potential of what you could do with archival material, and how it might be repurposed and how a community might be brought brought together to celebrate the archival material. And it was one that really attracted their attention. Although I think to my knowledge, nothing ever actually came of it in the end, which is a real shame, because the one thing that I do remember seeing, which we've mentioned before in this episode, but but Tom Jandal took one of Chaplin's old BBC films, The Kid, in fact, and created a machinima story with it in a way that only Tom could. But this to me was one of those sort of ground marker kind of, you know, beautifully told machinima stories that moved away from the original kind of laddish humour that you got with the the likes of the RoosterTeeth Halo sort of stories. It was wonderfully made. I loved it.

Damien Valentine 30:47
I had a pretty good friendship going with Michelle, particularly when she was part of the machinima community. And this is one of the films that made me pick up the Sims two as a machinima tool for a while. And because I'd watched it, I thought this is so unlike the actual game. And I wasn't really interested in telling stories that the game itself would do, I want to do sort of science fiction stuff, which I'm sure was no surprise to those that know me. But when I saw this, and because it's so different from the sound of modern days, sort of lifestyle stuff from the, from the game. That's what inspired me to pick up the game. And I talked to her a lot about how she did it. And she was talking about all the mods that she found and the mods sites existed for the game. And she actually found these some sort of sci fi stuff. He said, Hey, check this out. And I ended up using that in my project. So this is one of those films that like Edge of Remorse, offered me a lot of inspiration for my own work, and I'm glad to see it back. And I watched it again, pull back a lot of memories. And I was gonna choose it on that ground. But Tracy, you beat me to it. I'm sorry. That's fine. I still got to say that which is the important thing. So glad it's here on the, on the upscaled and everything and I think it still holds up under some glitches, we've got skewing process. So it doesn't matter. It still looks great. It's still a good film. I miss Michelle's creativity because she created a number of really good films.

Phil Rice 32:25
Yeah, you're and her and the co director that she worked with for a number of years under that Britannica Dreams, label her name, her name is eluding me now. I can't remember. Started with a letter A I believe, but the two of them, they in this world of, you know, gamer humour, and I mean, the kind of stuff that I was making Male Restroom Etiquette and stuff. I mean, just sophomore humour. These two were just undeterred. making beautiful and unashamedly woman made machinima. Like just the most gorgeous sets and the, you know, just such attention to detail on costuming and hair styling and elements that, you know, frankly, guys are pretty much idiots about most of the time, you know, and the they were just so that the level of detail of what they would do, I wish that more of their work was was out there. But this is and I hope that she would agree too and not be upset that I say this, this is definitely the best. They did lots of good work. But this is if you know if you needed to see just one film to get a sense of what Britannica Dreams and, Michelle, what they were about and what they did. This was kind of a pinnacle for them. Really. I think it was the right combination of you know, this is kind of a classic story. A story that's not overly sentimental. Right, you know, and they're yes, some of some of the other I think some of the other subject matter that they chose was more of a traditional Western sentimentality thing, which is fine. There's an audience for that. But this I think, because of its roots in Japanese culture there, there's just not that much of an element of that woven into the fabric of the story. To me that makes it just magical. And and then just visually it's Yeah, even even though the the this is one of the films that I'm I think most disappointed on how well the upscaling did. There's just limits to what you know these stupid computers can do. But yeah, anyway, nonetheless. Wonderful story and the sound is just terrific. I mean, it's it's it's you It's great. So it's one of my all time favourites. It was extremely inspirational to me as well, Damien. And Michelle was always so generous when I would ask questions about same thing as you trying to get the most out of the Sims two. Yeah. She was always so polite and so responsive. And I keep in touch with her and Frank, on a limited basis nowadays, and they're still doing well. So that's great.

Tracy Harwood 35:26
And the, the co director was somebody called Kehri Batal. Carrie Batal.

Phil Rice 35:34
Carrie, why did I think it started with a

Tracy Harwood 35:37
K? K h era? Carrie? Carrie? Carrie? Carrie HTRI. Okay,

Phil Rice 35:45
that's yeah, that makes sense. That rings, right. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 35:47
Well, you're absolutely right. It's a milestone film. And I'd like to remind listeners that when you go to put your imagination back at a time, in which machinima was 1000s, and 1000s of people were interested in it. And we were all inspired by somebody who took a step forward. So you have all of this, as Phil points out this sort of humorous, semi romantic, goofy kind of films made with The Sims. And then suddenly this film comes out. And it's like a classic Disney Animation. You know what I mean? Everything is flawless. It's a beautiful story. The music and narration is just perfect. Everybody was just stunned by how great this film, wasn't it, it inspired everybody, because it showed you what could be done. And that's what we were all waiting for. We're waiting for the next person to show us what you could do with this game or what you could do with that game. And that was exciting. And it is still exciting today to think about that. Although machinima is in a different place. More so than any other film I've ever worked on as a sound designer. This one was a real creative experience for me, because I had strong emotional reactions to different scenes in different environments. And I would try out literally literally dozens of layered sound effects, to create the sound effect of snow of certain types of winds in and outside. And it became such an obsession to me that I would dream about the, the sound, you know, so for me working on this project was a creative act, inlike simply doing a craft job. And I was really proud that Michelle felt so good about the sound design and how it blended in with her. And that's what I wanted. I didn't want the sound to be to stand out. I wanted it to be part of the story that it evoked the story, and I think it did that. So it's a great choice. And if any film you want to choose out of the 30 year, watch this one, it would be a great choice. It's a really, really good film, and the original Kwaidon series of stories by Lafcadio Hearn is a great source. I don't know why more machinima filmmakers don't draw from these sorts of sources because they're perfect for machinima.

Phil Rice 38:15
Yeah, so we've got a collection now, that's ready to go of about 30 of films that are of, as you can see, from just our four picks there that there couldn't be more, four completely different, you know, approaches to storytelling slash filmmaking. And as you go into the collection, there's, there's even more variety there, of every genre you can think of, I think, so I hope that you all enjoy it, we are going to put the link to that out there, we're going to start promoting it. I'm going to be working on a kind of a trailer of sorts that I hope will give like a brief glimpse of all 30 films, get out there. But we want we want people to know about these. This is. And it's an important part of the history this and these can be a source of inspiration. If you're someone who doesn't just like hearing about machinima, but actually likes making it or aspires to make it I think a lot of the people who listen here are involved in some kind of creative production of some kind. These are a great source of inspiration to see. To me this is like. It's like going back and listening to Led Zeppelin one. And remembering that at the time, they had an eight track recorder and to see what Jimmy Page and his engineer did with eight tracks. It's astounding. In a similar sense. This is when we had a lot less to work with it was a lot more just elbow grease and skin of your teeth and figure something out. There were no games with built in machinima tools, there was no such thing. You know. And so to me, that's, it's inspirational for that reason. And I think even if you're just getting started, these can be inspirational for that reason that we're gonna mention Tom Jantol again. But he he's bits because he, for so long proclaimed just how important it is to just open your mind and focus on what you want to convey and just find the way to do it. Don't listen to any preset rules. Don't stay within the confines of one tool. It's like tying your hands. He's so right. You so right. So this, this collection is just a really beautiful selection of films that demonstrate people who did that, who, who pulled in friends with the right skills, and figured out how to make their films. I don't think any of these are fully solo efforts. It was all about people working together and leveraging the strengths of friends and and the support of each other too. Yes, so that's that's the Machinima community we, we remember and that we encourage even today, even though it looks different, but that's still the principles are still the same. So thanks for tuning in. We'll, we'll see if we feel like revisiting and highlighting a few more of these films at another time. But check out the whole collection. The link will be in the description or on the screen here. And thanks for joining us. I'm Phil This is Ricky, Tracy and Damien. And thanks for tuning in. See you next time. Thank

Ricky Grove 41:34
you. See ya.