Damien Valentine 00:55
Hello and welcome to the December edition of And Now For Something Completely Machinima. Happy Holidays to everyone who's listening and watching is joined by my fellow macinima people. Tracy Harwood. Hi, Phil Rice. Hello. And of course, Ricky Grove. Hey. Alright, so this week, we're going to be talking about Phil's film, but I believe he got some news that it was announced the day after we recorded last month. So this is like we're all very excited about. So Phil, what are you going to tell us?

Phil Rice 01:36
Yeah, so Reallusion has released a new tool that works with well I think it's, it's mainly intended to work with with iClone. But it's an area that I've been keeping an eye on and was right on the verge of dipping my toe into experiment with and that is, these different technologies that are out there that can take the input from a webcam, for example. And extract from that motion data. Specifically, with specifically regard to the to facial animation. There's a couple of different tools that were that's being experimented with, in a similar vein as like ElevenLabs and Leonardo, you know, these little pop up companies experimenting with that. One of them is specifically green screen footage, and it will try to extract from that motion data that you can import into whatever tool and then there's another one that's meant to capture it live. And Reallusion has entered into that market with a really nice showing the tool is called Accuface. And it does both of those approaches. You can hook up actual motion capture equipment, like if you've got some sophisticated like the Rococo thing, you know, where it holds the camera out in front of your face. And basically, without any pointers or any stuff stuck to your face. Like we've seen, you know, in the making of Avatar movies like that, it actually does a very good job of you know, kind of calibrating to the face that it's looking at, and capturing all the little intricate details of the face animation. Reallusion has been pioneering in this area for a while now, there Accurig tool, which is now just built into iClone And I think I think into character creator as well. Or maybe it's character creator, which built in, you can take any model basically, and it will looking just looking at it at a model with no bones for animation or anything, it will put in a proper skeleton in there and let you tweak it. And it's just if you follow the instructions that tool gives you it's extremely effective at so you can grab a model from anywhere and basically add that skeleton to it. Now they've taken it to the next level with this Accuface because basically any face that's put in front of Accu face, by way of a camera have of really any any quality camera and it will help you calibrate where the eyes are exactly where the mouth is and all of that. And then we'll capture a performance either from video or from live interaction, including head turns and all the different facial expressions and capture it all into clean and usable motion data. So it's a pretty big deal and it's there were I saw some people on one of Reallusions forums or Facebook groups or something kind of belly aching a little bit about the price because if you've if you've been using real illusions product line for a while you find that it's certainly not a one time purchase, getting involved with with iClone and that that pipeline. You know, of course, the main software updates every few years. And they offer very generous upgrade discounts for people that have the previous version. But, you know, you kind of need a budget to I'm sure Damien can attest as well that you know, to, to have the toolkit that you need. It's a regular expense, and this is yet another, this is an additional expense, because not everybody needs this. But people who are involved in what we're doing to very, very useful tool, there's really, there's no other way to get the information quite this way without some kind of a very, very high end, professional kit, including hardware. And this is something that for a few $100 I believe it is it's silly that I don't know the price, like right off the top of my head, because I purchased it like eight hours after it was released. I haven't gotten to use it yet. Because I'm not on the project. I'm not yet on the on the project that needs it. But I knew right away, okay, this, this is something I know that I need. Yeah. And the idea of having it from company like Reallusion, where there's going to be some support involved and where it's a, you know, a community a product that has a community around it, but it isn't just community support it, you know, it's actually got the official stamp.

Phil Rice 01:51
Its not a Christmas list thing. So it's what you say?

Phil Rice 06:16
Not for me. No, no. Got it or a new face. A new face would be a good Christmas list for me.

Ricky Grove 06:43
I don't know. Yeah.

Phil Rice 06:44
But happy face. I'm good. Yeah. So anyway, it's a it's a big deal. I think it's it's, it's certainly affordable within when you look at it within the context of what tools in this? Yeah. It's well. You still there, Damian. Although

Damien Valentine 07:08
we're having some issues with my connection. Oh,

Phil Rice 07:12
yeah. While you're away, we've made some changes to the show. Okay, technical difficulties are no longer allowed, I sorry, thank you for your service. And maybe some other time. He's still there.

Ricky Grove 07:29
I think the issue of the of the cost is legitimate. But on the other hand, if you compare that high end professional tools, simply buying Maya or Cinema 4d, or some of those is three times the standard times the cost of whatever you end up paying in Reallusion. And also, the other thing is that real illusion has just gotten more professional and more quality as they as they've gone. That's why they're so popular. And they're doing so well. That because they don't release buggy applications. They fix things that come up.

Phil Rice 08:14
They fix things. But no, no, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yeah. They don't release buggy things and just let it be. That's right. They're, they're in continual development, what I really respect about them is that they have, they have moved themselves into the same category, as, you know, Autodesk type that that it has here of software. And yet, comparatively, the price to get involved with their stuff is very, very reasonable by comparison. Like, I mean, Autodesk and most of, you know, the higher end Adobe software and things like that, man, it's pricey stuff. And it always has been, yeah, and Reallusion could get away with that. If they wanted to just target just the professionals market, which is what Autodesk and those other software's, do you know, they're not interested in our use of it. No, not really. You know, it's it's people with a bigger budget. Reallusion could do that. But they have not. And I think that's, I think that's deliberate, that they're deliberately remembering the people you know, the the amateur community like us that have been involved with it for many years, so I appreciate that. Anyway, it looks like a really exciting tool. Great.

Ricky Grove 09:33
Damien, you were gonna tell us the price.

Phil Rice 09:36
He's muted right now.

Ricky Grove 09:38
You're muted Damien.

Damien Valentine 09:40
I can never Yeah. So I was looking at the price and that cause my connection is, I don't know Oh,

Ricky Grove 09:45
no, even the Zoom is upset. But the big thing on Oh god, I've

Damien Valentine 09:51
got the figures in front of me and that seems to so it's, they're currently doing us a launch special which is half price. So the half price is $250. And the full price will be $499. Nine. Yeah, I don't know when that expires because it doesn't say but hopefully by, it won't have expired by the time this goes out. So if you're thinking about it,

Ricky Grove 10:14
get it, now's the time to get it. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 10:17
And there is a trial version as well. So you can download that and give it you can produce 10 videos, I think the limit is, or use it 10 times for 30 seconds each to you know, to get a hang the handle of it, which is what I did. And by the time I had a pretty good video, so that convinced me to spend the money.

Phil Rice 10:37
Sure. And I'll reiterate to that there are some some other quite a bit more affordable tools that aren't going to be as as sophisticated or necessary, you shouldn't expect the same level of result. But if you just don't have a budget for it, but you still want to do something like this, maybe we'll cover those, maybe I'll plan to cover that. Next month as my news item, I'll quickly go through a review what those alternative tools are for, for webcam to motion, basically is the category. And there's some neat stuff out there, that's that's relatively inexpensive, at least right now. Because a lot of them are in beta and stuff. So I was really surprised given that there's those tools, not a one of them is final, the alternatives. They're all in beta, they're all very early. And here's Reallusion steps out. And this is a fully functional product that does, it does it in multiple ways, like no other product does that no other product in the category can accept the input from pre recorded video, or from camera. It's just wonderful that and that they kept a lid on this, I didn't even know they were working on it. So it's very, very smart move, especially with all the emphasis that they've done on you know, meta human, and and you know, creating these very realistic characters, that's a big part of their market, maybe not so much how I use it, but it's a big part of their, their market for people who are doing stuff really advanced stuff with Unreal to get these realistic human characters. And if you're going to have a realistic human character, part of what makes it look real in video, is realistic motion. And they have seen that and actually, what I believe it's James Martin is kind of leading the initiative, he's actually going around the country, and they're doing live Expo type. Sign up, you know, training for real like full body mocap, how to work with it, how to work with the hardware, and how to actually get it all the way into the workflow using iClone or character creator, very savvy on their part. Amazing. Yeah, been in Atlanta and a couple different other places. They're travelling around doing that. They seem very excited about it. So yeah, it's there. They've clearly got this, this part of animation as a as a priority. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 12:59
that's great. Yeah, I've been really impressed with it as well. I tried to trial and I was put that clip together, I just repeated some lines from Heir to the Empire to test out was easy when the character voice and he just seems so much more lively than when I tried to enter making his face by hand. And some of the voice actors have been saying they want to give it a try. So I've got to figure out how to direct them. So they can read the script, but also

Phil Rice 13:32
they could record a video of their performance. And you could bring it in. So yeah, that's,

Damien Valentine 13:36
I need to figure out a way so that I can maybe draw a map of the set and say, well, you're gonna be here. And these other characters are here. And maybe you look over here at some points. Exactly. Yeah. So I never had to think about anything like that before. So going around my head for the last few weeks. How am I going to do this? Because they they want to give it a try just to see they've done it and they're excited for it. Oh, that's

Phil Rice 13:59
very interesting. I'm curious to see how you work out that problem. Yeah, that would Yeah, it would be fun on

Damien Valentine 14:05
that. Yeah, I will because I'm using the recordings I've got so far. The other thing is I've been doing the the facial animation myself, my face is not the most expressive face but I've been trying to give it a go and I just not moving my mouth. So I've still got the lip sync from their recording because the lips thing is still really good. But I can do the other expressions and it combines them together quite nicely.

Ricky Grove 14:31
Right You can layer the the various animation takes you do, which is another great thing about the programme. Sure.

Tracy Harwood 14:42
All sounds fascinating.

Damien Valentine 14:43
Tracy, do you want to say anything about it? No,

Tracy Harwood 14:46
I haven't had a go with it. But it just sound absolutely incredible. I think that's definitely going to be a one on on my list. I haven't really found any good. You know, reasonably priced facial animation tools that we have We can use other than the sort of the big expensive stuff. But I do remember reading some time ago, and I think I put something on the blogs, it must be several months ago now, where Reallusion, were using a different type of technique, which wasn't really looking at muscle movement, but was looking at how the surface of the skin moved, which was an entirely different approach to the way that most of the other facial mocap stuff actually works. And that's, that's what they used on Avatar 2. And that's what, you know, led them into kind of new developments around that, I guess. And my my thoughts would be that what you're talking about is one of the products that come out of that set of developments. So it's kind of a different way of producing the facial animation, I would guess. It's really interesting stuff.

Phil Rice 15:58
This isn't their first tool in the marvellous facial animation thing they had, they have another one that exists for quite some time that used an iPhone, something about the iPhones camera could capture that information. And you could use that. And actually, I never got to try that. And I'm not sure now that I ever will have to because this this tool seems to be able to pull that off just through a regular. Yeah, nice web camera. So I

Tracy Harwood 16:25
mean, I don't know if you see if you've ever had a look at this. But you know, when you sign up for biometric, you know, things like facial recognition, biometric facial recognition, he's seen the images that those scans creative your face, you wouldn't recognise yourself, you look ancient, because the scans goes below surface, and then sort of do some kind of modelling so that you've got, like, different layers of your face and the image that it produces. It's bizarre, but that kind of, and that's all done with webcam technology. So if if what we're talking about is an integration of that kind of level of depth of analysis. With, you know, with animation tools, I think, I think there's, you know, there's going to be vast improvements to where this kind of technology can be used in the very near future, I would have thought.

Ricky Grove 17:20
And when they start adding, adding an AI to it, it's actually even better. Yeah. Which I guarantee Reallusion is trying to work out.

Phil Rice 17:30
I think, I think they'll be among the first to really properly integrate that into a high end commercial product like this, I fully expect it, I have no reason to think it like there's, they're keeping a nice tight lid on it. It's like when it's like trying to find out when the next Tool album is going to come out, you'll never tell. Right? It's just all of a sudden, one day, there it is. So that's that's Reallusion's got. They keep up tight lips,

Damien Valentine 17:58
I believe this some AI actually in this plugin. Now, the way it interprets the facial animation, because you wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, one of the things you do is you do performance, but you have to do that sort of calibration of your face to different expressions. So you need to rise right by this. You do the leader. And you can calibrate that. And then it'll go back to the recording or the live video. And it knows how to read the moods of the expressions you're making and calibrate the performance accordingly. And that's obviously going to be AI driven in some capacity. I don't know how it works. So I just know, there's something that they talked about kind of briefly on the on the website work.

Tracy Harwood 18:43
So I've got a little bit of news. Cool. Well, well, what abiding memory do you have of Pink Floyd? Apart from the music? What do you remember?

Ricky Grove 18:57
Their music their album Dark Side of the Moon, or the pigs over the great illustration with a pig over this stacks. smokestacks of animals out of animals, right?

Tracy Harwood 19:10
Yeah. Do you remember the worms coming out of the the apple ricer, or whatever it was the potato ricer people being ground up? And do you remember that?

Phil Rice 19:21
We don't need no education?

Tracy Harwood 19:24
Yeah, well, believe it or not Pink Floyd. Like we just launched an animation competition for their 50th anniversary release of Dark Side of the Moon album. I couldn't believe it was 50, 50. That dates us, doesn't it?

Ricky Grove 19:43
I think Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 19:46
Yeah. Well, I was a little shocked at that. Anyway, what they're calling for is any copyright cleared form of animation that can be submitted to this contest, and they're looking for people to take a fresh take on that album. The deadline is really quite tight. It's the 31st of December. I'm guessing there's gonna be a lot of submissions, but there's some stunning prizes for it. 100,000 pound prizes to the winners and some really significant stuff. Yeah. And also, great panel, reviewing the work so Pink Floyd's Nick Mason is going to be involved and also that well known director Terry Gilliam, even, among several others. Awesome. So I think you know, there seems to be an effort here being made to think about what this album means to the next generation of, of animators, which is, which is really cool. So if you've, if you've got time and opportunity, the 31st of December, isn't that far away? Get your animation fingers going, I think. Yeah, after after

Phil Rice 20:57
fire up Halo. And I think, get the ideas going. Yep. Well, I

Damien Valentine 21:02
luckily, Machinima is fast, you know, a fast turnaround. So any of our listeners and viewers should be able to turn something out and submit it. And I wish you luck. Yes.

Tracy Harwood 21:14
That might be the challenge, I think, because that that will be as ever one of the

Damien Valentine 21:18
iClone of Moviestorm tools that should if you're one of those users, then you should be in luck, at least for submitting,

Phil Rice 21:30
testing to see if anyone attempts to use you know, Midjourney or Runway or some kind of AI generated thing for this, given the questionable copyright nature of that whole enterprise. How do they evaluate copyright of something like that if they assuming that given detect that it was made with that? There's some interesting stuff. I'm not going to have have the time to construct something specifically for that, but I'm gonna watch what is submitted with interest because there's a lot of ways people are creating animation nowadays. But you know, from Unreal Engine all the way, you know, across the spectrum, some some interesting possibilities there, so I'll watch

Ricky Grove 22:13
for me. Yeah,

Phil Rice 22:15
there you go. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 22:18
That funny little walk they do.

Damien Valentine 22:23
Yeah, we'll definitely have to come back and talk about some of the submissions that we see. Yeah. So yes. Yeah, for sure. All right.

Tracy Harwood 22:31
That's my that is my only news really, but actually, I think it it links quite nicely to what Phil's gonna tell us a little bit about and in details, but

Damien Valentine 22:38
it's good to have a in early so because this there's more time to actually submit something if they want. Alright, so let's move on to the film. So Phil what have you chosen for us this month?

Ricky Grove 22:51
Oh my God, here it comes.

Phil Rice 22:54
So yeah. From if you've watched the show for a while, you know that I have a like for you know, silly let's play. I don't mean silly in a derogatory way. But I mean, you know, satirical sadistic Pop Performance is stick sadistic particularly with The Sims for some reason. I don't know I have some kind of grudge against the Sims. But every single one of them is, you know, mean spirited grinder or something. That's right. This one is titled I abducted my entire neighbourhood in The Sims four.

Ricky Grove 23:38
Just the title makes you want to laugh.

Phil Rice 23:41
And it's by a guy who's been doing Let's Plays for a while. Under the the YouTube channel name, Let's Game It Out. He has this his voice is very it's like a very produced sounding voice, you know, heavily compressed almost like a radio or TV type. announcer voice I don't know what his background is in that regard, or if it's just what he chose for this, but so it it reads in this almost old timey television type voice of you know, I don't know how to describe it. Maybe Ricky will have an idea of how to describe it. But it but then the Yeah, the content is, you know, this guy's a psychopath. I mean, it's he. I won't get into the I won't give away the entire story here. But basically, he starts up a game of The Sims 4 and a duck's a sim keeps him locks him in a house with bare furniture, hardly any furniture at all, locks him in there, and then just starts obsessively painting him and hanging pictures of the guy on the walls. Like if you imagine this as a city Aereo Oh, and by the way, the lead character doing all of this the abducting and the painting and the sadism? It's Keanu Reeves. It's Keanu Reeves. You know from the late matrix slash cyberpunk, long haired, bearded? Yeah. John Wick era. It is it is Keanu Reeves. Which it to me adds an additional level of funny to it because Keanu Reeves is whatever psychopath, you know is on on the scales, I get the impression that Keanu Reeves is on the other end of the spectrum altogether. Just that he's just like a ridiculously nice guy. Right? So yeah, that's, that's, that's it. This This reminds me of who was that Graystillplays about I built a 5000 mile hallway or whatever. And then he just puts the Sims through this, and this is that type of thing. And he ends up with quite a collection of, of sins. The title is a spoiler. As to what ends up happening, yes, he abducted his entire neighbourhood. It's just absolutely my kind of humour. It's, it's, it's humour that I think if I showed it to my wife, she'd questioned my mental health. Like, she'd wonder what's wrong with me? Out Loud, you know, what's the matter with you? Why it's so cruel. It's so mean. It is. It's mean. It's cruel. It's, I love it. I absolutely love it. I don't know how some of okay, I know a bit about how The Sims works. So I know enough about it to know that like some of the stuff that he kind of the video plays out as if it just unfolded and just happened and he improvised his way through it. But there's some of this stuff that's, that requires a little bit of planning and manipulation of the game and stuff behind the scenes to make it happen. I don't care. Like it doesn't spoil it at all for me, because this is a performance. This is a essentially a really sick comedy sketch. In the guise of a Let's Play, which is, as far as Graystillplays, my favourite videos are grey, so plays the ones where he's doing that, where he's acting almost like this just happened. Whoa, whoa, this, I just stumbled into this. Truth is to come up with ideas this good this sick and this funny. There's planning involved. I really respect this craft Cardo. Yeah, it's just wonderful stuff. What did you guys think of it? Well,

Ricky Grove 27:45
you know this though those awful horror movies series called Saw where they put these groups usually if teens or younger people in these horrific moral situations and torture situations, those are so bad, the squirm factor is off the charts. However, you take that concept and you put it in a cartoon. And remember Roadrunner and coyote Wily Coyote, coyotes always getting chopped up in magically violent show. That's right, exactly. So you put them in a cartoon situation and it becomes funny. And you you lose that moral tone. I mean, I was saying, hey, it's sadistic. It's mean, I was being sarcastic about it. Of course it is. Because somehow it's safe to do it to lifeless animated character, obviously, lifeless animated characters. You know what I mean? Yes, so you can be, you can be a sadist. And it works because it's funny, because if you think of it, the subject is a serial kidnapper come artists. I mean, if you did a real life version of that, it would be horrifying. You know, you'd have it just terrible. Plus, I think the the tone of the humour is a kind of very, very black humour, which is so modern. And so if you look at the go through Netflix and several of the other things, you'll find that almost all of the comedies nowadays, unless they're romantic comedies are black humour accommodates, because because now audiences are conditioned to know that there the humour is on two levels. There's the obvious joke, and then there's this underneath a darker tone to it, that sort of meanness to the whole thing. You know, I also think that you were talking about the narrator, the narrator it's his tone of voice. And I when you said it was highly compressed that made so much sense because the the upper register the higher tones are emphasised. He's over the lower it's a drier sound, which gives the edge to his voice. And he's already doing this sort of, I don't know, slightly patronising tone of voice as if somehow, not only are all of the Sims characters fools, but the audience watching the video are stupid as well. You know, he's has got this holier than thou kind of thing oh, let's do bad. Ah, he's little sarcastic asides. It's just brilliant. And his upsetting his use of the game mechanics, changing things around and then plant it making it look like oh, he made a mistake. And now he's going to fix it. You know? Obviously, he's worked all of that out. He's written it all out. Yeah, I mean, it's clear, you can make a good film like that. My only problem with the film was that it was too long.

Phil Rice 30:56
It I think,

Ricky Grove 30:57
I think it could have made the point better. But then again, I asked myself in my notes, I can say, well, what? What exactly is the point of this? Review? Do you guys know what part of it is? Other than to put these characters in the situation? Make them your score mud? I don't know. But anyway, there's marvellous, I just loved it. It's great.

Tracy Harwood 31:28
It's really interesting to hear you say that, because I've got very similar comments, actually. But, but I wonder to what extent this guy really is a tormentor. And, and the length is probably a deliberate choice as well. Maybe? What

Ricky Grove 31:42
tormenting the viewer?

Tracy Harwood 31:44
hadn't really? Yeah, maybe. Anyway, my comments. Well, I don't know if you remember that many, many years ago, I'm sure you wouldn't remember this many years ago used to see quite a lot of Sims movies, doing, you know, cruel unmentionable things with the characters. Because that's the only way you could get them to act. I remember the ILL Clan telling me about how they used to torture the, the Sims characters to get them to do different things before they kind of moved in to Second Life and what have you. And I remember also RoosterTeeth guys tried to produce a series was it called the Strangerhood. And that was a that was a bit torturous as well with Sims characters. And they got a bit fed up with it, because it took so much effort to actually, you know, get these characters to do what they really want. But don't kind of get the impression that that's quite the same as what this this guy is doing. And it's this kind of sadistic humour in tormenting these characters that really kind of shines through this. And, and he really kind of, you know, rams it home, but there's a huge amount of effort that has gone into doing it, I would suggest it's probably done over many, many hours, if not days of running the Sims. Indeed. But I You know, I've never really been a Sims player. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry too much about that. But But I think it's really, you know, the interesting choices, the creator, makes that seem to give him a role of something a bit like a praying mantis really, and, and, and a predator and it comes, you know, by the end of it, you, you clearly get the sense that he is indeed a predator. Because he starts out wanting to sort of, you know, position this as wanting to socialise and ends up wanting to see what happens when he starts really restricting the, the other characters and ultimately, his attempt to sort of capture as many votes these kinds of folks as he can, and keep them locked up forever. Yeah, seems to be his kind of, you know, the where he gets to it. And it's that kind of getting darker and darker throughout. Yes, that makes it really quite interesting. He's like, an empathic kidnapper, doing it for love for some reason. And you kind of got to ask why Rusty, that sort of central character that he starts out with kidnapping, you got to you got to think why on earth does that guy keep going back? There's something really quite disturbing in that relationship between the two of these that I think is hidden from us somehow. Yeah. And then there are obviously lots of kind of, you know, there's a bit of toilet humour in here, which is, you know, reasonably funny. But there's also something about the observer being observed And that's, I think that's quite, you know, the way the way that that relationship is developed between, you know, the guy creating the film, what he's apparently doing with the character, and also what he's doing with us as the audience. I think that's an interesting. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 35:21
Yeah. But he's inevitably an unreliable narrator.

Tracy Harwood 35:26
That's for sure. For sure. Yeah. And that's, I've not really seen that done before, I don't think in machinima, and he gets, you know, seems to sort of suggest he's getting more and more daring with his sadistic deeds. And when he starts sort of, you know, doing all these paintings and sticking them all over the place. It's kind of like, he's kind of taunting people to sort of or, you know, the, the other the other players and the audience to you know, sort of catch him out in what he's doing. Somehow, just, you know, say, no, no, no, you're not doing that. Right. And it's almost like he's kind of daring us in some way. And certainly in the in the, in what he's portraying. It's clear what he's doing is daring, the other folks there to come and rescue Rusty. But of course, it's just a game and no one does. Or if they do, they're kind of captured as well. So that in many ways, he's using these these paintings like flypaper. And that's kind of an interesting concept as well, I think. Yeah. But the other side of that is presumably, the fact that he's put all those things up around the sort of local community and he's catching these people. That is the bit that's enabled him to make a profit out of what he's doing. And he only kind of skimmed over that a little bit. So yeah, and, you know, he ends up putting an art store on his front yard, and he's saying, Oh, I've made a million and a half bucks out of selling these and whatnot. But it's, you, there's a lot missing, I think, ultimately, I kind of concluded it's really sick. But it is done is really sick. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this in Sims. I think it's really well edited. And I kind of ended up asking, Is this a study of Rusty or a study of the creator, or both, and it's in it's kind of pitched as a study of Rusty, where, you know, the creator's kind of talking about his vulnerability is stupidity. You know, the isolation that he's, you know, he's he's put through and how fragile he is as a, as a character. And maybe that, you know, maybe that maybe that's true. But I think what also may be true, is that and somebody puts out a comment on the on the channel that I thought actually probably summed it up pretty well, which is, along the lines of, well, it's a pretty good job that this guy's a YouTuber, because if he wasn't, if it would probably be out there doing this in real life.

Ricky Grove 38:23
Oh, my God.

Tracy Harwood 38:26
And I suspect that may be closer to it. So yeah. Excuse me. That was what I thought about it. Anyway.

Ricky Grove 38:35
Great casting really, really insightful comments. Right.

Damien Valentine 38:40
So a couple of things that came to mind when I watched it was first, the way that the use the painting that you can take a picture of something in the game to use as reference. I didn't know the Sims had that as a capability. So I learned something just about the game from that, because as a game feature, I've got a copy of Sims 4, I never really used it that most of that was quite educational. And then I was thinking about it from the perspective of what the game is capable of doing. Obviously, the game is not really designed for players to be psychopaths in it. Obviously, you can engage in crime and stuff like that, but not to this level. So the the way that this Rusty and the other Sims act, they're not programmed to act like they've been kidnapped, because that's not what the game was designed for, which adds to the humor of the fact that they don't try and escape

Ricky Grove 39:41
because they're just normal. They're acting normally. Yeah. And

Damien Valentine 39:48
they don't try and no one comes to the rescue or anything like that.

Ricky Grove 39:51
Police or anybody investigating these people's being missing

Damien Valentine 39:56
the fact that You know that they put the paintings out all over the place. And he was, there's one bit where you put stock in a cafe, and there's these two women sat at the table, and he puts them up. And then he makes a joke about how like kills the conversation and the next shot, the table is empty, because they've left. Now, obviously, he that made all that happen. But he's aware of what he's doing is extremely wrong. And he's just doing it anyway to see what could happen in the game worlds. And I thought it it's a very sick, dark kind of humour. I definitely would not want to watch it as a live action film. Like, I've got no interest in watching the Saw films or anything like that, because it just doesn't appeal to me. But, Ricky, you write this, right? It's animated somehow, it makes it more watchable and funnier. Indeed,

Ricky Grove 40:47
indeed. A huge sense. The humour comes from the fact that you expect one thing, and you get something else. And you're surprised and you react to that difference by laughing at it. Yeah. So you have a guy that's playing Sims 4. And he says, I'm gonna go out and get some friends, he gets some friends, and then he kidnaps the guy. But he says it in such a normal way, as if somehow this is what you do in Sims 4. And that's what makes it funny. And I think the creator the film Saw, knows that source of humour, and wanted to see how far he could go in the game with it. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 41:34
Because people watching this are going to be somewhat familiar with the game. I mentioned a lot of the viewers who are watching. So they're going to know that's how the characters behave. Because if you watched it live action, and you thought, why aren't they tried to escape? Why it's no longer trying to find out where they will gone? And it just wouldn't work. So yeah, being familiar with the game and its limitations in the way, not only limitations, but the way it's designed. That, that's, that's what sells it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I

Ricky Grove 42:05
think it's part of a tradition of gaming. You know, what, as I've gone into great depth in learning Elden Ring, I've discovered, I mean, I've put in 1000 hours on that game so far. And I've discovered all sorts of people making content for it. And what astounds me is how many different ways you can turn the game against itself? Do you know what I mean? And I think in a way that that impulse, is what propels some machinima filmmakers to use games like Sims 4, because they see all of this bourgeois normalcy. And they want to turn it upside down. They want to they want to play with them in different ways. And the game without the developers, even even knowing it, have created an environment in which that can occur.

Tracy Harwood 43:09
You know, this guy, I looked on his channel, his whole channel is filled with videos where he's doing kidnaps of NPCs in games is

Ricky Grove 43:22
a little, he's found a niche. That's right. Let's see, that's the thing that's interesting about YouTube and other ways of earning a living. I mean, the fact that you can earn a living on like, for example, doing game builds, for Elden ring, there's people that are making, you know, six figures doing that, because they have 100,000 people watching, but that has created this sort of interesting place that has made the difference between professional and amateur very, very slim. Yeah, because is a professional, somebody makes their living, essentially doing what, off of their creative creations. So why not? If this guy's making a living, he's a pro. And if he finds something that he does really well and has a strong response, he keeps doing it. I think that's smart business. Yeah. So

Phil Rice 44:25
yeah, there are worse jobs, that's for sure. Or worse jobs. One of the things that I loved about his approach and this is actually true of The Sims in general. And it always has been, you know, this, this, these animated characters are put onto the screen and they have facial expressions and nonverbal body language. And, you know, we never really get to know what they are actually thinking or feeling. You get an idea there'll be some little emote, emote little, you know, icon that'll show up and okay, you can tell that they're angry. Or sometimes they're just raising their eyebrows about something and making some funny face. And it's kind of like if you ever if you've ever done this yourself are gone with someone who who likes to go like to the airport to people watch they call it or to go to the mall and people watch. And sometimes from a from a distance, where you can just see the interactions happening. And you see expressions and nonverbal movements, but you can't hear what's being said. And it's only natural writers do this a lot I find, who are of a kind of a little bit mischievous temperament is they'll, they'll fill in the dialogue of what they think is going on. And it's very funny. Sometimes, you know, in our imaginations, a lot of times are just wired that way. Well, the Sims is built on a, it's an entire world of characters, where you are compelled to do that, because that information is missing. And so what he has done here is instead of just trying to fill that gap in with what's natural, he's got this unnatural narrative, beautiful. And he's interpreting those. So a lot of the shots are just, you know, that Rusty turns and kind of raises his eyebrows in a weird way. And then he just basically chooses to interpret that in a humorous way related to his narrative. It's just wonderfully done. Like, if you strip all that away, the game's not really given him a whole lot to go on there. It's the game is not driving his narrative. But it's it's open enough to where he can put that humour into place. And it just works so well. And so much of what's going on on the screen is him essentially reacting to in a very controlled and planned way, but reacting to what the game is giving him with this vagueness of expression. Oh, it's just wonderfully done.

Ricky Grove 47:09
Contrast this movie with Snow Witch made in The Sims as well, yes. Good point. It's the same engine. Okay. My point that I'm trying to make is that good, really great machinima is not about the engine so much as it is about the imagination that artists have encountering the engine. Yes, and seeing what they can do with it, how they can turn it around and play it against itself. I think your film and Red Dead Redemption about that funeral. Guy going into the funeral was one another example of that. You wouldn't think I mean, funerals would occur in Red Dead Redemption. But Red Dead Redemption is about action. It's about, you know, gunfights and going here and interacting with this when they're going to this place. It's not about it's not about somebody having a deep feeling about going to a funeral, a conflicting feelings inside of himself. That's we owe that to your imagination fill in the by the same token, this guy's imagination, although it's a little on the end that has a high squirm factor. If you've really stopped thinking abstract thinking thinking about it. Yeah, it's the same thing. He's using his imagination, based on what the game gives us.

Phil Rice 48:38
Yeah, the game is a palette. The game is a palette. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's the most interesting machinima to me is one where the game is just a palette. Yeah. It's it just happens to be the thing that can generate the imagery, but it's in service of, of someone else's vision or story or comedy sketches, or poem or just looking artistic, whatever it is. Well, look at that success rustic to me than just a recording of someone actually playing the game. Windy has its value has its place. I watch let's play just regular let's play stuff. That's not drama news like this. I watch it very regularly to learn more about a game. I'm interested in stuff like that. And technically, that's machinima, too, but when I use the word, this is the kind of thing I think of where exactly the point is, is turning it into something else. It's transformed. I think

Ricky Grove 49:35
all four of us share that share that opinion. Look at Red vs Blue, one of the one of the most successful machinima series ever made. You couldn't have done that without that game engine. You couldn't because they didn't have to worry about lifting because the guys had helmets. All they had to do is minor animation but That game gave them the opportunity to do their specific type of black, absurdist humour in it, which caught the public's eye, which, which tickled the fancy. So much so that they were able to take that into seven or eight seasons, become a major professional company, and all of that rot. But I think you're right, I think you're absolutely right. It's the game is the palette. I think that's going to be our catchphrase from from now on.

Phil Rice 50:33
Sure. One more thing I'll mention too, when we were in Tracy, were talking about the legendary difficulties of getting the Sims to behave. That's still the case today, I follow several people who make movies in The Sims 4 presently, and it's a regular, a regular quandary even with they've got all kinds of mods and tools to spawn and control things in a certain way. But there's always that little factor of the Sim is just just wants to go. Sometimes just goes and does what it wants. And that was true. When I made Male Restroom Etiquette. If you remember I released that outtakes reel after of where I had had these guys in a restroom, and just constantly forcing them to fight to get all the footage for this fight scene. And at 1.1 just starts breaks down crying. I didn't trigger that at all. He just started we're in the middle of a scene where he says to just stand there. One where a guy was, you know, basically, I had him laying down on the ground to essentially play dead. And just all of a sudden in the middle of filming, the victim just stands up and kind of looks around like yeah, so yeah, there's there's I'm sure there's many, many hours of potential outtakes out there of what people have tried to get these things to Yeah, yeah. So anyway, well, I'm there's such such great comments from from all of you. And I'm glad that that I hesitate to use the word enjoy on this because I think it's it's kind of a mixed reaction. But I knew that would be one that would spawn a lot of discussion. So thank you all very much,

Damien Valentine 52:26
Phil, that was an excellent pick you've chosen this month. And you're right, it did spawn quite a lot of discussion, which I enjoyed being part of and listening to. So I hope our listeners enjoy watching this film as well. And if you'd like to send us any feedback about it or about us, please send us an email to talk at completelymachinima.com You can see your news and everything else on our website, which is also completelymachinima.com. We'll be back next week with another film review. So take care, happy holidays and see you then. Bye. Bye bye bye