Phil Rice 00:45
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and other related technologies. I'm here with my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damian Valentine. Hello, Ricky is away. He's ice fishing in Manitoba. But should be back with us in a couple of weeks. So this, this week, we've got, you know, last year, we kind of adjusted the structure of the show, and put a lot more of the news burden on the blog. And subsequently, we're giving less attention to it here. And now we're kind of as we enter 2024 Here, we're kind of thinking of some ways to feel like maybe the balance needs to correct the other direction. Now we want to incorporate a little bit more news. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening in the world of machinima, particularly in AI, what a year 2023 was for AI just insane. Especially with regard to you know, creative production, AI generated video and audio and images and, and then all the stuff that's happening with virtual production, iClone has released a whole bunch of new tools and Unreal continues to kind of dominate that space. Unity kind of had its slip in the puddle kind of moment, and it still may be righting itself. So it's some interesting stuff. Tracy, why don't you kind of lead us off with what's what's on our minds news wise this week? Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 02:23
so well. Okay, so I want to start with something that I think is majorly important and massively significant as we as we move forward now with with machinima because I think what we've done over the last couple of years is demonstrated that the ground has been returned to the Machinima community well, and truly. So the thing that I want to highlight this week, and was super interested to see was that another machinima film has won a major Film Festival Award this year, last year. And it was it was one that was made in Red Dead Redemption 2, and it was called Hardly Working because it won an award I think, in December time. The film was by an Austrian collective called Total Refusal. And it won European Film Festival's best short. And for those that were at the Milan Machinima Festival last year, it was also actually featured there earlier in that in the year too, so this is this is about last year, but that whole year was pretty significant. I think. It's worth mentioning how that festival works the European Film Festival, because it then gives you a sense of the achievement and for this. Basically, the category European short film is organised by the European Film Academy, in cooperation with a series of film festivals across Europe, where independent juries present the films in candidacy for the award. And last year, there were 29 films from which these participating festivals nominated five films. And then something like four and a half 1000 Members of the European Film Academy voted for the overall winner, which was Hardly Working. So I think that makes this pretty notable, however, that was in competition against both live action films and animation films. Which which I think, you know, it was the only machinima in its category which I think makes us absolutely significant. You know, the fact that it's one such a major award, and in the way that it has done through the through the European Film Academy I think is amazing. And I think it's significant too because this particular festival is one at which there are automatic nominations for the main Film Academy Awards, although this particular category isn't one of them unfortunately. So I wanted to say many congratulations to Total Refusal for this achievement with with a machinima film The first one that I think has won at a major film festival. Let's put that into context then as I think, actually last year was particularly exciting for machinima's broader recognition among professional communities. If you recall, we mentioned Sam Crane's live production of Hamlet in GTA five, which won a stage Award for Innovation in January. And then in April, I was really thrilled to have been invited to the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival for the first extensive overview of experimental machinima at a major film festival for which we've got some reports on our channel that you can see, too. So I think that whole year culminating in what Hardly Working has achieved, really demonstrates the mission whereas a force to be reckoned with among the widest communities of practice, and basically, that's how many years after we said that that would be the case. I mean, donkey's years. So I think that's really that's really important, really significant. And definitely something that I wanted to highlight. Do you want me to go on? I've got another bit of news as well.

Phil Rice 06:20
I just wanted to, can you think of any other instance, where a machinima film went up against No. Live action? And even traditional animation? And and I mean, that's just that's really? That's amazing. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, I think it's quite a tip of the hat to to the filmmakers that that they achieved a quality that could get it past that point. But it's also very interesting in terms of how attitudes may be have started to shift. I think they've been shifting for a while. Yeah, you probably have a better finger on the pulse on this than I would. But, you know, I reflect on stories of old, if you will, where there were attempts to enter, I think famously, didn't some of the, the machinima people tried to enter their film at Tribeca or something along those lines, it was a pretty high profile festival. And they basically got laughed out of the room, the whole thing was very insulting and demeaning and discouraging. And, you know, just to, so it's, I don't know, part of me is, is gratified and grateful to, to hear and it just makes me wonder what the dynamics are behind that is it that, you know, this is a new generation of decision makers now than it was then this is, you know, that happened in what 2005. And so you have the people that make the call on that they've aged out. And now the people that were kids that are making those decisions, so maybe it's as simple as that.

Tracy Harwood 08:05
I think so. But I think there's something else here too, which is the rise of the avant garde film, again, I mean, Ricky would probably be able to tell us a little bit more about that whole kind of avant garde genre genre. But it's something that we see quite a lot of media artists now using, you know, found content using games for their creative work. And I think really, what you've got here is an is an example of a group of, you know, avant garde film film makers, using a game and, and exploring it in a kind of interesting and innovative way. And, but I would say, really, they're probably not necessarily calling it machinima as such, but just avant garde film.

Damien Valentine 08:56
Say, the other thing that probably helps is the graphical quality of the games. Now, it's absolutely not higher than it was in 2005. I mean, this is a Red Dead Redemption film, that looks stunning. You could put it up against any modern animated show, or film and it would be comparable, comparable. But in 2005, you put up something made with quake three against sling that Pixar was doing. Visually, it's not going to stand a chance against it. And I think, even though, in theory, you should be looking at more than just the visuals. There's that element of people can't necessarily get away from just looking at the way it's something looks. Yeah, and I don't mean to demean anyone who made anything in 2005. It's just what games are capable of then is very different from what they're capable of now. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 09:51
you think? Just a little bit. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 09:54
It's also quite interesting to your point there and Damian. It's also quite interesting to me. any of the other festivals that I've been at where machinima has shown like Oberhausen and and also Sam cranes work as well made in GTA5. And that has been and still is a game of choice for the avant garde filmmaker. Which is a shame really, because, you know, there are a lot of other beautiful games that can be used for, you know, for creating really interesting machinima works of which Red Dead Redemption is a great example.

Phil Rice 10:33
What do you think GTA is finding more success in that regard? Is it because it closely imitates a real environment. So it's, I think, maybe the the ability to use it, let's say for social commentary, it just comes much more naturally when it's people in a city, you know, and some games are more fanciful, or maybe sci fi or whatever, and GTA if you if you don't pay too close attention to what the actual objectives of the game are, which are pretty fanciful, and pretty horrific sometimes, if you just look at as a city simulator, then for making let's say topics that are that tend to be favourites among Short Film Fest, you know, short film makers, and you know, the Sundance type pics and stuff. It's a lot of it seems to be about social issues, and stances and stuff. So I wonder if GTA is just better suited for that. It's a little hard to make a commentary that feels modern, on a modern social issue, set in the old west, or set in the the, you know, in in a spaceship and Starfield or something. So maybe that's why GTA is so appealing?

Tracy Harwood 11:58
Yeah, I think I think that's true, I

12:00
think, a lot of sense.

Tracy Harwood 12:02
I don't see, I don't see them moving away from it anytime soon, to be honest, although I do see a trend move more towards the use of Unreal and, you know, the creation of, of assets and story worlds, that the artists themselves then can put more more attention and more detail into so that that would be my, you know, my thoughts on what the trajectory of it is. So it's not probably going to move towards these, you know, more more and more traditional machinima approaches, but more towards more virtual production approaches. Right. would be would be my guess. But I don't see us coming out of the GTA movement anytime soon. Because if you know, six comes out. When's that coming out? Early next year? mid next year?

Phil Rice 12:49
Yeah. Probably in about probably in about 12 months. Yeah. Okay. Well, when that I think they would love to have it done by the holiday season next year. But that seems that seems a little tight. But it'll be soon.

Tracy Harwood 12:59
Yeah, for I would imagine that'll be the perfect next step for some of these, some of these creators. But nonetheless, you know, the the achievement of this film is most definitely noteworthy in the trajectory, and the recognition of machinima in its own right. And the way that it was made is absolutely noteworthy and really impressive. And like I said, many many congratulations to these guys. For for their success well deserved. Absolutely. Shall I go on. Yeah, another one. Then another bit of news. Again very interested to see this one, this is Amazon announcing that it would be making Warhammer 40k shows and movies with the platform, apparently, to have the exclusive rights to make content based on the Games Workshop brand. Now, I was really interested in that particular statement, actually, because we've reviewed a few very successful fanmade machinimas using the game recently, and I wonder what it will mean for those creators in the game that have quite substantial following, including from the game itself, I think, I'm thinking, the folks that created Astartes, which we reviewed few months back if you recall, and which is actually featured on the Warhammer community website. But of course the focus, at least at the moment with the Amazon deal is for film and TV projects. And as I understand that the details of what the first production will be is still to be thrashed out. So I guess it's something we'll be keeping tabs on over the coming months. But why I'm interested in this isn't just because it's happening it's also because Games Workshop has a connection also to Lord of the Rings with its strategy game, and I picked up the very same day that I picked up on that story. The other story, the Warhammer story, that Amazon also sorry that a fanfiction writer for Lord of the Rings have been successfully sued for publishing a book sequel by it by the by the Tolkein estate and by Amazon as well. Now, it's actually a little more complex than it sounds because it would appear that the fan fiction writer had actually tried to sue Tolkien and an Amazon for a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, which they released on Amazon in 2022, in which he kind of basically claimed that they had infringed his copyright. So I think what this is coming down to is who is authorised to commercialise a fanfiction work, and course where the big bucks are involved, such as, in this case with Warner Brothers, also being involved here and Amazon, then a fan is unlikely to be successful. Now it's not transformative work like like machinima might be, of course. But I do think the issue of copyright protection and the convergence of different media platforms for streaming content and the conflation of films and games, and also the increasing professional filmmaking community's recognition of machinima such as when we were talking about the Film Festival award. I think this is going to put increasing pressure on the legal system to actually formally recognise the important role that machinima creators can have in the creative ecosystem across the world. Quite frankly, I, I do not accept. And I'll say that, again, I do not accept the conclusion that has been reached by quite a lot of folks, that takedowns of some creators, that, that, you know, the the these big production channels have forced people to take content offline. I don't think that's, I don't think that's correct, I don't think it should happen, especially because the success of the games themselves, is due to the success of the internet. And that is fundamentally built on the creative endeavour of fan communities, with whom all of these platform channels have benefited over the years. I think it's incomprehensible that they seek to cook the goose that lays the golden eggs. And it's high time in my view, that this whole ecosystem was fully exposed. And that fan rights as creative contributors, as advertisers and as commercial assets for these various stakeholders are established with a more solid foundation. I'll put you some links when this goes up on our website, so you can see the kind of things that I'm talking about. I don't know if you've guys got any comments on that. I know you've got more experience of it than I have in terms of actual content being out there.

Damien Valentine 18:08
Okay, so obviously I'm no means a legal expert and I knew this but obviously with Heir the Empire and making Star Wars fan films, the whole fan fiction side of things is something that I'm quite familiar with. I think this guy who made the Lord of the Rings, fanfiction, nothing wrong with that his mistake was trying to sell it because he does not have permission to do that. If he just written his fanfiction and posted it online for people to read, there have been no problems at all. But his mistake was selling it and then attacking Amazon who have who do actually have permission from the Tolkien estate to create their TV show and sue them for it and obviously that really backfired badly on this guy. I have no idea why he thought that was a good idea because most people I know who write fanfiction or make fan films know that they are playing with someone else's franchise. And some of these franchise owners are very restrictive of what they want fans to do and fortunately luckily with Star Wars George Lucas has always said he wants fans to be creative for as long as they can your money and when he sold Star Wars to Disney that was part of the contract because Disney's is on the they don't really like fans creating stuff but he insisted it was part of the contract they have to honour that and so that's something that's continued on. I don't know too much about what the Tolkien estate views on fanfiction I'm sure there's plenty of lore the Rings fan fiction out there. There's there's a couple of very impressive live action. Lord of the Rings fan films that are free to watch and they've not been taken down because they just been put up there for free and the visual quality on these these match the actual Peter Jackson films, they've gone that the costumes look just as good. The effects work they run into to the Hawks who will make up they look just like the ones in the film's really well acted, and they're not taken down. But he tried to make sure he wrote the story. I haven't read it. So I don't know if it's good or not. So I'm not going to judge it on that. But he should not have tried to sell it without the permission of the Tolkien estate. And my understanding is they probably would not have given him permission to sell the story, because as far as they're concerned, they have JRR Tolkein's work. And Christopher Tolkien is taken when he was still around, because he's now passed away. He took some of his father's notes and completed some of those books. Those are the only things that they will publish them actually have published. And then you get the adaptations of like the Peter Jackson films, and the Amazon TV show, which is sort of based on the film brilliant, but not quite. But it's still it's still all part of it. So you know, I don't know about that. He should not have done that. Because, you know, he doesn't have any control over the Tolkin licence?

Phil Rice 21:10
What kind of what kind of sale did he attempt to do Damien, do you know,

Damien Valentine 21:15
I believe he tried self publishing it through Amazon. And so you could, you know, authors can self publish books through Amazon, and they just get printed on demand. I believe that's what he tried to do.

Tracy Harwood 21:26
No, he had a publisher, and he published he printed and published through the publisher. So it was on a wide scale distribution.

Damien Valentine 21:36
The publisher would have been thinking, well, we shouldn't do that without contacting the Tolkein estate because you think they would be aware of copyrights and stuff like that, given that that's what they do

Tracy Harwood 21:46
copyright in terms of what exactly because he was extending the story.

Damien Valentine 21:51
Yeah, but it's to do with the IP ownership. So if he had written a story that if he'd wrote the story, but every story, right, but didn't place it in the middle earth world, made his own world up, I think I've been completely fine. He can do whatever he likes with it. Because he based it on an existing world that the Tolkien estate owns. That is where the problem lies. So even though he's telling a different story in that world, he doesn't own the world it's in. To me, like, if I made a Star Wars fan film that had nothing to do with any of the movie characters, but it still had lightsabers and, you know, the force. Yeah, stuff like that. But then identifiable? Yeah. And then I tried to sell that. Disney would not be very happy with me for that. And I'm actually now be getting some very angry letters from their lawyers. But if I made a story that wildly I like Star Wars, and it's going to influence my writing, but it had nothing to do with Star Wars at all. No force, no lightsabers, just a space story that had similar kind of adventure tones that Star Wars house, they wouldn't care because I've created my own worlds to do and so there's this whole intellectual property ownership, which is also part of the copyright.

Tracy Harwood 23:11
It's not it's not about that I think it's about the commercialization bit a frightened to that somebody else is gonna make some money. But they're missing I wanted

Phil Rice 23:22
to dig into just a little bit Damien. And so I don't, I don't I don't want you or need you to tell us if you do monetize on YouTube, for Heir to the Empire, but can you tell me would you be permitted to do so?

Damien Valentine 23:45
There are plenty of Star Wars content creators who do monetize their videos.

Phil Rice 23:49
Okay, that's a good way to answer that. And then they would fall in the fanfiction category?

Damien Valentine 23:53
Yeah, I will some people who just do like the talking head commentary.

Phil Rice 23:57
Yeah, that's different to me. Yeah, there

Damien Valentine 23:59
are people who do animations and stuff. Not necessarily to tell a story but just to to you know, make a space battle because they want to write things like that. So the there are people out there who do monetize their videos, I don't know what arrangements they've got with Disney and Lucasfilm. I know that there are people out there who put Star Wars music in their stuff. And obviously that gets

Phil Rice 24:24
Yeah, music is a whole nother ball of wax. Yeah. Because it's, it's one of those things where like, Okay, so the estate objected to, let's say, whatever level of publishing deal that he did, where a product is being created, and then purchased by consumers, and so there's that. Okay, so they object to that. I still would have questions as to why. Why do you object to that? And this isn't even about the law. It's just let's talk just in common law terms here. How does that hurt you? How does that take away from your income? Him selling that, but let's let's just say okay, so that's the thing. But commercial use, of course is much broader than creating a physical product and selling it to people. It's also, Damian, if you were to flip the button and turn on monetize on one of your Star Wars videos by the same legal thinking they would have legit reason to protest you doing that as well and take action against you for it. And to me, those things are in such different, different categories, you know, of commercial use, and yet it's all lumped in there. And I've had guys that

Damien Valentine 25:47
leave comment saying they liked my work. They've been inspired to go out and buy the book because they want to

Phil Rice 25:52
know how that happens all the time. Yeah, absolutely.

Damien Valentine 25:55
And I had one the other day saying he bought the whole trilogy of books, liked him so much. He's just bought all of the Star Wars books from the whole expanding universe. Yeah. And he's been going through like, he's read about 30 of them just from watching my video, or one of my videos and

Phil Rice 26:11
I'm just wondering, like, was there some precedent legally that I don't know about that? You know, someone some third party came along and created a fanfiction that ended up eclipsing or overwriting the original IP, some obscures that, you know, obviously, that didn't happen to Star Wars. It didn't happen to you know, Frank Herbert, and Dune. Nothing like that has happened. But did something like that happened? And that's the precedent or is this just a matter of it was, is it just institutionalised greed? You know,

Tracy Harwood 26:52
I tend to, I tend to go with what you're talking about there, Phil. But like I said, there's no this is now because of what I, you know, started out this particular episode talking about, you know, the fact that major film festivals are now recognising machinima. And, you know, we're talking here about Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar does not have the best name for assigning copyright to works of fanfiction. Which, right? Arguably that is, but on top of that, you know, when we went to when I went to a Oberhausen, and what you'd got there is works being shown being bought by galleries and showcased in, you know, in multiple different ways within gallery environments, but being paid for to do that. Yeah. You know, that's a whole different thing that has not yet been exposed. Now, we've got games that are mixing with film worlds same sort of thing. We've got this convergence of different platforms, we've got big production companies coming in creating all sorts of content, you know, through these kind of commercial deals with the game engines. We're in a different time now. But I think it's high

Phil Rice 28:09
generative. You got generative AI, peeling stuff from all of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then and then there's the question being currently wrestled with of, is any of that commercially viable

Tracy Harwood 28:23
at that? Absolutely.

Phil Rice 28:24
Oh, yeah. There's it's boy, it is a I think it's Hi, Tara simple thing? No, I

Tracy Harwood 28:29
don't think it that. I don't think it is, but I think it's high time, that the actual the, you know, the because because the indies have always been exploited in this in this way. But I think it's more than a high time that the the legal system did actually start to recognise the role of the creative indies in this ecosystem, which is churning out, you know, dollars for lots of stakeholders, some of whom can commercialise that but many of whom get diddly squat for the effort. And yet their work is then exploited in, you know, new expansion packs or new, you know, new new character lines in games, as they you know, release whatever they whatever, whatever it is, they release, I think it's high time this was formally accepted and formally recognised and supported. There

Damien Valentine 29:23
is a case happening that you might want to keep an eye on Tracy is actually about Star Trek. Yes. So there's a cut. I think it was around the time that Star Trek Into Darkness. As JJ Abrams movie was released. There was a Star Trek fan film, I think it was a Kickstarter to make a fan film and they, they reached like a 20 minute video that had already made and they've got some of the Star Trek actors in it, and they're telling a story. So a prequel to the original series of Star Trek and the very impressive production values you think it is, you think it was an official production? They raised over a million dollars to make the full story that they were talking about. And Paramount, started looking into it. And they decided that this was an unacceptable amount of money being raised for a fan film, because why do they need a million over a million dollars to make this. And so there was big legal case. And eventually, that the settlement was they could finish what they'd started when they couldn't use any of the official Star Trek actors. And they had a certain timeframe to finish it. And that was all agreed. And then Paramount released a set of guidelines for fan filmmakers to follow. They're very restricted, like you can only make a 15 minute video, you can't use any Star Trek actors, your budget has got to be below a certain amount. Once you've made your video, you can't make anything else. You can only make one. Or I think maybe you can make two I think if you're doing a two part story, they can be 15 minutes each. But once you've finished your project, you can't make another one.

Phil Rice 31:13
monstrous man, monstrous, unacceptable. I

Damien Valentine 31:17
agree. But it's kind of gone. This is still going on now. Because the Axanar fan film has not been finished. So Paramount is now suing those fan filmmakers for breaching the agreement because they've not actually finished the project, which has been going on for about, they should have finished it by now. It's been about eight years, it's the whole thing kicked off. And to be honest, a lot of Star Trek creators are on Paramount side. Because if Axanar and I hadn't done this thing and raise so much money, Paramount wouldn't have cared and wouldn't have forced these restrictions on people. So the fan filmmakers actually want Paramount to win this one because they've been the Axenar in our team, but having these very tight restrictions forced on them. And that's still going on now. So it's a mess. And I don't know how it's going to end. But it might be one to keep an eye on because precedent for future.

Tracy Harwood 32:14
I think it's high time there was a bit more open debate about this. But I think it's coming because I think, like I said, I think I feel we're in a bit of a perfect storm for this. And I've got another example of it actually do want me to go go on I'll carry on. Alright, so there's so the final bit of news that I picked up on this month was from from from my side of things anyway, was the you remember last month, we were talking about the Cyberpunk movie trailer. And the and we also discussed the kind of Ultimate Edition release. While I create that I came across an official booklet for the ultimate edition called a Booklet for the Ultimate Edition. Now what fascinated me about this was actually that it was called a booklet, not not guidelines, or zine or a handbook or an annual or whatever you call the how tos. But something else. And it's when you look at it, it's a kind of a halfway house between this kind of collectible annual. And yes, it's digital, but I understand that there are also print versions of this available. So it's a kind of a halfway house between that and also a fanfiction zine, a promotional of some sort. It's also a set of guidelines all kind of rolled into one. And it includes lots of little known or cared about facts, tips and hints. Such as, for example, the in game car radio actually has stations on it, can you believe. It's also massive, it's 170 odd pages. And it got me wondering, is this a thing now do other games do this? I had absolutely no idea. I couldn't really find any other examples. We talked a little bit about Elden Ring. And just what, you know, set of guidelines might look for that. And it's kind of incomprehensible that they would even attempt it. So it kind of kind of made me wonder who on earth is this aim? That? Is it maybe for storytellers, because actually, as I was flicking through it, bearing in mind that, you know, this, this, you know, there's these new these new tools are going to be released shortly. As I was flicking through it, there's all this stuff about the game lore, all the backstories in there that you probably wouldn't even find in the gameplay. And of course reflecting on these mod tools that are coming out for this. Is it therefore an attempt to try and claim the story world through through which perhaps they might then be able to keep tabs on it in some way? I don't know. There were a couple of things that I noticed actually when I was looking through it and firstly There wasn't a single mention of the word machinima anywhere in it, which I thought was strange. And strange, because the anticipated role of the expansion of the life of this game is clearly through people creating their own stories using this tool set. And as you know, the stack loads of content that has been created using the Cyberpunk world. So I was kind of fascinated that that term specifically wasn't mentioned. And in about page 83, about halfway through it, there is explicit mention of these new projects. And these new projects are actually films being made with the Cyberpunk world. So there you go. There's another example of this kind of conflation of games and film, and other media formats, weaving around content creators specifically. And presumably, since this one doesn't actually have really an established story world, not in the same way that Lord of the Rings does. It's clearly one that's going to be directly benefiting from what the fan communities do with it. So there you go. I'm building a case here, I hope there are people that can pick it up.

Damien Valentine 36:22
I said a quick fixer as you're talking and it looks like it's gonna be very intriguing read for, because a lot of it is sort of in world lore and talked about the characters, but then it also talks about, like the behind the scenes stuff, like a new saying about the the additional content about the comics, and the anime, there's a Netflix anime series, which I still need to watch, because it sounds like it's gonna be quite good. So yeah, I'm quite intrigued by what they also addition in defence of liberty expansion is they wrapped up that game. But they're obviously going to make more in this world, because they built it all out. And they put a lot of effort into building nice city, and developing all the lore around it, and all the characters in all the backstory and things that just get mentioned. But you know, there's obviously more happening that doesn't necessarily have a place in the game, but you want to learn more about it. So they're going to expand this a lot. And I think this is a part of that. And it'll be interesting to see how they do embrace fan content. Because, you know,

Tracy Harwood 37:26
we all know it, isn't it? Yeah, it's real. It's clearly part of it. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 37:30
we all know that fans are very creative. Actually, when the game was in development, they actually had a contest where it was a photography contest, and they wanted people to find places that would look like they were in Night City and take photos of them and submit them in. I did try it and I didn't get anywhere because people went to places like Hong Kong where you know you're not gonna be able to compete with that when you are you got is Bath and Bristol. There is actually a funny story behind that I was I found near the shopping centre, this road goes down the hill, and there's some steps. It looks the step where the steps are. It's really rundown, it's filthy, there's broken windows. And I was taking a picture of this. And this guy come up came up to me with an orange jacket. I think he's on the street cleaners or something. And he looked really concerned I was taking pictures of this trashed stairwell, rather than any of the nice stuff on the other side. And that's explained to him. It's photography contest. I still look very confused. Yeah.

Phil Rice 38:39
So you haven't you haven't seen the Cyberpunk anime series on Netflix Damien.

Damien Valentine 38:45
No, I've seen the trailer and it looks really good. But it came out. I finished the game. And I didn't want to go back into that world just yet. So I'm replaying it now so I think maybe now's the time to go back and watch it yeah

Phil Rice 38:57
it's it's brutal it's it's very hard R rating Yeah, yeah, it's it's quite it's intense. I'll be interested to hear what you think of it when you watch it. It's

Damien Valentine 39:10
it's you kind of have a pointy look on your face when

Phil Rice 39:13
you it's not PG 13 at all. Yeah, it's hard R. Yeah, I was not expecting that. At the time for the game though. Yeah, that's my understanding. Yeah. So Damien wanted to thank you for the news stuff. Tracy. I appreciate it. It's good. Good stuff to be thinking about as we approach things this year. Damien you have a pick for us this week? Yeah. Tell us about

Damien Valentine 39:40
the get up it was it's called The Cinematic Experience GTA 5 Machinima and I was trying to find something different from anything I've brought up for a while and I came across this and its by someone called Syed, I believe that's how you pronounce it, Syed that's near his channel. And it's kind of it's like a way we think of those travel adverts where they're trying to make the make a video of a place and trying to encourage you to go there as a tourist to explore it. A lot of it's like that, and you kind of getting a taste of life in GTA 5. And of course, GTA 5 is a crime game. So you get lots of people running around with guns, which is perhaps not going to attract tourists, but you know, you never know. But a lot of it is just showing off the city. Like there's a thing with a plane flying to the valley and people talking and just kind of living their lives. It's not, it's not actually telling a story of the game. It's just kind of showing off. You know, the city that it takes place, and I was quite intrigued by this as a video. And I thought I'd make it my pick for this month. So what do you guys think?

Tracy Harwood 40:58
I really enjoyed it.

Phil Rice 40:59
Do you mean to go ahead, Tracy?

Tracy Harwood 41:01
Okay, well, all right. Well, for my take on it, it seems to be a really, I mean, I It's a reflection of the character or to me, what it was was a reflection of the character that you see at the start. And it's kind of sort of standing on top of a mountain, just looking out over the valley. And then you switch to all the this sort of city goings on, if you like. And I read that as him just sort of standing there reflection, reflecting on some of his experiences of being in this kind of game world, from things like the little things that he's kind of observed and remembered. And then the random connections that he's made between, you know, people objects, and events, if you like things like, for example, the way that a bird flies, and other flying things. So, you know, he goes from the bird soaring over these mountains to the plane going up the valley. And that's really interesting kind of switch that he makes there. And then he does it in several other places, you know, so it says characters running. And it's, it's the the movement of the of the jogging that he's kind of focusing on, and then he switches from that to the sort of speeding cyclists racing by, you know, sort of up on their pedals, sort of giving it some as they're going past. And I think it's a really interesting sort of set of connected observations that he's making about things that are kind of not connected basically, when, when, you know, because we don't have that experience in the game. So I think it's all about the creator's experience of it. He actually says in his introduction to it is that it's an edit special to them. And I think that's, I think, I think that's just what it is. It's special to him. And, but but not that you can't connect to it, because actually, I think it's really quite cathartic to watch it. And I think, I think it's cathartic because it is these beautiful edits that he's done. These are these are kind of like, sweeping camera angles. And, and the way that he kind of, you know, it switches between the shots, I think, is just really quite masterful. But it's what creates the mood in it that I think is I think that's I think that's the thing that drives it, it's actually the music that drives you through it. Because there's no sound at all from the from the, from the game side of it, there's no, there's nothing that you hear that's to do as far as I can recall of it. That's actually to do with what's going on in the game. There's no sound at all other than this beautiful, serene music. And it's that music that's called A Road Less Travelled. It's by Fringe Element. And as I understand it, these are guys that create music for films and this particular piece, they describe as an emotional piano track, which was originally released in 2016. And it was composed by Lisle Moore Now I mentioned that because to me, that's what this is. It's a It's visuals to a beautiful piece of music, which evokes this kind of epic journey. And the cinematic really is a great accompaniment to that to that music. It doesn't really tell a story for me. Beyond that kind of personal experience. We've looked a few a few of these kinds of mood machinimas over over last year we picked up quite a few of them I think. But I think as ever, when when we look at those I think the thing that we pick up on is stunning detail in the game. And this is no different than you know the characters, the way they live their lives are all in this kind of complex world, the scenery, and the animations. It's an amazing game, I think. GTA Yeah, that's my comments.

Phil Rice 45:13
Yeah, we we we do have, we've got several films that we've looked at over the years that, that that's a highlight of our experience with them is that they're really demonstrating just how beautiful that game is, you know, No Man's Sky comes to mind Red Dead Redemption several times, several other GTA 5 films. This one, what jumped out to me in that regard was how important the edit and particularly the shot selection is to conveying that beauty in the game. Because these are not scenes that you could effortlessly effortlessly take in just playing the game. They're very carefully selected and chosen shots and then sequenced in an emotional way, and like you said, tied into that music. So some really, really nice craft that goes on here. And yes, the game bolsters it by being beautiful. But, you know, in the same sense that you know, Brad Pitt is a beautiful human right? But with a really good photographer. It's like whoa, really, really beautiful. You know, is that kind of thing that you know, he could also look like a complete bum you know, with with you know, with a badly you know, aimed GoPro or something. So, and yeah, so the, the person the eye of the camera that that was at work in this film is is a big contribution there. It does help to have a beautiful landscape and a beautiful game to generate the scenery in such rich detail but yeah, wonderfully selected shots like there's not there's not a one that doesn't fit, with one caveat. Way, way, way too much shakey cam, whatever that effect is, and I can't remember from dealing with I think that the GTA 5 like the Rockstar Editor, I think that it as a shakey cam, you can apply in game, but there's also filters you can apply in post production, you know, in After Effects or in DaVinci Resolve that do shakey cam, whatever this was, there's too much too much like it just I think the number of if you go back and count like the number of shots that had that effect applied, maybe one in 10 of those should have had it like he was that that much too much. Just way too much. And I don't know what the intent is behind it. And he's not the only filmmaker he or she is not the only filmmaker doing that. It's it's it you know I mean in in actual cinematography and live action, you know, there's camera movement is something that it made its way into TV really big in like the the early 90s I don't know if you guys are familiar with the American television show called NYPD Blue. Oh, yeah, it was basically this police television police drama. And very you know, noteworthy for it was doing some just the camera never sat still right. Now, there's a name for that technique. I don't know what it is. Any camera operator that's professional would know it, but it's a technique. But what was magical about it is that it looked accidental. Like it looked like just somebody who just wasn't very steady with the camera. You talk to any professional camera operator. No, no. is not accidental. It's it's executed. It's a technique. And it's done with a skill when it's done with skill. It doesn't make the viewer nauseous you know, now probably the first time people watched it, actually people wrote in to the television network that produced the show complaining about it you know what the hell's wrong with you people make it this you know, it just I got sick. You know, there's always going to be people who are that that way but now it's just it's just a fact of life like other than your your occasionally you'll still see a typical three camera sitcom, you know where this cameras are pretty stationary for the most part and that's it. But most films and most TV they work some camera movement into it. Well, this this is an algorithm. This camera motion is not someone executing a technique, it is an algorithm to just jiggle the camera around with very little randomness to it, like, not enough randomness. I don't know how it works within. I don't think GTA 5 gives you too much control over that part at all. It's just do one or not. If you do it in DaVinci Resolve, you can you can control a lot of how random it is, and also how blended it is. So it's not. So it doesn't feel like a pattern. That's that's what's coming through in this and it is it's very jarring and I don't know if it if it would be that way for for someone who's not a filmmaker, maybe not so much. It might just be generally not as pleasant to film as you think it should be. But you don't know why this is why this is why too much of that just too much. So I think that for certain shots certain shots that feel like okay, this would have been a handheld camera operator filming this, but you know, moving behind the guy running or something, okay, some motion there makes sense. Because if you keep the camera just just dollying straight and that it feels either reminds you okay, this is this is synthetic. This is animation. This is a video game or whatever. It's not real. So I get it, you use it for that, but not just because there's a bird flying. So well let's just do this. It just wow. So I realised now I'm feeling bad because I've spent more time talking about how much that pissed me than I've spent talking about how beautiful the film is. But everyone looking at it knows it feels beautiful. Right? It is. It's beautiful. Yeah, so

Tracy Harwood 52:03
yeah, that's a really good Phil, really good point

Phil Rice 52:05
a little too much.

Damien Valentine 52:07
It reminds me I was watching is a behind the scenes thing about a sort of analysis video of action scenes that I saw on YouTube. I can't remember the name of the video, so I'm not going to try and make it now but they had a scene from the movie Taken with Liam Neeson. And the scene is he runs up to a box jumps on the box and has a fence which he jumps over and lands on the other side and then carries on running. And it's all shakey cam. And there are 18 cuts, short sequence and it's the slice over about four seconds. And they were saying this is ridiculously over the top. But what he just does in that brief moment, and it's all done just to try and make it more exciting. But yes to over the top.

Phil Rice 52:55
Doug Liman I think was responsible for that, pushing that editing style way too far. And then things have had to correct certain Doug Liman who did the Bourne Identity? Yeah. Actually the second Bourne movie with Matt Damon, not the first one, the second one, and there's this fight scene in there were it's just, I mean, if you if you pause at any point in the fight scene, it's just a blur. Yeah, the whole thing is just an unintelligible blur. Great sound design. Like you can tell. All right, somebody's getting their ass wooped, right? But you don't, because he can't see it. I have no idea who let's just hope the good guys wouldn't because it's just a blur of other and motion blur. And I know exactly what's breaking glass. Yes. In the in the apartment. That scene? Yeah. And then I remember my mom. My mom saw that movie and gave me a review. She doesn't review movies for me very often. But she says, your father and I went and saw this movie. And you know, she named it because I just I found myself sitting there going What is this? What am I? What am I even looked at? She was really animated and upset about it. And then I went saw it. I was like, Mom, I gotta agree with you. It was just a bit nauseous mess. Hollywood themselves went a little too far with it there. And so really, it's more of a complaint. My complaint is about the algorithmic repetitive shakey cam that's built into either these games or if you're using a video editor and you don't tweak the randomizer setting, that's what it's going to be it's just this pattern. And and humans are smart, like our senses are very smart. We pick up on that and it just doesn't feel good. So the solution is okay, you can't fix the filter. It's going to do what's going to do but just don't use it too much. You know, it's got its purpose. versus there's not any other way to do shakey cam and video game footage, not really not the real way. You know, if you try to do shakey cam with a mouse, it's damn, it looks like somebody's effing around with a mouse, you know? So I get it, it has purpose, but just not too much. Sometimes a shot just needs to be beautiful and just just let it be there. You know? Sometimes, God forbid, you don't have to move the camera at all.

Damien Valentine 55:26
That's nice, isn't it? Yeah.

Phil Rice 55:27
Every once in a while. It's nice. So anyway, great pic.

Damien Valentine 55:32
Oh, glad you both enjoyed it. Yeah, definitely. I hope our listeners enjoy it as well.

Phil Rice 55:37
Well, if you agree or disagree with us or have any other thoughts on any of all this on the news, and all the nonsense I was spewing about camera technique is if I have any idea what the hell I'm talking about, let us know what you think. Talk at machinima. No talk at completely machinima.com is the email. We've probably got some other ways to reach us. But email is best. That I was actually I went and visited our Discord server the other day. And it's it's, it's crickets in there. Yeah. So that's always there if you want but yeah, try us by email. Let us know what you think. Sometimes we end up reviewing comments for people on the air here. It's great to hear what you guys think about these things. Or maybe if you made this film and you want to let us you know, tell it tell me what an idiot I am for. For picking it apart for that. We'd love to hear hear from all of you.

Damien Valentine 56:36
Well, if you want to talk about that fight scene in The Bourne Supremacy.

Phil Rice 56:41
Yeah, yeah, it just it looked AI generated or something. It's pretty crazy. Hands all just akimbo. So we missed Ricky hope he's doing well with his ice fishing in Manitoba. And we will see all of you at the next episode. And have a great day. Thank you.

Damien Valentine 57:00
Bye. Bye bye.