Ricky Grove 01:03
Welcome to week to the Now For Something Completely Machinima dot com. I'm Ricky Grove, here to introduce a new film that Phil chose. Thanks for joining us. Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood Damien Valentine are here to talk with me today. Now Phil's pick is a very interesting one because it's a it's a trilogy of films that was sort of stopped in the middle because I think he could have done more that came out back during the heyday of machinima by a guy named Todd Stallkamp. And I remember when they first came out, it created a stir because it shot and Sims and it was one of the first example of Sims machinima that was could be serious, dark, and even brutal. The idea of brutality in The Sims is just beyond comprehension. But that's what people were doing in the heyday of machinima is they were taking things and turning them upside down. And I'm really happy that you pick this. Phil upscaled the three videos to make them better quality. But here why don't you introduce the film to us, Phil?

Phil Rice 02:20
Yeah, so this was this was this was that, you know, one of the kind of peaks of you know, a lot of great content that was starting to emerge from machinima. Generally speaking, and, and The Sims was really, The Sims 2 was the version of the game then and it was really kind of making a mark. And so I caught this, this film, I don't I can't remember how I learned of its release. But I caught the original version of this film, the first chapter of this called The Fixer. I think Todd was he was still using a filmmaker label of Burnt Coffee Productions. And at other times it was TF Stallkamp instead of Todd. But I watched this film and was just mesmerised. I think what, what most caught my attention Other than that, you know, that kind of strange juxtaposition of this brutal you know, assassin story essentially, over the landscape of The Sims, which just wasn't being thought of in that way. Generally, that caught my attention but but what really caught my attention was the writing. The writing and the delivery by Todd himself of the the narrator character named Ernest Rent and it was I just was was stunned. The style of the narration and the writing underneath that it kind of strum the same chord as like maybe I don't know James Salas, author of Drive, which was later made into a movie; No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy to a degree it had that that same level of dark to it this willingness to to let its lead character be not even really an antihero, like there was nothing really here this was this was a bad dude. Not completely amoral, as you'll learn later in the story, but definitely has a different definitely has a different set of values than what is traditionally embraced, you know? The very, very recent, David Fincher movie The Killer. Oh, yeah, you haven't seen it. The vibe, you get off of that character that he's just not playing by the same moral rules that hold society together. That's Ernest Rent to a degree. But Ernest rent as, as a sense of humour, he has a rye wit, he has a way of saying things that is, is not, not the normal way of saying things, you know, is poetry to his way of describing things that might otherwise be banal. So, yeah, just intriguing. You know, in the opening, in the, in the second act of this first chapter, we we see the naked backside of this character, and it's like, this is The Sims. You know, yeah, just and the thing is, is he, Todd didn't make it about that, about being shocking, or whatever. But it was just kind of an early way in this series to just set the tone that, hey, I'm going to make the film that I want to period, I'm not going to abide by what the Sims says is proper or whatever. It's rather remarkable and noteworthy, by the way that Todd ended up going to work for EA, and specifically on the Sims. And what's interesting about that, and actually, Tracy will tell us a little bit more later this episode, but it'll be interesting to maybe ask Todd about this, because I've never been 100% clear on whether I have to feel like that the filmmaking in these was responsible for helping get him the attention. I think it was, but the content is not something that the Sims, people would have wanted to put out there with The Sims label. So there must have been kind of a strange dynamic there where, yeah, we like what you're doing. But, you know, more bare asses. Yeah. Right. Right. So I, I have to think, in addition to the fact that we've seen from everybody that went from, from kind of a freelancer machinima maker like, like, like Todd was, who go on to work in the gaming industry. One of the things that was inevitably the case with every single one of them was they stopped making amateur machinima altogether. Some of that is just the effect of when, when making this stuff becomes your, your career, it's what you're spending most of your day doing anyway, and probably the last thing you want to do is come home and, and do more of that. Right. But but in the case of The Fixer series, in particular, I have to also think he wouldn't have been able to do that, and not risk upsetting his employer, and maybe rightfully so, you know, I mean, they've they've got a right to want to market their game in the way that they want to, and I get it,

Ricky Grove 08:19
there may also have been an issue where the content the content they create, while being an employee is owned by the company.

Phil Rice 08:30
Oh, yeah, that's true. That's a great point. Yeah. Yeah, that is a copyright thing. work for hire, is the employer owns it? Yeah. Some of my, my, my thoughts and theories on that, of course, are informed by my own experience. Making a piece of rather popular Sims 2 content that when it came time to, you know, use that in a commercial environment, so to speak, you know, get it on TV, for example. The no that we received was pretty clearly because of the irreverence of some of the content in the film. And you know, this, this one takes it even further. I mean, I don't, I guess I depicted murders in mind to deny but this is a little bit different. Now how I got involved, I ended up becoming, and Ricky as well, we ended up becoming involved with the series as it went on, like in the actual production, and how that came about was. I reached out to Todd when I saw the first episode, and basically just said, you know, first of all, I love the film. It's amazing, and I hope you're gonna make more of these, you know, just sincere praise, but also kind of expressed to him my concern or my caution, because the original version of the film had recognisable copyrighted music. The opening scene was actually the song Sway by Dean Martin, which is wonderful, and it fit the scene wonderfully and it's a great song. But my concern was, you're going to be limited this is this is, to me, this was clearly potential festival material. But if you've got that copyrighted song in there, it's going to be it's a non starter. And so there was a little bit of interaction with this and stuff. And he's like, Well, what do you suggest? I do? I was like, Well, I'd be glad to rescore this for you. Now not actually writing the music. But you know, saying, well, we could we could find, you know, Magnatune, their whole catalogue right now as Creative Commons, we could find stuff that's appropriate and make it work for this. And he was kind of like, I don't know, man, I love the way that song. There was a particular mood that I wanted. And that song captures it. And he wasn't, he wasn't gung ho about it. I think he would, would say so too. But I said, Well, let me give it a try. And so I did, and I rescored it using selections from all creative commons selections for Magnatune. And he ended up really liking it. I don't think he liked it as much as the original because you know that there was some that song really, I think was part of the form is very unique idea for him. Yeah, yeah, wonderful. But we ended up doing it that way. And now the funny thing is, I don't know that he ever ended up submitting it to any festivals, he did produce a second chapter, which he selected his own music for that. And in the third chapter, he left me to be his kind of music supervisor again. And I even composed a very short piece of incidental music for a scene that we couldn't find something else for the scene where Ernest is getting beat up. It's kind of a Nine Inch Nails sounding industrial, weird little thing. And he had me do all the sound on it don't remember if I did sound on the first one or not, but I definitely did all the sound on the third one. And Ricky was was a major voice contributor to that one of my favourite characters that I've ever heard him do. So yeah, it's, it's, I feel because of that I feel a little, you know, a little weird putting this up there because I don't really like to, to use the show as a vehicle to to toot my own work or, you know, to call attention to my own work. But this would have been great without me involved. I do think that I helped elevate it a bit. But the thing that's great about this is the writing and the character that Todd created, the way that he executes the narration, I would give my left arm to be able to go back in time and send Todd a really good microphone, because that's the only thing that was lacking. He didn't have one. So the sound quality of his narration wasn't what he would want it to be. But the performance of it was just so perfect. And I just, this is some of my favourite machinima like this is this is like, if I wasn't so kind of focused on creating comedy. This is the kind of stuff I would want to produce like it's it's just, it's smart. It's daring. Very entertaining. finds a way to be funny, even though it is so brutal and cold. But there are moments that you can't help but chuckle and they're deliberate. They're not you know, we're not laughing at them. We're laughing with him it's just wonderful wonderfully done. And it is it's a heartbreak similar to like, like a breakup. The fact that he was not able to continue making this. I completely understand why I don't think that his decision not to continue it was at all unreasonable. But the story was so good. And I don't know how much more of it there was to tell maybe not a whole lot more. Maybe one more chapter could have wrapped this up. And maybe someday he'll either do it or he'll let me.

Ricky Grove 14:32
There you go. And producer, I would do it hot. It's cold. He

Phil Rice 14:41
would have to return to do voice again. But anyway, I love this series. And yeah, when we were restoring all the Machiniplex content I couldn't, not upscale and, you know, preserve this going forward to because it's one that it's a series that deserves to be remembered. It's very memorable if you've seen it, you know so I probably don't need to ask you guys what you think but I'd love to hear what your comments are.

Tracy Harwood 15:09
So I go first because I've got a little bit of backstory as well, I'll share that might that might sort of you might, it might stimulate some memories for you perhaps. I'll tell you the first thing that caught me was the titles of these, Fixer episode one: Fat Men Run episode two: Guns, Gandi and Getting Some and chapter three different to the episodes, One Digit Off, brilliant, absolutely brilliant and titles. Obviously, you know, the first thing I noticed, quite quite apart from from Todd's name on it was that Phil, you'd worked on all three. And Ricky, you were in the last as the Greek king pin, Casper Rory, what a great name. And that the first episode of this was actually released, originally, I believe in around March 2006. Okay, so this was a 50s film noir style to it from my point of view, and it's but it's mixed really. And I think it's mixed with a Guy Ritchie pastiche. And it's also narrated in a kind of Brad Pitt ish, style, you know, monotone a tonic sort of voice style, which I thought was a was another really kind of interesting aspect to it. It was seemingly inspired by Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and obviously made in Sims two. And there are scenes in it with, you know, shots of, of kind of bloody bodies. But you don't see any violence. And I think really, that's, you know, the selection of Sims to show to do that. And, and to show that, and to portray, the humour of that was really quite inspired. The humour itself is really dry and draws heavily on, I think, Richie, but probably also Tarantino. It's violent, the themes are definitely adult, there's crime, prostitution, murder, revenge killings, and all that sort of stuff in it. And it's evidently focused on this gunman for hire this guy who goes by the name of Ernest Rent, which is an absolutely beautiful, dry, humorous kind of name. And you'll see why when you go through the each of the three episodes. And off those three episodes, episodes, I think probably the second one was the most rounded when I was watching it, they don't, they don't seem to make a lot of sense of standalone films. So you really need to be prepared to watch all three. They're very short, they are very short, but but I think you need to watch them as a as a complete thing. The first one basically sets the scene, the second one kind of expands the plot and the characters. And the third one is, is more kind of classically acted out and closes out of the fewer of a few of those kinds of character arcs really. The approach is a little different in the third one, I think, which which, which is is that it's it's primarily voice acted throughout, whereas the other two are narrated. And I'm when I was watching these, I wasn't sure if Episode Three was indeed where it was intended to end. And my guess was probably not. And basically, I then did a little digging around. And I can tell you that actually, there was intended to be another episode a fourth episode, but that was never made. And I will tell you why from what I've dug out in a little while, I thought overall, it was a fairly complex plot, actually, it's quite, it's quite dark and quite quite complex. And it's complex, because there are a lot of characters. And in places, it's kind of a little hard to follow them all and, and, and, and to follow how they all interrelate because they do seem to interrelate but actually I think that is also part of its charm. It's the it's the kind of the richness of the plot that that makes it stand out along with, I think the sound design, the editing and the music selection, all of those stood out amazingly to me. But the other thing that made it stand out for me was the, the you know, all the various cultural and artefact references that are kind of littered throughout it, which really add a great depth to the story. And I'll give you some examples the telephoto lens which gave a sense of who the central character actually is. The rain representing London, the CD representing some kind of deep information based goings on, the sound of the car engine, which is definitely a kind of super sports car. And, you know, that's definitely the sort of car that a sociopath would would would drive. And for that matter, I suppose how else would associate path sound if it wasn't monotonic? So, you know, those were things that really, you know, there's just added that kind of the, you know, the layers to it were really very interesting. I thought the sex in reference to this kind of morally bankrupt person and criminality that, you know, the the newspaper clippings giving hints of what's going on. And of course, the use of guns, although you don't ever really see them being used in a in a massively violent way. I mean, all of that was just brilliantly done. I thought there were a couple of cliffhangers. And one I'll mention, I wasn't fully sure I got it. But there was a baby scan shops, for example. That obviously, perhaps would have closed out in the final episode, which probably added yet another layer to this, this character had it have gone that far. I think the animation itself looks quite dated at this point, even though I think you've done an absolutely sterling job restoring it, Phil. Yes. I do think what it has is a very distinctive style, which, irrespective of the quality the animation actually comes through really strongly, it's probably the most it's probably the the most recent film that I've seen with this kind of. Well, sorry, I'll say that again. I think the most recent film that I've seen with this kind of style is actually the Sharon Tait story. You know that with what's it what was it called?

Phil Rice 21:56
Once Upon a Time Tarantino one, yes,

Tracy Harwood 21:58
that's the one Yeah, wants to put on that was very similar sort of style. Obviously, this isn't exactly the same, but I think there's a lineage there. And it's quite amazing to think that it was pulled off in Sims. I was also super interested to see some of the early machinima community working on this alongside both of you, of course, but one of the names that jumped out at me was Trace Sanderson, otherwise known as Lainy Voom, whose work if you remember, we mostly recognised with that film Push, Push made in Second Life, I think. And she was the airport announcer in the third party got

Phil Rice 22:40
about that. That's right. And then

Tracy Harwood 22:43
some of the sets in the game that others had contributed were also being used. So I saw Britannica Dreams mentioned so that then Michelle being best known for making the Snow Witch and also can feign was mentioned and he was otherwise known as 3d filmmaker at the time. And he was another one that went to EA games during that sort of that period of time. I also noticed that this series had been picked up by festivals. And it was picked up in the 2006 community festival, the Machinima Academy fest festival that that you guys were running. It was also picked up in Germany with the BitFilm Festival that year, and it also featured on independent film channels Media Lab site, and that was set up in 2005 to recognise and celebrate the work of independent filmmakers, such as those who were creating machinima at the time and it featured on there I think in about the August. That's cool. In fact, it won the best series Mackie and it was in competition at the time to the Ill Clans Trash Talk to Chris Burke's This Spartan Life to Rooster Teeth Red vs. Blue and also Hugh's Bloodspell series. It won that year 2006. And I don't know if you guys remember that. But you should. Yeah, we

Phil Rice 24:06
were there. You were there was there actually we were all Yeah, he got he got misty eyed. I'll

Tracy Harwood 24:12
bet he did. I already do.

Phil Rice 24:14
It was a great moment.

Tracy Harwood 24:15
I can absolutely Imagine that. But let me share with you my little bit of digging around about about Todd because he's clearly got some some directing chops. Obviously he first found Sims whilst he was still in school, a lot of folks did. And from what I understand, he became really fascinated in how people loved creating stories with it. And the fixer series is one of the things he made just reflecting on how powerful it could be to do that to tell great stories. There was indeed an episode 4 slated and it was called what was going to be called Barking Irons. But it was just never released simply because he was struggling to find the time to make the content alongside the day job. Now out there was also going to be a Christmas special that year 2006. But that also never got made. And quite frankly, he laments this, you know, this, you know, not being able to make these on his blog in December that year. And even though he'd gotten really excited with the Mackie Award, which kind of given this great boost to try and push him to finish it, he just never really got around around doing it. Two months after that, which was about a year after the episode one was released, he'd started working at EA Games, which is about February 2007. And he started working as a video specialist, which he also announced to the Machinima community at the time. And then eventually he moved on to post production and then creative direction and he's still there. He's now the group Creative Director at EA Games responsible for the sins. Way back in 2007. When he just started working for EA, he recorded a little bit to camera for EA about his passion for machinima. And I'll share a link on the on the blog post so that you can see what he says about that. And he made a few other machinimas I think probably for EA games where he's basically promoting the game and the and the various kinds of expansion packs. Just before he started working there, though, the reason that fourth episode never actually got made was because he'd been commissioned along with Trace Sanderson to work on a broadcast production for a UK based news programme. And I managed to find a link to that to, or at least the first part of it, I'll see if I dig around, find the second part of it's bound to be on YouTube somewhere. And apparently, as I understand it, it went on to win some awards, including a media Innovation Award in 2007. Although I actually can't find a can't find anything out about that to verify whether or not that's actually true. So, Todd, over to you on that I'm sure you'll be able to tell us. At the time, he attributed his move to EA primarily to machinima and to the community and much like a number of others at the time, including Ken and Paul Marino who who was behind AMAS, the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, the the, you know, the head of the team that ran the Machinima Film Festival. He basically said that his success was all due to Phil, you're mention on the overcast podcast, a recommendation by 3d filmmaker, that's Ken, producing an ad for Sims 2, being featured on the IFC's Media Lab site, the Mackie and the UK TV show, all of which put him on the path to where he ended up. So there you go, Todd Stallkamp machinima class of 2006. I think this is absolutely fantastic story. I was, you know, really, really, really enjoyed sort of researching this one. And as I said to you, before we switched on, I managed to make contact with Todd, as I was writing this up, and I'm really looking forward to having a chance to have a catch up and an interview. And you guys working on that as well. So all I got to say about this one.

Damien Valentine 28:22
You mentioned, he used this, whether he wants to use the Sims 2 as because he wants to share how powerful the tool was. I was thinking that that must be something like that, because you think a game like Grand Theft Auto would be more ideally suited for this kind of story. So obviously, there's lots of mods involved with The Sims you know, to get the gun and stuff like that in and I will always enjoy watching machinima made when the game when they tell a story, or do something that the game's not designed for. And this is a really good example of that. Because obviously, that you don't have guns and stuff like that in The Sims. I do believe in one of the later games they do, like a crime. career choice. I don't know too much about it. But I was wondering if that was inspired by these films. Obviously, it doesn't get quite as brutal as what's shown here. Got to do more for more of the comedy side of things, but I did have a little bit of a wonder, was that the inspiration?

Phil Rice 29:22
But yeah, one of the one thing that I'll add to that, Damian that the reason that he didn't choose GTA was GTA 4 didn't get released until two years after this film was made. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 29:32
that's how I would explain it. Yeah, I didn't follow the GTA 3,

Phil Rice 29:35
just GTA 3 didn't have really didn't have any of the the stuff that made four and five. Such great, great. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 29:46
yeah, I didn't follow those games that closely. But yeah. Okay, so that covers that. You know, as opposed to looking at, you know, the environments which Tracy you covered as well as donated by members of the community and there was one where you're looking at the backgrounds, and they've used the wall creates, you know, the wall placement tool to create buildings like skyscrapers. And obviously, they're not really that far in the distance. But they've been textured, obviously, with custom imported textures to look like windows. So they look really small in the distance, but it's just that the way that they're framed, but you know, really, they actually just behind I think things like that are really clever. And you can only do something like in a game like The Sims, where you have the tools provided to build things, and then bring in your own content to decorate them. And again, that's another thing I admire is sort of how you want to achieve an effect. So you think about how to do it, and then you do it, and then it just looks great. And yeah, it does look dated, but the effects still works. And, you know, I was always appreciate stuff like that with machinima, because you know, something like iClone, you can create that whole street in the background if you wanted to. It's probably not really necessary, but you've got the option. But when you got a game like The Sims, you can't create that. So you have to figure out tricks to achieve the same effects and in a lot of ways that offers more creativity or forcing you to be more creative and thinking about how to get around those limitations of the game that you've chosen. And, you know, this is there are limitations for The Sims, which we discussed before, like characters acting silly, and you know how hard it is to get into exactly what you want. And he spent a lot of time working on this to get exactly the shots he wanted. And bringing the mods, I'll see that there's the nudity. So you have to find a way to remove the sense of, you know, the pixelated filter, the Sims automatically puts over or any character that addresses. So, you know, to find a mod for that, you know, shows a lot of time and effort went to this. So I am sad that they didn't get to see a fourth. But I can also understand why he didn't do it and why. What a huge amount of time it would take to do it and why he never was able to find it, which is sad, but also I can appreciate it because he was working at EA. But yeah, these are excellent picks, and actually hadn't seen the third one. I remember the first and second. So this is the first time I've seen the third one as well. So that was a nice little surprise. Yeah, that's all I gotta say. I just really impressed by anyone who were random limitations of a game and just fantastic with it.

Ricky Grove 32:36
Well, there's so many things I want to say about this, but I'll try to keep it short. So we won't go on and on. The first thing I want to talk about his style. One of the things is film is is a triumph of style. If he had shot it in Grand Theft Auto, it would not be the same film because it would be too realistic. That's true. He his goal is not realism. His goal is a style that fits the story. And that's what makes it so effective. The idea of these sort of simple card almost cartoonish kind of characters. You know him murdering this woman in cold blood, the been the first episode with blood coming up would not be the same as if it was in Grand Theft Auto, it just wouldn't. And I think style is something that is often neglected in not only a machinima, but in mainstream live action film, as well. Because they're so they're trying so hard to be realistic. You know. And I think the tradition that this film is part of which I don't think noir is the right call because the lighting, nor you have to have obscure lighting in order for Nora to be effective. And there isn't that there's a couple of times but it's that's not that. It's a crime drama. It's a hard boiled crime drama. Now, what's interesting is that, that type of film that type of short film, that type of feature length film has been going on since the 40s. And there have been everybody I mean, filmmakers know that style. The fact that Todd Stallkamp in machinima in a game called The Sims managed to make an original contribution to crime drama is an extraordinary achievement. Yes, I mean, literally, it's extraordinary to do something new in such a well trodden genre is just amazing. And you're right that writing is incredible. One point comes to mind. Part of what's great about crime drama, hardball crime drama, is there's oftentimes the dialogue is suggestive as opposed to literal, meaning that what they say is not necessarily what you think it is. There's more to it. So the lead character, or Ernest is being beaten up and the third episode. And the character that I portrayed, the Greek tycoon guy is sort of gloating over it. And all Ernest Rent says to him is 'fe fi fo'. Now, in a in a dozen in three dozen and 20 dozen films, they would say no, no, no, he's got a he's got a he's got to really say something more significant than that. No, no, Todd knew what he was trying to do, and knew who his character was. And that suggestion is so threatening. And so right for hardboiled drama. I can't tell you, it's just fantastic. The writing is the big accomplishment in this. I also think, and this is my last comments before I get too loquatious, that I think that films get better. The production values get better. And I think part of it is is he, he, I think he gets better at making the film for each episode. And the reason why there's so much drama in so much voice acting in the third one is because narration is kind of a simplification. It solves a lot of problems and telling a story because you have a narrator, a third person narrator who could just tell you, he felt this way they did this, they did that. Well, I think he finally got to be comfortable enough to be able to get into the real meat of the dialogue in the third version. That's why there's so much dialogue in it. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the character. I think I remember. I think I remember Todd telling me to play it low key. And he gave me permission to do some ad libs. So I did a few ad libs in it. And I think that's one reason why my performance is good is because it fits perfectly in with that low key style. He has a lead character has this sort of world weary attitude that is often found in private eye characters. But instead, it's in the main sociopathic villain, which is another creative aspect to it. I think the series was so well made. And so well shot, that you could take this series, make it live action, use all of the shots that Todd made and put it on Amazon, Amazon prime as a series, and it would play play like gangbusters. He's so skilled, he could be said what he could have segwayed into professional television production. With this film, if he had the right contacts. Obviously, the world gives you certain cards and you play him. The card that he was given was go to EA and work with him. And that was a smart thing to do. But he in another world if he had had a contract, he could be doing pro television production right now. And if you're talking about a remake Phil, I'm wondering whether it might be interesting to do it in Unreal. Just a thought. Well, here's to you, Todd. Fantastic series. I love it. One of my all time favourites. And thank you for choosing and Phil. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's it for our episode today. I hope you liked it. We sure did. Send us your comments at talk a completely machinima.com and go to our website completely machinima.com for the show notes. I believe there's we're going to be doing an interview with Todd right.

Tracy Harwood 39:03
Yeah, that's correct. Yep. So

Ricky Grove 39:06
that's coming up shortly. Thank you all for watching. Thanks, Damian. Phil, Tracy for your comments. And thank you, Todd Stallkamp for creating such a wonderful series. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.

Phil Rice 39:17
Bye bye.