Phil Rice 00:45
Hello, and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I'm here with my co hosts Damien Valentine and Tracy Harwood. Ricky is off in the desert collecting cacti, but he will be back with us at our next episode. So we're gonna do our best to fill in here without him. And I think this week, we're just gonna jump straight to a pick that is a little, maybe out of the ordinary for us. It's certainly the platform, that it's honestly a little out of the ordinary for our normal picks, because this one, at least with with the way that Tracy shared it with us, it's on Twitter. And it has a familiar character. So tell us about a Tracy. Absolutely,

Tracy Harwood 01:37
yeah, this has been released only on X. It's only available on X. I think it's been called Shinto Ritual. As far as I can use Google Translate. That seems to be what it's called. It's by some Sumoguri. 2323 seminaries what I'll call him or her. And it was released on the 23rd of November. Actually, this film was one that was shared with us by Jason Bowman. You may or may not know Jason Jason was actually responsible for setting up the UK chapter for the RoosterTeeth Community way, way back when. Anyway, Jason saw this on Twitter and thought it might be a fun one for us to discuss. Now it's made in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom system and was released, like I said on 23rd of November, so it's not been out all that long. mentioned when Jason sent it over to me kind of mentioned that he hadn't actually seen an awful lot of Zelda Zelda based machinima, so it stood out and then I sort of thought about it. And actually, I haven't really seen an awful lot of mean either. Yeah, so Zelda based machinima either. So I think this is really quite an interesting one, for a kind of a number of reasons. What struck me first of all, actually was just how many views this had racked up. And it currently stands as we record today at about 2.8 million views. But I think part of that is actually because of the timing too. So the plot for this is is it's it's a Godzilla story, or what some folks are actually calling the Zonai Zilla or Mechagodzilla. Because it's made with zone i parts in the in the game. Basically, Godzilla is attacking Lurelin village is rebuffed by this defence as as as all Godzilla attacks are. And obviously that doesn't work because it never does. And so Godzilla then returns to the ocean, presumably to sleep it all often it's nuclear infused hideaway, wherever that is deep in the Pacific. Now, what I really liked about this is actually the editing and the sound effects which make it a great homage to Toho and ish. Forgive my pronunciation here. Ishihara is Honda's Godzilla films. It is actually a fairly faithful recreation of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo in that very first 1954 film. And obviously, I think the sound effects are all from that kind of time period, which is fantastic. It makes it all quite iconic, I think. But it's actually the editing that really stands out in the short or it certainly is for me. And as to the point that I made about timing. I think that's important for a few reasons, I suppose primarily because there's been this kind of massive upsurge of renewal renewed kind of interest in Godzilla films in recent years. The Shin Godzilla directed Hideki Ano, is that correct? Which one in a number of the categories that the Japanese equivalent of the Academy Awards in 2016. Then there's Godzilla Minus One, which was recently released. And next year, that sort of later this year, we've also got Godzilla X Kong, which I'm quite looking forward to seeing to be honest. And then of course, there's also the Apple TV Plus series, which is running at the moment called Monarch Legacy of the Monsters or Legacy of Monsters, which actually, I am thoroughly enjoying, although generally,

Phil Rice 05:32
are you watching it? I am watching it. Yeah, it's in my queue. Yeah, no, it's

Tracy Harwood 05:37
really great. I've got to say, I, I have never really been into the fandom for this particular monster. And part of the reason for that, I think, is because I remember as a kid, seeing these really dated, you know, black and white. I don't know whether they were the films or whether it was a TV series we had here in the UK of it, I don't, I don't really remember, I just remember it being a really rough, rough, kind of very dark, very black and white. And then a language that I didn't understand with writing that went far too quickly across the screen for me to follow as a young child basically. So and I guess, really, for that very reason, I suppose I was a bit more interested in in King Kong than ever I was Godzilla. Now as I understand it, Sumoguri, which ironically means skin diving or free diving in Japanese. He's basically used this ultra hand building mechanic feature in the game to create an animate the objects, such as the items in the set and the monster. So this film is something that he's created from scratch in the game, as well as the the explosions, the effects, the camera angles, and the timings. And the sound effects are really quite outstanding. I think. It's quite interesting to note, actually, that this film is being badged as a bit of a marker in Zelda as well. Some have described Tears of the Kingdom as potentially a Fortnight like environment, which I think is it's probably a little difficult to appreciate from this and, and given that it actually doesn't really have the creative freedom that environments like Minecraft, or go Fortnight has, in such abundance, I think it's a bit of a stretch too, but the nonetheless, that's what folks are saying. I've also seen one of the forums say that partly, you know, partly, there isn't really an awful lot of machinima in this either. It's because of it's never really been used for its creative elements, in all 40 years that the game has been available, which kind of makes sense, I suppose. However, I think another one of the gaming another one of the timing aspects of this is actually to do with the game itself. Because, you know, that was released to quite a lot of hype last year. It became the fastest selling game in the Zelda series. And indeed, of the whole year, when it was released in May. And it's one a whole clutch of Game of the Year awards. So I think this machinima was always going to find an appreciative audience, whatever the platform was, that it found itself on, I think it kind of tapped into that sort of cult classic Japanese thematic kind of scene, very cleverly, actually. And, and well, deservedly, because I do think it's a really, it's a, it's a, it's a cool edit of it. I've actually dug out the original Japanese trailer for the 1954 film, which was released by Toho. And it's on YouTube. There's obviously there's a whole tonne of material out there that you can kind of dig into. But I was really interested to look at that. Because, and something I'd never really fully appreciated. In that trailer, it actually makes reference to King Kong as well. And what you see there is that what they're what they're making reference to is the special effects that it used the these effects in Godzilla are better than ones in Kong. So you've got to watch this film. That was how it was released in Japan, certainly. Which actually, I think adds a really interesting layer to the Godzilla X Kong film that's, that's upcoming too. So yeah, probably more than you might have thought I would have had to say about this, given that I know next to nothing about the Godzilla lore, but I was really impressed with this. What did you think? Well, you

Damien Valentine 09:58
always find a way to dig into the details. doesn't find all kinds of surprising things, even when it's something like this. So no surprise at all. For me, I, I'd actually, I'd heard that this Zelda game had this build mode. I never played the game myself. And I didn't realise you could do things like this, like they've actually built this Godzilla robot thing. It looks like you look at it, you know, it's meant to be Godzilla. It's not the exact perfect replica of Godzilla, but you recognise it, or you need to do that. And obviously, there's some kind of scripting thing in it to make it move. I don't know how that works, because this film was made on a Nintendo Switch, which is one of these, yeah, which not much bigger than a phone. So there's a touchscreen keyboard that comes up on it. So I don't know if you can do any coding or power over that work, but it moves. And then you've got these tanks that shoot lasers, I think the creator of this film, obviously, built those in the game with this building tool and built the attached lasers to them. And they work because when you see them fire, there's explosions in the, in the background when they're hitting their targets. So you know, I didn't know that they came after extensive range of tools. So it's quite impressive. But also, we haven't seen much machinima made on the Nintendo Switch. So there again, that's quite impressive as well. And surprisingly, we haven't, because if you press this button, but you cut this, this button here, it will start recording. You press it once you take a screenshot, if you hold it down, you can record a video, it saves it straight on the device, and you can then transfer it onto your PC. So you've got the handheld machinima tool. So it's kind of surprising. Maybe it's because, you know, it's hard to take up the gaming interfaces and things like that. But yeah, I just thought we've seen more anyway. So yeah, surprising for that as well. You know, I said a few weeks ago, I always admire people using games to make something that the game was not designed for. And obviously Godzilla was not what the intended has in mind for Zelda. And so yeah, I thought it's really good. I liked the old style sound effects. I wasn't sure if they just lifted from an old film or Oh, I'm sure they did, yeah, together. But I thought it was very well done. And this footage, the video footage they had was timed nicely with the audio. So they spent a lot of time learning all that with the editing. So again, a lot of work put into that. So yeah, I think it's a great choice very different. Also, not just on the platform that's being on Twitter, but using a game that we've never seen before for machinima on a games console we never we very rarely see. So I think it really stands out as a very unique film that excellently made. And yeah, we'll see more switch machinima now.

Tracy Harwood 12:58
Yeah, we'll get Jason on to tracking it for us, I think. Yeah.

Phil Rice 13:03
Yeah, my son has this Zelda game placed on this switch. And he he let me watch over his shoulder a little bit while he played and stuff and it's just some really, really gorgeous environments, big wide open spaces. I think his favourite thing about the game is something that's not featured in this trailer, which is the the game's original soundtrack. The score is just beautiful. Just really really evocative and beautiful and kind of morphs and responds as you move to different parts of, of the world. It's a neat system that they've got to, to to implement the music. Yeah, when I first was watching this, I didn't look at the tweet above it. Like the actual text, so I didn't see the hashtags and I was watching it thinking what in the world is this made in? You know, and I I figured okay. It's not quite as sophisticated enough to be a pure Unreal Engine creation which I know Tracy you tend to spot those before any of us now was my first thought well, maybe it's that but no, it's not quite there. So it must be a video game but what game it was only after I'd watched it that I saw the the Zelda hashtag and yeah, I had no idea that this game can had any sort of of modes that would enable you to do that at all it is very interesting. And what a neat experiment it must have been for the person making this to set out to envision Yeah, let's let's recreate this. This kind of iconic Godzilla scene. I mean, not necessarily shot for shot, but you know what I'm saying the, the something to go along with that. That soundtrack which I grew up on this stuff. Okay. A the Godzilla and to a lesser degree King Kong for some reason. It was more Godzilla and that whole pantheon of monsters that he would fight at different times. You know, those old the old movies where it's just you can tell it's just a guy in a suit. Oh, I just loved it just just cheesy, just a guy in a rubber suit, you know, stuff that would basically make, you know, early doctor who look like a technology upgrade. This is how low tech this was right? is like, Oh, I just loved it. I just loved it. I had all you know, I had Godzilla toys, I would play with dinosaurs or pretend they're Godzilla in my sandbox as a kid. I mean, it was just so the. And this was on every Saturday. Like, there was cartoons, of course, Saturday morning cartoons. And then on WGN out of Chicago, every Saturday was like a marathon of monster movies. Oh, and this old style, low budget monster movies, mostly. There was always a Godzilla movie. And then, you know, sprinkled some other stuff in there. Actually, the the Google this sometime if you're interested, you know, but there was a host of that programme on WGN. That station in Chicago, called Son of Sven Ghouli. Oh, and he was basically the emcee for these Saturday movie marathon. So he would get on and introduce the movie. And then like, like an intermission point, he'd get on and do more stuff. And he would do comedy sketches and all this other stuff. And as far as I can understand, he was pretty much a one man operation. Like it, it's about the quality of like, what cable access would be, you know, like, it was just as low budget as these movies. And he's dressed in kind of a vampire costume. And making these corny jokes. It was the best thing ever. You know, anybody who's grown up in the Chicago area and was my age, they'll know who Son of Sven Ghouli was it's still talked about today. Just classic. So hearing that soundtrack, like I instantly recognised it. Like I didn't have to look and look it up or see what I knew instantly what it was from. And it just it's very evocative. Yeah. And the, the, you know, the, the sounds and all of that from those those films did nothing but pleasant memories, for me watching it. So to be honest with you, I had trouble kind of sitting back and analysing and for critical purposes, the film, because I was just too caught up in the moment it was given me and I'm, I'm not sure if that's what the intent was, you know, I for all, I know, he would, the filmmaker would hear that and go success. You know, because it was it was a it was a feeling delivery system, that one minute and 40 second little film there. So I don't know, I just don't really care much about how it was made. I probably should as a machinima filmmaker, I shouldn't care. I just don't care. I loved it. It's like, I just want to I want to just pat the person on the back and say thank you. It was nice. That's great. It's just really nice. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 18:25
2.8 million others that have watched it.

Phil Rice 18:28
Yeah. Yeah. All I could see from the, from our on our board here is that it has close to 34,000 Likes, and I thought that was impressive. You're saying the views is over two, almost 3 million. That's amazing. Yeah. And especially for Twitter as a platform, you know, lately Yeah. Seems like it's almost nothing nowadays for a video on on YouTube to be able to hit hit the millions it happens. It's like, Oh, neat. You know, on Twitter. It's a big deal.

Tracy Harwood 18:57
It is. You know what's interesting, he has got a YouTube channel, he or she, but he's not put it up there. Mm hmm. It's only on X as far as I could see.

Phil Rice 19:08
That probably helped the numbers then. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 19:10
maybe maybe. Yeah.

Phil Rice 19:14
By the way, great. Greet pick Tracy.

Tracy Harwood 19:17
What Ricky would have had to said about it. Yeah,

Phil Rice 19:21
yeah, maybe we'll get him to have a look at it to have a look and just weigh in and kind of do an Instagram version of his reviews on these films that he misses. That would be kind of fun. Actually. I can encourage him to just do it with his phone. And then we can we can incorporate those later in the video. So

Tracy Harwood 19:38
from where did you say he was this week he's in the desert. Is he with?

Phil Rice 19:42
He's in the desert collecting cacti? That's right. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 19:45
I'd love to see what sort of cat's eyes yeah, picking. I

Phil Rice 19:49
was looking for the prickly pear but I told him Look just yeah, just get a prat and just keep cacti and you know,

Damien Valentine 19:55
are you gonna use it for his eyes. My next one goes ice fishing. He's going to put the cacti in there. Yes,

Phil Rice 20:01
that's right. That's right. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 20:06
We have a second pick that as well. Don't be modest about this one. But Shall I? Shall I introduce this one and go through my thoughts? Or do you want to tell us about it to start with?

Phil Rice 20:20
Go ahead.

Tracy Harwood 20:27
So, I have picked or we have picked this film that Phil has made in actual fact, you released it, I think on the 10th of November, so it's been out a little while. It's called Lobachevsky Tom Lehrer the secret to success in mathematics. And it's a typical Phil humour style film. So, one would expect and and indeed, there is no no reason not to expect great editing in this course. And obviously, what Phil is used here is public domain audio recording of one of Tom Lehrer's classic songs. But I think it's what you've done with it. That's, that's really quite fascinating. I actually found it a lot of fun. And being an academic, of course, it demonstrates the kind of poetic telling of a Russian esque tale of life in the pursuit of knowledge of, of knowledge in in academia. And it's highlighting some of the key challenges that researchers face and some of the less ethical ways I suppose that the publish or die mantra has kind of been dealt with. But all that aside, at the time that this particular song was written by Lehrer, which I think was in the early 1950s, America would have been in the midst of the Cold War. So there's this really interesting undertone of political intrigue, represented in what was being said in this song. And at the time, of course, there was great deliberation over spying and secrets being plagiarised from the Americans. And on top of that context, the song was also written when Lehrer was himself struggling to write his doctoral thesis in mathematics at Harvard. And he never did complete that. Believe me, I'm pretty sure that many students can relate to Lehrer's sentiment in conducting research, which is kind of represented in this song. So there's quite a lot of in jokes, I think that's that's sort of an undertone here. And so I guess, that may well have led to him being distracted by kind of contemporary cinema during during that sort of time period as well, probably as a way to escape his studies, which seems to be the reference to Lobachevsky's, colleagues, research being published, and then made the subject of a Hollywood film with a well known actress, Ingrid Bergman, and mentioned that this kind of infamous studio, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, all of which I think, is really quite interesting. All of that said, though, I think the actual inspiration for the song wasn't, wasn't that I think it was Danny Kay's routine that honoured a Russian actor Stanislavski that was the original inspiration. Question for you, then Phil, how did you manage to mash these different kinds of contextual underpinnings together? Because there's really lots of hidden depths in the song which make it a rich source, and it's written with such precision in lacing these things together. But you've really captured quite a lot of that. And I just wondered, how did you do it?

Phil Rice 24:08
Nice simple question.

Tracy Harwood 24:10
Sorry about that.

Phil Rice 24:13
Okay, so Well, first of all, how I you know, how the idea came to use this song. I wasn't unfamiliar with Tom Lehrer's work. I don't think I I certainly did not understand or had hadn't heard all of his catalogue. But you know, there were some that were familiar to me. And when I heard this song again, prior to picking it as the subject of the film. I felt like I had heard it before but when I was very young, and so a lot of the humour I only caught the I guess the low end, the low hanging fruit of the humour, you know the kind of silly way that he played with the accent and things like that, that was all that really, I was able to absorb. And then I discovered now you know, 25 years post collegiate and just that just so much more of it. It all made sense, you know, but how I discovered it was someone I can't remember who but it was actually someone personally told me about Tom Lehrer, making his catalogue of all his songs public domain. And basically, they sent me the link says, hey, they're all available for download on his website. Go get it, you got to hear this. It's great. And so I just basically this when that happened, which the first the first batch of releases that was close to two years ago, probably probably about two years ago from now. And then later, he released even more about one year ago, but I just went and just downloaded them. And just put it into a folder that I've got that I kind of call my inbox, which is basically just stuff I don't have time to look at right now. But I will get to it eventually. So I can put it here and feel safe that this will get to this will get reviewed eventually, that it just sat in there for like almost a year. And when I was going through kind of doing some housekeeping and cleaning up some files and clearing out the inbox, I thought, oh, you know what, I haven't listened to those yet. Now, let's just so I unzipped them all, throw them all into a big playlist and just put them on while I was working in my office. And this song. You know, several gave me chuckles And you know, he's he's a wonderful performer. And very clearly a very smart writer, I love his style of humour. But this song just just lifted out in full relief of Whoa, this is just so funny. And my son is very much into pursuits related to mathematics and engineering and stuff. And that's increased my increased the relevance of those topics to me naturally, you know, as he's pursued that course of study, I'm more interested. So yeah, it was just like the perfect time to encounter the song again. And I thought, I wonder if I could do something with this, you know. And the original idea was just going to be when I first decided, Okay, I'm going to make this was in the fall, early fall of 2023. And I just thought, okay, AI art has come along now, to where I could just, you know, I could just do a slideshow. But just but just do something to kind of illustrate some of the humour of this. And so I just started experimenting with that of generating different images, based on pieces of the lyrics or inspired by the lyrics or whatever. And just the more I got into it, the more I thought Now this needs more. This needs more than what AI is gonna. So then AI became very much secondary. It's just like alright, AI is gonna be the filler that the morter between a few of these bricks but mainly I want to I want to portray the people in this story. I want to portray that. Yeah, so that's, that's just kind of what led me to it. And it was right around the time when I was finally getting serious about about iClone as a tool. I had bought a clone seven I want to say the previous November or December, they were basically giving it away. Right before iClone eight came out, they were almost giving away iCloned seven. It was so cheap. And I didn't have time to work on it at that point. But I just thought that's just too cheap. I can't just I'll just go out and get it. And thinking that I'll probably get a little bit of a discount on iClone eight if I buy iPhone seven. And I was right. So where I when iClone eight came out, I bought that but I still didn't have a game plan. My only skill set was fiddling around with video games. And I still not to use moviestorm which is you know, it's like the steam locomotive guy at Henry Ford's house, you know, it's like what, what the hell am I gonna do with that? You know? So I set about constructing. Sorry, this is so long winded but I said I said about constructing a plan. Uh, where I could the advice that I was getting from people that I would ask was, you just got to get in there and just learn it, you know, and that's fine. And I didn't want to get, it's not that I didn't want to learn it. It's, I want to start producing now. Even though I don't know, enough about icon to produce what I eventually want to produce, the more detailed stuff, but I don't want to wait. I just don't have the patience. Or frankly, the I don't have the I don't have enough miles left on my odometer to just take a year off and do nothing but study how to make films again, I want to start making stuff now I've got the juice, I've got the inspiration. So why can't I produce something now, but be learning that too? And so I thought, well, how can I do that without coming off, like just a total amateur and not in a good way? You know, we, Ricky has kind of reacquainted me with the word amateur to where it's not a bad word, but I didn't want to be amateurish. You know, and have it be these clunky. I've already done that. That's my look at you want to see that? Look at my early films. That's that's all my early Ops is just clunky, you know, barely figuring it out stuff, I still have a standard of quality I want to hit. But I've got a skill deficit right now. So the plan that I came up with was to evaluate all the film ideas of what I want to produce, because I've gotten to the point now where I'm not adding anything, I'm not adding anything more to that list. I have enough work now to keep me busy. Through the rest of my able years. Believe it or not, I don't have to add anything new. And I've got but but the thing is, is the stuff towards the end of that list is like feature length, production, the major, major deal. And there's full series of really complicated stuff. I can't do that right now. But I've got other ideas that are less demanding, technically, but are still worth making. Because that was the that was the distillation that I had to go through was, which which of these ideas are even worth making it, I throw away probably 75% of them to come up with the list that now will keep me busy the rest of my life. That's how many we just reach a ridiculous amount of ideas of what to produce. So now everything that I'm making is stuff that has passed that gauntlet. So I structured this order of what I want to produce and Lobachevsky fit in the right place at the right time for me in terms of I will have developed enough, I knew this when planning it. By that point, I will have developed enough skill in these key areas of iClone to be able to pull off with that film needs, it fits perfectly in that slot. So that's where it goes. And so there was something much less, you know, that was less technically complicated prior to that, and the one prior to that was even more simple. And the ones after it get more and more complicated. You understand what I mean? There's like a, I was building a hierarchy of sorts. Lobachevsky fit in there. So some basic animation and you know, really mastering the compositing using content out of iClone and things like that. Those were all keys to this. And then I had I had been experimenting a lot with let's start it off with Midjourney. But more so Leonardo AI, Runway Runway was a big help on this one for some of those more bizarre scenes and backdrops and stuff. So, yeah, and then the decision to make it all black and white was kind of that was actually a pretty late game decision. But I feel like it was the right thing to do. It's actually not black and white, right? It's more like a old printing sepia tone look. Yeah, but essentially, it was washed out to black and white and then colour corrected to that to make it all look consistent. That was a very late game decision. It wasn't that I didn't envision that way from the beginning. But when I got all the video in the editor, and it started, you know, putting them side by side I thought that's it feels pretty disjointed here. Oh, that's why because of the colour so yeah, but having done it then it was like, oh, yeah, this is what this should have looked like all along. So yeah, that's, I guess that's a nutshell of why the song touched me enough to do something with it. I was very cautious about the fact that this is somebody else's song. And you know, I'm not doing a whole lot of there's not a whole lot of that in my agenda. For what to produce going forward, it's a lot more focused on original stuff, or stuff that I know I have the rights to use this, it was so recent, and I thought, oh cheese. But I felt pretty confident that I could take a chance and believe what I'm reading that this is indeed, fair game to use. Got a bit of a scare when I uploaded it to YouTube. Because Youtube flagged it. Oh, this is after it's already, it's completely done, the whole film is produced. And fortunately, I'm uploading stuff to YouTube about four to six weeks before it hits the air. So I had time to respond. But I uploaded it and it gets flagged for the music, the YouTube content ID system on the audio and I thought, Oh my God. And so I started planning for well, the alternative is I just, I create a cover of the song and try to sync it exactly to his, which I could have done. I don't have quite the piano chops. He does. But I could work around that. And I could definitely perform it vocally, it wouldn't be as good of accent as him. But again, it's one of those things where you do what you got to do. But meanwhile, I just responded to YouTube and said, Hey, according to what I see here, here and here, this is public domain. And I shouldn't be able to use this in my movie. So basically, I filed an official appeal. And they responded A few days later and said, Yeah, you're right. Objection lifted. Yeah. So yeah. Well, that was pretty neat. You don't hear those stories turn out that way very often. But in this case, it was it was property that indeed, that was his intent is all the recordings that he has any domain over our pure public domain.

Tracy Harwood 36:53
So thank you for sharing that. That's really interesting. But you know, the bit that really strikes me about because because I get how you've done it, and I get why you don't but but it's the the layers of the interpretation that are just outstanding. From my, from my point of view, you know, that the notion of plagiarisation, the time period and the 50s, the Cold War, the Hollywood scene, you know, the the tale of non-discovery of, of research and the political intrigue, because it's the selection of images and the characters that you capture so beautifully, which I think is a really great match for Lehrer's sense of humour. I will just say one more thing. Sorry, Damian, I know you've you want to sort of jump in on this as well. I just want to say one more thing. I understand that Lehrer gave up songwriting in the early 1970s, because he he's must, must be what now? Mid 90, 90s? Yeah, he's

Phil Rice 37:56
9596. Nine, like, Yeah, okay. But

Tracy Harwood 38:00
I was reading a bit about him. And apparently following the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, he actually said political satire became obsolete. Meaning that it's actually quite hard to be funny about serious stuff. And I think that's really, you know, it's I think it's absolutely true today, it's really hard to be funny about serious stuff. So to capture that humour in some new way, I think is, is really an a, an achievement. And I think that's exactly what you've done here. What you've, what you've done is captured political satire through this, this film. And I actually think that if he saw this, as Lehrer saw this, I'm fairly certain he would enjoy the interpretation. And I also think it should be held up as an exemplar to others to because of the way that you've managed to portray political satire. So many congratulations on this Phil. Thank you. Work,

Phil Rice 39:08
it wouldn't be so amazing. If he did get to see it. I would I set out to make something that I thought okay, if, if by some crazy twist of fate, he does see this, I don't want him to be I want to make it clear. I want the film to make it clear that I'm not making fun of him. Oh, no, I'm not making fun of his song. And that and that it it's truly an homage you know, it's not. And it was it was tough. I could appreciate political satire, but I could also appreciate how, how prickly it can be in our current climate. And, you know, in our current climate where, you know, most of the people that you run into now have very little memory of the Cold War and what it really was. And I mean, even for me, these images that came through in the film, I didn't live through that. My parents did. But I lived through an era where that was that era was being portrayed on television. So really, that's what I got. So I have no idea if it's if it's authentic, but it certainly is authentic to the view of that cold war era that I had. And this this sense of, you know, my wife is from former USSR. So we joke all the time together in good in good humour about, you know, whenever the the villain on the the movie we're watching ends up being Russian, and I'll just turn through and I'll just go Russians, of course. Isn't that always, of course, it's the Russians. You know, because we've had many frank discussions about the propaganda machines that we both grew up under pointed in opposite directions during that time, you know, as children of the Cold War. So and yeah, so I wanted to be respectful of that. And, and, and try to be authentic to that era without dredging up old, offensive stereotypes. I wasn't setting out to not offend anyone. But I also didn't, I didn't want it to be about making fun of Russians to be to put it bluntly, you know, it wasn't that because that's not what's funny about the song is the song itself has as so many more layers. And yeah, there's some tongue in cheek reference to, to a corrupt ability. That, frankly, all honest, USSR citizens know about. They all know it was there. I mean, that reference to the plagiarise, and all of that. There, you would get a knowing chuckle from anyone who is honest about the way things were. But to me, the extra layer there is that that wasn't just in the USSR. at all, you know, that it actually, it was, it's one of those where one side accuses the other of what they're actually doing. You see that in political spheres and all over the place all the time, right. The left accuses the right of something they're actually doing, or vice versa. And so this was kind of that type of joke of, you know, he's portraying this this Russian without, without what we would call scruples. But there's kind of this sense of, this is how it works, you know, and not celebrating it. But also not not being too quick to be judgmental about it. Because, yeah, it's not something peculiar to Yvan. So, yeah, I just I loved it. It struck me that his approach to humour about that, at a time when he had every excuse to be bigoted and disrespectful. In the 50s, nobody would have objected to him being bigoted about the Soviets. However, they would have clapped him on the back for it, you know, but no, this wasn't that way. This was kind of it was fun about the people that we're all being told we're supposed to think of as our, our enemies as the evil empire, you know, and all of that. So I thought, well, I want that I want my film to have that same. Same tone. poking

Tracy Harwood 43:58
fun in lots of different directions simultaneously. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah.

Phil Rice 44:03
Without poking fun without the emphasis being who's to blame for this, that or the other. It's just, you know, so yeah, I'm so glad that I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Definitely did. They really enjoyed making it?

Damien Valentine 44:20
I really enjoyed it. So I just wanted to add a little bit to Phil, you just think that he wasn't being really nasty about the Russians. And that was actually probably more risky in that area with you know, the McCarthy era and the Red Scare. Absolutely. Yeah. So if you're not making if you're not being nasty about the Russians, are you one of them that he could have been got himself into a lot of trouble for making this song for the wrong reasons? Like he

Phil Rice 44:46
really, he? He walked a tightrope there, I think, yeah, knowingly. I think he knowingly walked that tightrope. Yeah, yes.

Damien Valentine 44:54
Like when they introduced Chekov to the original series of Star Trek. It's kind of along those lines for He is actually going to ask you about how you made it, but you kind of already,

Phil Rice 45:05
well, is there a particular particular scene or shot or something that? Oh, it's

Damien Valentine 45:10
just, I was interested in how you kind of combined because I obviously recognise the iClone to it. So it's kind

Phil Rice 45:16
of a lot of eye clone rendering over the alpha background. Right? Yeah, you can render out the second pass over with just alpha channel. And then I brought that together. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of that going on. Like, I don't think there's no sets built an iClone, right? Everything is a backdrop. Lets, the very opening shot of that theatre is a photoshopped image. Actually, the Russian letters on the marquee, it says Nikolai Lobachevsky. But in the Cyrillic alphabet, little hint there that like people like my wife will catch and 99% of people won't even notice there. But that scene and then I tried to do the moving cars as a Runway shot. And it just mangled, you know, the cars turn into like beetles as they move across and stuff. So I threw that out and just animated a parked car and one moving car in iClone over alpha, and just put it on top. So there's a lot of that a lot of just layers on layers, most of which were planned well in advance, some of them, you know, the tech that I wanted to use wasn't working. And so I just, and that was all part of the learning technique that I was using for iClone was I'm going to focus on a particular set of skills that I want to flush out and not worry about. Set building, as you've seen from stuff I sent you, about a week ago, I've now moved into the set building phase. And it's it's crazy. But at that time, I wasn't worrying about that I just wanted to get to where I could relatively control the characters well, and get a clean image because I knew, I mean, compositing is going to be a part of several things that I'm going to work on in the future. And I've never been I've never been really pleased with how that's worked for me in the past, it's been, you know, Nine Inch Nails only, for example, lots of compositing there. And it was just a nightmare to get it to work, right? Because it was all green screen. You know, you outline

Damien Valentine 47:19
don't you? It was it

Phil Rice 47:21
was really hard. It took like, it just greatly multiplied the work to get that to not show up in the and then sometimes it's like, hope no one notices that, you know, I just decided I don't want that anymore. I want to get a I want. I want to be the perfectionist that I want to be. Yeah, but you have to be good enough to be gracious to do that, you know, if you don't know how to fix the stuff than being a perfectionist is just suicidal. You know? So that's what I've been setting out to do is, is finally learn how to do this stuff right? So this was a fun part of the journey for that. I think my favourite scene if I'm if I may, my favourite scene is when he describes the name of the paper that he wrote. And it's all the words that that series of Runway images of Romani and manifold and equations moving and stuff, oh my gosh, I probably spent, I probably probably spent 12 hours on that. On that eight second section of the movie. It was so fun to make. Because I knew what I wanted it to do. And I mean, there are dozens of hours of footage generated for that, to get it just right. And I just loved it. Like I actually paid for a Runway membership. Just to do that scene. I used up all my credit. Just to do that scene for like two months. So yeah, I had so much fun making this. So yeah, I'm glad I'm glad you liked it. And

Damien Valentine 48:53
it shows you put work into it. And I know you're still learning iClone, but it doesn't look like this does not look like a film made by someone still learning

Phil Rice 49:05
Well, yeah. And that's that's some nice sleight of hand. Yeah. Because I am, you know, and still am. But that would that was the reason for this plan is I just wasn't really interested in going on the journey of, hey, everybody watched me be a toddler again. Because there are areas that I'm really strong in and so why can't I lean into those and yeah, but at the same time be you know, I'm going to keep showing everyone this arm while this one that's really weak because I'm going to be pumping iron in the background, that type of thing you know. So that's, I guess that's a really really stupid analogy, but it's, you get the idea. It

Damien Valentine 49:42
makes sense. I also don't blame you for not wanting to spend a couple of years learning how to do it and not I just don't have that kind of time. I don't know I just don't patients either. up stuff but I want to figure out the basics and then make something with it. And then try and make it look as good as possible. I've got

Phil Rice 50:00
too many, I've got too many stretches of my life that I look at and go, What if I had just invested my time in X ways? You know, yeah, I've decided this, whatever this chapter is that I'm in now, that's not gonna, that's not going to be how I look, look back on it, you know, I might not end up making a dime in terms of the whole, you know, being an actual YouTuber or doing this for a living or whatever, but you know, okay, you will, it's never really what this, the only reason I want that is to keep is to be able to keep doing this more, you know, it's not because I need it. So

Tracy Harwood 50:37
I get good attitudes I have, Phil, because I, you know, like, as, like I said, at the top of the last episode that we were talking about in the news items and whatnot, it's high time, this creative ecosystem had a rethink. And, you know, whatever you get out of it, you should do it for the love of the creative side of it, which is, you know, that's the great strength of you guys, as creators, it's, you know, lean into that. Yeah, and I am sure that the other stuff will sort itself out one way or the other, eventually, but I can only see it coming out in clear favour of the creative folks in the ecosystem, because I genuinely believe that there is the desire to have them integrated more explicitly, within the economic ecosystem, certainly, in this country, there's, there's that movement going forward at the moment, I'm actually you know, I'm actually pushing for that at another level in the work that I do, formally, as I am in the European community that I'm involved involved with, as I am through this forum, too. So it's high time that that was the focus and and, and it leaves you then the free hand to do the creative work that you're so good at. Anyway,

Damien Valentine 52:11
excellent Phil on this film.

Tracy Harwood 52:15
Question. I've got another question. When are you doing the next one? Well, I guess you're already working on it by the sounds of it. But when can we expect a teaser of it?

Phil Rice 52:26
Well, ah, okay, so. Well, yeah, it's a matter of which next one, I'm trying to. I release a new film every Friday. Oh, of course. Yes. So on the on YouTube, every Friday is now some of those this past year, have been remastered reissues of old ones that are worth bringing forward. So like this past, the last week of December was Google Stooge. That's the last one that's I have no more in the band of remastered wants to re release. So it's all new stuff from here forward. But yeah, I would just say stay tuned to the YouTube channel and every Friday 6pm Eastern is is a new release of some kind typically short film. This this year 2024. After I finished a few more shorts here, it'll be full production on a Comedy Series. So yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a fun year. Fun several years.

Damien Valentine 53:41
So you're looking forward to seeing everything you do.

Tracy Harwood 53:44
Absolutely. Me too. Thank you, Phil.

Phil Rice 53:47
I'm having a blast. Good. It shows. I guess I'm the host. Yeah, I

Tracy Harwood 53:54
guess it's your show me.

Phil Rice 53:58
I just I just wanted to if you guys had some more stuff you wanted to say about me? I want to do?

Tracy Harwood 54:03
What have you got to say about me?

Phil Rice 54:07
Thanks for tuning in everybody. And yeah, we'll, we've missed Ricky hope that he's found the cactus he's looking for. And we look forward to his return. We will have some special episodes from time to time. This year, some we've got some interviews that we're we're trying to pull together and work up so we'll be doing that and, you know, trying to keep the format fresh and everything but stay tuned for more great machinima work coming coming this year in 2024. So on behalf of my co hosts Tracy and Damien and in absentia, Ricky, have a great day. Bye