Tracy Harwood 0:25
Well hello and welcome to the February edition of And Now For Something Completely Machinima. I'm joined today by my co hosts, Ricky Grove. Hey, and Damien Valentine. Hello. Phil is off swimming and fishing is ice fishing. Yes.

Ricky Grove 01:06
Yeah. He took over my spot.

Tracy Harwood 01:10
He did indeed. But he will be back for our next episode. This month, this week we are going to be talking about Ricky's pick. Film pick. Ricky, why don't you tell us about it?

Ricky Grove 01:26
Sure. It's called. It's an excerpt from a longer machinima called Escape Game. It's a created by Cris Uberman and music, HK and the Saltimbanks. Song dance again. Now I have some bad news. When I pick the the video from Vimeo I enjoyed it. I liked it. And I'll tell you the reasons why in a minute. But it was taken down. And it's no longer available. Probably because of music copyright issues.

Tracy Harwood 02:08
I found it YouTube. Oh, you did? Yeah. I've found the link. So you're on YouTube.

Ricky Grove 02:15
I looked around and I couldn't find it. There was definitely down from Vimeo. Good. That's great. That way people will see it. Yes. Well, it's a music video. And machinima has a long and interesting history connected to music videos. The first music video I saw in for machinima was back in the early days when Paul Marino did a video called Still Seeing Breen. Breen was a character from Half Life two. And he animated the character to sing this really driving rock song and I remember being so impressed. And thinking about this. This is an excellent vehicle for machinima. Because you don't have to do a lot of realism. You can do jump cuts. It can be very exciting. And people have done many musicals since then. In fact, I even saw an opera once. It wasn't very successful, but so music and machinima go well real well together. And this video the reason why I chose this video is because how well the music and the Machinima animation and world fit together. It was shot in GTA five. And I was also intrigued with that because it's a celebratory, happy, warm mood and in the video, whereas GTA five tends to be more darker crime focused machinima. So it's really interested to see how they're ever going to take these crime based characters and put them in a in a warm, happy musical. And essentially, it's a beach party with GTA five characters on the beach, and the camera sort of roams through the various setups of different people dancing and talking and eating one guy playing the guitar like crazy. In the it's in French with subtitles, and it has the sort of, like hip hop feel to the music, very, very celebratory. In that tone really caught my eye. I really found myself engaged and smiling while I was watching it. I have to admit, personally, I'm not usually attracted to happy videos, or happy movies. I don't know why I just it's a personal it's a personal preference. I'd much rather watch horror and drama, but this one really caught my eye and it made me think this might be a stretch but it made me think of, in my theatre days, which were very long, I spent a lot of time reading about theatre history and one of the interesting aspects of theatre history was Roman comedy. Roman comedy always, According to historians always ended with a celebration at the end with the cast, with a party like atmosphere, singing songs, and it made me think of this now here, we've come all the way from Roman comedy to the present day, where we have game characters celebrating and a dance like song in a very happy way. Now, it's not to say that it's all light, because there's some social commentary in the story, which is pretty pointed. But that's in the lyrics. If you're a person that doesn't pay a lot of attention to the lyrics, you and just the visuals, you're not going to get a lot of that. And that was the other thing I admired about is the multi layered quality of it. Cris Uberman has is a French filmmaker and animator. He's got an absolutely knock dead, dropped down website that features several other long videos that I liked a lot. He works essentially in GTA five. He's been making videos since the 90s. He wanted to make films interesting because he studied a lot of psychoanalysis, and philosophy, typical French focus. You won't, you won't find that in a Yugoslavian filmmaker or a Russian one, although sometimes, maybe you would. His past and current works include stuff like picture collaborations with artists around the world doing glitch photography. One of my favourites of his short film animated films, was a film called Stop, not animated, but it was a collage film called Stop Smoking, in which he took cigarette scenes from various films, and mash them all together in a sort of interesting commentary and on film and smoking. He's a smart filmmaker. And I think that's also what attracted to him what attracted me to him in his films, I urge you to check out his other films. But first, make sure you watch the short musical film because I think you'll be delighted at YouTube. And we'll provide the link on the show notes for the episode. So now that's my piece. What are you what's your take?

Tracy Harwood 07:41
You want me to go next, Damien? Sure. Well, I loved this actually. And I'd like you I really picked up on the vibe, but I wanted to go into it a little bit deeper actually. And, and of course, you know, as you've you've said, it's part of another, it's part of a bigger film, and the bigger film is called Escape Game. And as he said, created by Cris Uberman, who's I understood him to be an artist using GTA five in his particular piece as a poetic space for interpreting or I think, in his language, transforming violence, and drawing on the philosophy of Empedocles. And I don't know if you know this, but Empedocles, was a pre Socratic philosopher, who's attributed with having established the four ultimate elements that make up our world. So fire, water and earth, which has been interpreted as an assertion that nothing new comes from being and that there is only change between elements. And these changes take place as a consequence of divine powers of, of love and strife, when love draws things together, as evidenced in this video, and strife pushes them apart. And I think that's what this guy is teasing with in this particular film. So with that context, and then looking at the complete film, the story here, as I understand is, is have this kind of central character that you see walking across the beach in this short piece to name's Louis, and he's confronted with a series of unleashed elements in this game, GTA five, that as I understand it, he has to change in order to return to his real life. And the character in the story is narrated by this guy Lionel Mazari who's who's the guy who's velvety voices one you you hear halfway through this thing short. Now, having faced this series of challenges, this particular chapter which which kicks in at about minute 42, in this film, in the bigger film, is that is basically the final part of this story. And it places the care acting like you said, on a beach walking past a crowd of people, presumably, at some kind of power or gang related meetup. And he's passing them by and he goes over to this collapsed or I suppose inebriated person of whom he asked to borrow his guitar, and then he plays the guitar. And it's this guitar playing that results in this transformation of this social gathering into a happy party, where, you know, Louis is playing this beautiful piece of music by HK and the Saltimbanks. And, and in turn, I think that's what enables him to explore the true nature of the relationship between the virtual and the physical self. That's my interpretation of what this this is this is about. Now, throughout the film. As I understand it, Louis, has sought to transcend the game world. And he's basically, he's got to pass through it to get into the real world. And in fact, in the end, what what emerges from this final piece is that he states that the fragility of the human faculty of admitting the reality of accepting without reservation, the imperiousness of life, exists in the ability to see the illusion and that having seen the illusion, you can never return to reality because it is already present. That's what he's saying in there. And in fact, that's that narrated part was taken or inspired by the philosopher Clement Rosset, a French, of course, and his work is well known for touching on reality, and it's double. And in fact, Rosset was also a great lover of film, because he said, it demonstrated this ability to interweave reality with ambiguity. And what I think you're seeing in this film is this really fun twist on this, this kind of whole idea in a in a, basically an a side piece to the main party, where you've got these kind of two virtual characters on a stage, looking at a series of TV screens, this is in this little short that you shared with us. And on these screens, are real people dancing and singing and pointing at the virtual characters. And they're asking that your characters are asking you return, should we change the channel? What are they doing? Or should we just carry on dancing ourselves? Because we're all part of the same illusion. And I think that's what what's going on. They're playing on who's who's in the virtual world who's in the real world, and they're pointing at one another doing that. And then what the narrator then says is, this world has no meaning by itself, and is only a misleading double of an episode. Perhaps this impression of having been doubled constitutes not only the structure of metaphysics, but it's also the best example of a philosophical illusion. So I think in the end, what he's doing is leaving it to us as basically as voyeurs of this journey to decide whether we are in the in the physical or the virtual, and to interpret how these worlds are related, and what is illusory, and what is real. And I think also, perhaps at a deeper level, what he's doing here, with the whole piece is questioning to, to what extent the violence that we see in GTA is actually an alter ego of who we are. And so overall, I think the film in the game will become a little bit analogous of, of what I would call, you know, The Picture of Dorian Grey, the Oscar Wilde thing, where, you know, the horror of what goes on in one world is played out in this picture. And I think he's, he's doing a similar sort of thing he's playing with these two, two versions of reality, I suppose. Fascinating. Now, the other thing that I picked up on is, I mean, obviously, this is incredibly well, I really enjoyed the way that he edited it, I thought it was very well edited. For example, you know, the the footfalls across the beach, beautifully done, but also the way in which he switches between the realities through those screens. So there's a bit there where you've got the real, real life being projected to us through virtual TV screens and vice versa, very well done. The music is also a really great choice because HK and the Saltimbanks, they're, they're a French popular band with this kind of bluesy cum reggae sort of style. But their songs are known for being commentaries on themes of things like social exclusion, inequity and overconsumption in society, which I think is a fascinating narrative that actually takes place throughout GTA as well. So all round I think what you've got here is a very symbolic set of choices being made in this work. Now I'm no, you know, I'm no expert on French philosophy at all, but I have to say I did really enjoy reading up on this a little bit more deeply because it is I think there's a lot of philosophical thinking that's gone into the creation of this piece. It's probably worth watching the whole lot if you can, you know bear to sit through nearly an hour of of that doesn't make an awful lot of sense of which this kind of transcendence piece is the end part of it. I think we've rarely seen this sort of work actually in the machinima. Although one created come to mind you'll you'll you'll know who I'm talking about. Tutsy NaVaRaTnA's machinima is closest that I could think of that had a similar kind of approach in terms of the site and also treatment. I mean, if you remember, you remember his film? I think it was called and Journey into the Metaverse. Yes. And it was released about 2011. And that was also playing with this idea of where where am I, where's my double, where it where I'm looking for the, for my other other part of my being kind of thing. So he was moving between these kind of, you know, virtual and physical worlds if you like. So I'll share a link to that one as well. Because I think it might be interesting to

Ricky Grove 16:16
contrast the styles on. Tutsy's work was much more literal in terms of the those themes and those ideas. You could see them played out right in front of you. Whereas this film, I find it absolutely fascinating. You can watch it simply as an entertainment. Yes. And enjoy the music and the movement of the characters and anything with no hint of any philosophy, or any background about narrative choices or reality, or meta reality, or virtual or the real or any of that. Yeah, you could look at it that way, or do both. And that's what I love about a work of art like this is that it gives you so many different ways to approach enjoying the creation.

Tracy Harwood 17:04
It does. I really enjoyed watching it. So another great pick Ricky. I was blown away by this one. I really enjoyed it.

Ricky Grove 17:11
Well, I'm so glad Yeah, you really got into it, I realised that there was stuff going on, but I didn't want to dip down too far into it. Because for some reason sometimes when I do that, it destroys the the initial pleasure of watching it now. Sometimes that will make it deeper experience more the more you understand it, for example, the more I reread The Lord of the Rings, the more I understand the kinds of things he was trying to do with history and myth and folklore and, and ideas. So they in that case, it works just fine. But this one I don't know I I want to watch the whole film again. And I think that's a great idea. Thank you, Tracy, that's really fascinating. Commentary. Damien, what are your what's your take,

Damien Valentine 17:59
I got I came last print this one because I didn't miss that this is actually just the end of a much larger film. Because I watched it and it works just as it is that few minutes long segment with the song. So I just watched that, and I really enjoyed it is it's very bright and cheerful in a way that wasn't obnoxious, it was just very joyful. I get this be the word I would use for it because it's just it's not what you expect from Grand Theft Auto. We've seen lots of crime chases and stuff like that. I think I said before, I really like it when a server makers will pick a game. And then they'll make something that's not it doesn't match the tone of the game or not necessarily something the games designed for. And this is not playing

Ricky Grove 18:50
against the the theme and mood of the game. Exactly.

Damien Valentine 18:54
And I always like that. And this is a really good example of that because it works so well. And they've made good use of the camera tools in GTA five to do this story as well, right having that access to that made this film possible. And they've obviously spent a lot of time mastering those tools to put this together. And it's just a great film. I'm undecided at the moment if I want to watch the rest of it, or if I just want to enjoy this moment because it works as a standalone piece without the rest of it. Yeah, so after thinking about to I want to watch the rest of it as well. It's pretty graspable. So I just want this moment. I really enjoyed watching.

Ricky Grove 19:40
Well, be sure to visit his website because he's got not only several other films, which are long ish and philosophical, but he also has great photography. And he has a blog in which he's pulled in several other live action films that he admires and is interested in mostly from French pop theatre culture and French intellectuals. But it's a very exciting website. I urge you to check it out to see more interesting things. They're

Tracy Harwood 20:10
Fascinating. I wonder what Phil would have made of this?

Ricky Grove 20:15
I know I well, I think he would have enjoyed it and picked up on some of those things that you were talking about. We I think we leave it to you to do the deep diving on this, so I don't think he would have gone that deep into it, but I think he would have picked up on it. Although, I think he's much more interested in trying to catch something through the ice then. Yeah, yeah. galavanting on the beach or anything like

Tracy Harwood 20:42
that. Wouldn't be salmon though. Would it? Would it? No,

Ricky Grove 20:45
like a char Oh, get some char from a lake. You know, go out on the lake make a little hut. But little fire there a little smoke a little beef jerky? Sit there, you know, maybe listen to some music. Oh,

Damien Valentine 21:00
yes, it is.

Ricky Grove 21:01
Yeah, watch.

Tracy Harwood 21:03
Oh my god. Anyway, that's it for this episode. We hope you enjoyed our discussion. Tune in next week. We have another exciting film to have a look at. And in the meantime, that's it from us you are listening to And Now For Something Completely Machinima. I'm Tracy. And it's goodbye from me and from Ricky and me.