Damien Valentine 00:54
Hello and welcome for another episode of And Now For Something Completely Machinima. Now one of the longest running arguments in a geek culture is DC vs. Marvel. And in a way we're going to be doing that this week with a look at two videos. One is Spider Man, which is Marvel, and we've got a DC covered by a Batman video. I chose the Spider Man one and Tracy chose the Batman one. So Tracy, why don't you go first and we'll talk about this Batman film.

Tracy Harwood 01:37
Yeah, okay, well so yeah, this one's called Vengeance Batman fan made cinematic and it's been made in Unreal Engine 5.3 by Solo Filmmaking. Now it's a it's a it's a back alley fight scene between cops and crims with, with the cops in trouble from a brutal assault and our hero turning up almost in time to save them, but not, roughing up the crims and then answering that age old question, who are you really, hence the title of the movie. Now I picked this because it's a well choreographed fight scene and the detail in Unreal Engine is amazing. But there are some other things I wanted to discuss with you as well. Now, there are a few problems with the sounded it the footfalls don't match the movement or the environment that well, there's way too much swearing in this. And actually, the fighting is rather too brutal for the little we know about the characters, and who they are, which kind of indicates some storytelling issues for me. And that's quite an interesting point, because we're now seeing lots of examples of Unreal being used but the thing that's really missing is the stories. And they're kind of compelling presentation. Now, I appreciate however, this is a fan made short, it's been inspired by Batman films, and also by the Tokyo back alley assets, which had been created by Black Medium Small. And that created, put them on the marketplace. And our Solo Filmmaker here had picked them up out of the marketplace and decided that's what he wanted to use. The it's it's basically the incredible detail and the beauty in these particular assets that motivated him to create this short film around them. And I get that but with a more emotionally engaging story, there might be more reason to actually watch this. And then I picked up on something else, which is that he said that reflecting on his portfolio of 60 short films over six years that he's made, he noticed that his Batman themed content consistently got most views and because he's made so many of these types of shorts, using Batman as his inspiration, he struggled for an original take. So he's used ChatGPT to develop the idea and create the punch lines. And then he's used ElevenLabs to add what he describes as an emotional layer to the interaction enabling him to make dynamic adjustments to the voice. And I guess that then might also have led him to think about how he might present the story. So he settled on what he describes as a shift to a Hong Kong style reminiscent of Sleeping Dogs, emphasising details such as water, blood and reflection. So I wanted to highlight this, this is a process because whilst I think on the one hand, the use of the AI is a great help to refine things I feel the thing it's less good at is helping to script characters and create a story off bat and that's not a problem to do with the graphic quality here at all but to do with the craft of creating compelling characters and a plot. And so far, however, I think there's very little emphasis within Unreal or for that matter any other creative community on this particular aspect of the process in using AI that I've seen, so I'm hoping we see much more discussion about the aspect of kind of creating story going forward, because I think it I think we need it. But it's also led me to ask to what extent AI can ever be at all, to replace craft based creativity. Now, I was on a discussion panel a few weeks ago, when this question came up about AI, enabling everyone to be creative, and isn't that great. And I said at the time that I don't think that will be true, because the ability to create compelling and engaging works, it's also about tacit knowledge and craft. So my thoughts here are that whilst I think the process of using these tools to refrain from refine craft is worthwhile, also, bear in mind what you the creator brings to the process as a as a human too. And I would definitely encourage this particular creator to put more emphasis on the story. There's actually a making of film, which I'll put a link in the show notes too, as well. If you can stand getting through the adverts, because this guy certainly is clearly trying to monetize the content. But I'd be really interested to hear what you guys sort of say to say about this one, what did you think?

Phil Rice 06:18
First, I just want to say thank you for telling me that this story and was created with ChapGPT because I feel kind of liberated now to go ahead and say what I really think and the only criticism then of is it solo sole creator, is that filmmaking? Yeah, yeah, it was his decision to use that in that way. Because I was ready to. I was like, as I shared before we started recording I was pondering how can I talk about this film, and not completely destroy my my, I think reputation as a fairly nice guy. Because I was just ready to eviscerate it. Now I feel comfortable doing so and maybe with even a little little bit less heat. Heat. Yeah, because it's just a fact. Having experimented with, with ChatGPT significantly, to just mainly just to learn and explore what it can do. I've found that it's excellent at the kind of tasks that you might attribute to Grammerly. You familiar with Grammarly that, it's basically usually works with a browser plug in and it will, it'll help give you tips and fix your grammar to to be more clear and, you know, change the tone of what you're saying. But if you were to, I mean, if you were to ask Grammarly to actually write something to express how you feel? Well, first of all, that's not even an option. And there's good reason for that. is not good at that. And story wise. Yeah, every experiment that every experiment that I've done with it, is the outcome is so bad, because my thought was, alright, let me back up a bit. For me with AI. In regards to artwork, let's say, when that gets to the point where it can do what it does, let's say perfectly, you know, like, where there's no flaws. I think I'll lose all interest in it at that point. I'm interested in it from a comedians point of view, I think it's hilarious. What AI art does sometimes the way that it mangles hands and faces and it's just, it's hilarious. Like, it's, it's, it would be difficult to get a person to be able to create that because our instinct is toward order and toward reality. For the most part, there's obviously artists that, that don't adhere to that, and that's great. But, you know, that's my interest in AI is that it's kind of broken. And so I would experiment with ChatGPT thinking, maybe it would be funny to have ChatGPT construct. I mean, you could tell it to construct a screenplay. And you give it a sentence or two of what you want and how many words it should be and it'll just do it. And I thought, well, maybe I could spirit with that. And the end result would be the text equivalent of mangled hands. It would be something funny, and then I'd make that into a movie and it'd be funny because it's broken. It's so bad that it's not even funny. It's just so awful. So the word derivative doesn't do do it justice. I'm talking generally, ChatGPT trying to, let's say craft narrative. It's so bad. It's It's not funny like the the AI art can be. And it's certainly not trending towards realism or let's say success at all. Like it's bad, really bad. So, I've kind of directed a lot of my ire at ChatGPT in general, so we can go ahead and adapt that here. Now that yeah, this is bad. The story craft, it's broken. It, it's disjointed. I'm very, I'm actually really thrilled that we can lay this at the feet of ChatGPT that I'm not that I'm not eviscerating sole creator, and that he if he or she, if they listen to this will know that, that it's not them that's being criticised here, except a question that decision of doing this. If it was just for expediency, then okay, so be it. But, you know, just as a, you know, pro tip, if you're going to try and use one of these, you know, chat, ChatGPT or similar tool to mine ideas and you know, stuff like that. Man, you can't take the output straight from that and, and use it as a screenplay, you just can't. It needs at the very least it needs human touch in this in this film's case, I'm not even sure any of it wouldn't have been worth saving, like even the structural integrity of the story of this is just, there's no better word for it than it's just broken. And that's all ChatGPT. Again, I thank you for mentioning it. Because now I recognise what I'm seeing here. At first, I just thought that this is something impossibly bad made by human, because there's plenty of stuff like that out there. That's impossibly bad and made by humans. But this has that particular brokenness that really only comes from the artificial intelligence world. So yeah, I'm actually I'm, like, really happy that it's that it sucks because it's ChatGPT, you know, because now I don't have to be in a hole.

Tracy Harwood 12:36
You know, what? The first real example I've seen of somebody's using it in this way. And it just lives up to my expectation as well, given all the tests absolutely about and been doing. So let

Phil Rice 12:49
me try and think of what the creator's name was, we reviewed I picked one of his films a few months back was it Dean Corrigan? He did the he's doing this series of shorts Denver Pluto. They were little bitty, like sci fi shorts, the one that I picked, had the AI computer talking to the the woman character, the pilot. Yeah. And yes, her voice was actually ElevenLabs. And remember, we're talking about that the computer sounds more human than That's right. Yeah, human. Yeah. But he uses he used many different layers of AI tools, including, I believe he mentioned, ChatGPT to help kind of as an idea mine, but what he didn't do is take direct output from that. And call it the screenplay and produce it that would have been just horrible result. And he knew that. So I think there is maybe a role for it. Although honestly, I've done some experimenting, even just with idea generation, like just on the lowest level just and it's just, it's just awful. It just is awful. That's just not you know, this type of AI that is not what it does. You know, the however it does work I'm not going to pretend that I understand every aspect of it, but you know, it's, the generative AI process. No it doesn't. That doesn't that's like using the math part of the brain to try and write a musical song. Yes, there's 20th century composers who did that. The music's awful so yeah. Berg was that one of the names anyway. So So that's that. That's that accounts for a lot of the broken news is there are some beautiful moments in this cinematography wise. A lot of that's just good use of the engine. You know, I mean, this this was, the scenes were clearly crafted by somebody with experience, there's there are some, there's a lot of audio issues like way too many. It sounds like from the description that he was, he kind of imposed some time limits on himself really pressured himself to get it done in certain amount of time. I think he worked on it a month and a half. That's that's pretty fast for it for short, this complex to build from scratch and do. So maybe that maybe added accounts to that maybe it's the fact that it was truly a solo creation. And not everybody has every skill set, you know, so you may be great at animating. And maybe not so great at sound. Or you may be great at animating a sound and not so great at writing. You know, we've seen that. So how many times is that come up on the show? Right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it could just be okay. Somebody tried to do everything. And they haven't filled out all those skill sets yet. But there was a lot of sound flaws. There's a lot of lip sync flaws to which there's not really an engine related excuse for that. I don't know if he used iClone. You know, Acculips for the? I don't know, but it didn't. It didn't turn out some of it. It was so bad. I thought that for a moment. Wait, is this whole thing dubbed? You know, like another language? I really did. I was like, it was so off. So I'm not sure how to account for that. And but it was it was distracting. The fight scenes were well crafted. I agree with your, your, your taste evaluation on them, Tracy and in terms of its violent even by by the latest incarnation of Batman standards, you know, so the latest incarnation of Batman is pretty dark and pretty violent. Yeah, but it's not gory. And this, this takes it a little bit further. So you know, it's just not to my taste. Yeah, I think that's everything that I wanted to say. It was. I don't know. I gotta be honest, I don't know how much I enter into a Batman fan film expecting high things. Because more than any other DC or Marvel character, Batman has had more screen time, from Hollywood and TV, and then also in fan films than anybody. I think anybody in the whole thing. I mean, it's just been done and done, done and done. And did this break any new ground for Batman or or show us a different side or whatever? No, it didn't. And so because we've seen all the sides, you know, it's really, I guess I'll to give him credit. It's really hard to be innovative with Batman. because so much has been done in so many different ways. From Adam West, just that end of the spectrum, just the crazy comical, you know, zany Saturday morning cartoon type Batman, all the way to the modern goth, you know, gloomy. Robert Patterson, one Pattinson. Which I love by the way, but it's just been done to death, you know, so. And I think ultimately that that is part of what had to have, in addition to his own experience making these films with this character. It's the fact that, you know, how do you be innovative? With that character? No one I feel like that's maybe what drew him towards? Well, let's try this approach to get get a new idea. Yeah. And so, yeah, it didn't work. And I guess, without being mean, I hope he knows that. Like, I hope he realises that. He seems from the description to be pretty, pretty pleased as punch about with himself about the film, and that's great. But I hope he realises this isn't a way forward. You know, I have to think that the first page of YouTube comments I saw were just, you know, bow down and worship comments. So I don't know, somebody's gonna get on there and tell them what's what, you know, I would think they kind of always do on YouTube, whether they're right or not. So, but yeah, this isn't. Yeah, that's where the flaws all emanate from. And when you mentioned that, you know, the process that we used to create it, it just, it just explained to everything to me. I still ended up talking about it way too long, but that's me.

Tracy Harwood 19:51
That did you think, Damian, what

Damien Valentine 19:54
was your thoughts? Very similar to both of you. I watched it and I I felt like that, that there was something that wasn't feeling right about the dialogue. As a visually, it was a very stunning film, and the assets that are a good match for Gotham City, especially the more recent incarnations, but something like their dialogue was really bothering me. And, you know, I was sure if you're someone whose English wasn't necessarily the first language or something like that. And it said, ChatGPT as our that explains a lot.

Phil Rice 20:30
I didn't even see the end credits. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like ChatGPT rates dialogue, like you would expect from a night an early 1980s television commercial saying, or maybe even earlier than that, where the audience, clearly the advertisers creating it think the audience isn't very sophisticated. And we weren't. Right. We weren't cinema and cinematic language and the type of event think about the types of movies that were made back then that the ones that were intellectually challenging, or they were unusual, more unusual, I think, than they are now. Now, the standard I think, has been elevated in the TV room with shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and, and, and many shows, and on in the BBC as well, that just the bar is way up now. And so advertising has its it's unusual that it outside of the realm of parody, that that dialogue. Sounds so stiff, and I don't know forced, but yeah, no, I agree, David, and sorry to interrupt.

Damien Valentine 21:46
So I was thinking, Well, if you've got to go to ChatGPT to create the script for you. This is obviously taken directly from the output and incorporated straight into the film. Yeah, it needed a lot of editing, to the point where you might as well just write the whole thing yourself. Because at the very bare bones of this script is a Batman story. You could imagine that, but it needed a lot of work to be a good script. But as an experiment, I can appreciate that he wanted to try to do something different. And this is what he was trying as an experiment. I can completely understand why he's doing that because you're right for this business. A lot of takes on Batman, so it's really hard to do anything new. And as much as I liked the Robert Pattinson Batman, it felt a lot like Christopher Nolan's Batman films but darker. There's nothing wrong with that because they're both no I agree on it. But yeah, it's like I get it you want to try? Isn't experience try do something new the Batman and that, I don't think it really works is that yeah, but yeah, that's an experiment. That's fine. Do it, put it out there, see what reaction you get? I'm gonna say to this creator if you want it to more Batman stories. This isn't necessarily the best way to go about it. If you want to do something different for Batman, my advice would be don't copy the latest incarnations of Batman because they are going for that really dark gritty look. Try and do a very different spin. Like, we haven't had a

Tracy Harwood 23:25
between the scenes. Damian. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 23:28
We talked about before the previous episode, but yeah. You know, Adam West Batman. Obviously, it's like comedy focus. very campy. That's not been done for a very long time. Because even the the Tim Burton Batman is very, it wasn't strictly serious, but obviously more serious than that. Yeah.

Phil Rice 23:52
No, there was definite there was definite comic elements there and that's that's originally part of the way Batman was was handled. I mean, in the comics, there he in the banter between he and Robin and whatnot. It had some wit to it, you know, and it's it. That's one thing that has, you know, much as I love the Christopher Nolan Batman, and I like, I like this new one. I think it's got potential, mainly because I just I think Robert Pattinson is, you know, future. He's a great actor. Yeah, I really, I really, really like what he brings, but it's lost all humour. Like all Batman is not fun in the same way. Yeah. And you're right, that would be grounded that okay, it's, it's not completely new. It doesn't have to be new though. You know,

Damien Valentine 24:44
you find a way to do things dark and gritty. also has that element of humour. Because Christopher Nolan's Batman, for the most part, very serious, but there were some there was some jokes in it, and I'm not just talking about the Joker being fun to watch. There's some good banter between him and Alfred that made you laugh, and bring some more of that into it. It doesn't have to be so dark, serious and completely humorous. I get it Batman's a dark character, but have some of that humour in it as well, because that makes it look more fun.

Phil Rice 25:15
You know what it needs it needs it because he likes to score. So it needs to be a Tarantino Batman film. That would account for all the language. Right? And and all the all the violence. But then also, there's moments where you can't help but laugh. So yeah. Anyway.

Damien Valentine 25:33
But yeah, visually, it's a very impressive film. I think I did think the movement was a little bit too much. Turn that down a little bit. And you have a very stunning film. But that's my as my thinking back this film, starting to look at, not necessarily the best approach for generating the story. So I hope Solo creator keeps, keeps that in mind for the next who's next projects. And I'd like to see what he does next. Because obviously, he's got talent. I know Oh, yeah. I don't just see this video and then stop making stuff. We we do like to encourage creators to, to keep improving their craft and to create more of what it is they create. So don't think we're trying to tell you to stop because we're not doing that. We just work we're

Phil Rice 26:24
trying to tell ChatGPT to stop. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just stop. Stop what you're doing more

Tracy Harwood 26:31
human in the loop as well, I'd say. Absolutely.

Phil Rice 26:35
Alright,

Damien Valentine 26:35
let's move on to the Marvel side of things. So the Spider Man film, Spider Man action figure animations. Now this came to me, actually through the newsletter that Reallusion sends out. And it was a they'd found this guy. And they did a sort of behind the scenes thing about how he was doing these videos. And I did think about linking that. But that's not really machinima. As such, it's more of a behind the scenes documentary, I thought, let's talk about what he's actually making. And then we can put the back behind those things in the show notes. So what he's doing is, he's using his phone to scan his action figure collection, which is obviously lots of Marvel characters, in particular Spider Man. So it puts it on a black square, and he walks around with his phone getting several times to get different angles of it. And then he's importing that model, from his phone into iClone as a fully animated character, which he's then generating animated shorts for now we're gonna get there's no real story to what he's doing. Because they're very short clips. It's more of a technical exercise. I think he's having a lot of fun with it. But we've never seen anything like that in the show. So I thought, this is very different. I wanted to choose it this month, just because it is so different from anything we've seen before. So yeah, what do you guys think?

Tracy Harwood 28:01
You want me to go next? I'm happy to if you want. Okay, sure. Well, I just I had to watch this about four times. So I thought what the hell was that, but I've just seen under a minute and a half of the most crazy fight action using these 3d scan figurines. I've got not seen anything like it. And you know, you can clearly see that this is a person who loved his box of action men characters so much, he just didn't want to leave them under the bed under the bed. So he's used them as inspiration to take them to a whole new level of play. The quality of these animations is pretty amazing. I think they're really very smooth. And I think what I like about them is the is the sound editing that he's put over them. He's He's clearly got an incredible workflow. And his evidently, uh, you know, he clearly understands what he's trying to do with each of these characters in each of the shorts that he's, he's making, which, gotta say is not aimed at YouTube, but at Instagram. So it's really short, sharp kind of stuff, I think primarily he started out as an action figure and Toy Collector. And these animations were a way of keeping his collection going. But I suspect that maybe now what he's got is the other way around, that the demand for his animations means that he's got to collect more figures. And I think that's kind of an interesting reflection on the kind of hobbyist journey, which he's taken really, I mean, it's well beyond personal collection to this kind of shared enterprise and is possibly something that I think maybe museums might be interested in as a way of animating their collections for a new generation of visitors and followers. I thought it was cool. Really interesting. But he talks about it in the context of what he's doing is stop mo animation. And it's not really that that he's doing it, it's, you know, I guess it might have been if what he was doing was photographing them and then moving the character and then re photographing it, I can kind of see why he might think that what he's doing is stop mo, but it's actually proper virtual production. And it kind of made me think is what what we're looking at here a kind of analogue machinima, and maybe, I don't know, because the, you know, the gate is it's clearly inspired by the games that these characters are, you know, are in, but it's not really, you know, a computer video game that they're coming from, it's much more analogue kind of play that you you, you see these kinds of things that, you know, it's more of like a physical form of game based content. So yeah, that was my thoughts. I thought it was really interesting pick not seen anything like this before. It was. Yeah, really interesting. The way he's going about doing it.

Phil Rice 31:11
I've never, I've never seen you mentioned, Damian, we haven't seen anything like this on the show. But I've been I've never seen anyone do this at all yet. Maybe he's the first I don't know. But it's fascinating. I think, maybe this is really a silly thing to fixated on. But the thing that was most enjoyable to me about it was that as I watched it, and then just read a little bit about how he did it, I thought, hey, I know how to do everything that he did to make this happen. I mean, I don't think I could execute this as well as him. Because there's, there's, that's a skill set, you really have to work on action, and you know, animations and getting all that to line up. So but I'm talking about the scanning of the figure, the bringing it in and rigging it as a character and iClone. And then of course, setting up these animated scenes. I think I even understand how he did the backgrounds. I'm curious what your your guess or thought or knowledge would be on this Damien. But because the background almost felt like a 3d photo. Now, because it doesn't really it, everything kind of stays central. And it's this very, it's a realistic looking room. But it's from very each each of the shorts is from a very particular point of view something and maybe a 360 camera or something, which is very clever. Freedom, the guy who does all the iClone tutorials, I've seen him do tutorial on on that on how to quickly mock up a background that's, you know, out of wherever you're at. And it works perfectly for this scenario, because you're not having to do it with life size characters. These are, you know, he's got everything kind of scaled to where they're like action figures size, you know, that's what it looks like. So I just found it fascinating. They're fun, I could totally see this, this content performing well on on Instagram or Tiktok. Yeah, really neat. And I loved the the interview that he did with Reallusion magazine. That interview was from back in October, I think seems like a very sharp guy. Very nice. He's a good communicator. So when he was talking about explaining, you know, how he did what he did, and what inspires him and stuff, it was, it was very enjoyable, felt kind of like a, like a kindred spirit in a way, you know, another, basically solo creator out there, just making what he loves. And I think that, that whatever the specific origin of that love is, if it's for the figures, or if it's for filmmaking, or maybe both, but it comes through in work like this, that it's hard to quantify what that is, right? But it's the person who made there's talk that like that good chefs put that into their food, right? Yeah, that when they have a positive energy or attitude, and they're baking something or cooking something, it ends up coming through in the flavour of the food, and it's kind of like, that's the sense I get off of this film is this was loved by the person who made it, and how can you unless you're really cynical, how can you not enjoy it? purely on that basis, you know, even if nothing else, even if you don't care about Marvel or anything, it's just when you see somebody that has really injected love into something in their making, man, you know, bring it on, I love it. So it gave me a fleeting temptation to because I've got a massive collection of Star Wars figures. So I was kinda like But now, I have too much of my agenda. No, no, I'm going to have to wait. And someone else will do that now. So, yeah, just a lot of fun. I think the only criticism I would have is, at least on the YouTube version that we watched. There's some aspects of the video fidelity that aren't great. Like the actual render quality of the video, but since these were produced as shorts and then probably brought in for a compilation on YouTube, maybe quality got lost there, you know, maybe I should go seek out the originals on Instagram, they may end up looking sharper, but the image was just a little bit there was some kind of digital distortion here and there and like, like maybe they had a a high keyframes value when they rendered or something like that, you know, where there's, there's that digital stuff that happens and stuff that was just a tad distracting. But you know, I could tell that what was underneath that the the fidelity of the actual production was high, you know, and a lot of care was taken. So it ended up not not detracting too much from from the enjoyment of it. And again, I recognise this isn't the first generation of this release, it's probably been copied from somewhere. So, you know, that can happen. But, yeah, I enjoyed this a lot. I'm surprised I was surprised to learn that ChatGPT wrote the scripts for this

Phil Rice 36:45
Yeah, yeah, just just for those for the for those in the audience. Who, there's no sarcasm in your world that that was sarcastic. I don't think there was any ChatGPT involved here at all. So yeah, great stuff. Great pick.

Damien Valentine 37:02
Y'all got you both enjoyed it, because it's just seemed like, it's not a lot of depth to it. But the way it is made is very impressive in that sense of fun that he had making it coming across it and watching it

Phil Rice 37:14
was a big piece of it was a big piece of bubblegum is what this was. Yeah. It was good. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 37:20
So I thought that this has to be my pick for the month because I just, it's so different, and so much fun. Yeah. And yeah, Phil, I do have a lot. You have a collection of Star Wars because I've been thinking, I wonder I got some really good stormtroopers and I thought maybe if I scan them, the better stormtroopers threats the Empire you never know. So yeah, that's it for our superhero double bill episode. Let us know what you thought of both films. How do you feel about ChatGPT as script writing tool, have you used it successfully? Because if you have we'd like to know because we haven't seen any good examples of that. Yeah,

Phil Rice 38:05
we'll be the judge of that. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 38:09
Yeah, that's no talk at completelymachinima.com. And let us know if you have any other thoughts or feedback you have about the show? And that's about it for this week. So thank you, and again, bye bye.