Phil Rice 00:45
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. My name is Phil Reiss and I'm here with my co hosts Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove and Damian Valentine. Hello. This week we are discussing a feature length film, which is, is certainly not the first it's been done. But it is a rarity in the world of machinima and even in virtual production. And this one has some some interesting elements to it, and some really nice production values. I thought, but Tracy, why don't you it's your pick. So why don't you tell us about this film? Absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 01:31
Well, Emesis Blue, it's Source Filmmaker, by Fortress Films, and it was actually released February last year. It's an astonishing one hour and 50 minutes long. It's it as you said, Phil, it's a length we've rarely seen reviewed. By rarely seen and certainly, more or less, more or less, I think we've probably only reviewed one other feature length film that probably didn't get up into well, as I recall. I guess our challenge with with what we what we see with these films mostly is that because because we are mostly concerned with with short machinima, we never really tend to get into the long the longer forms. However, when I started watching this, it immediately kind of hooked me. And I thought, well, it's time we took a look at a longer form one see what see what we will think of it. So me says blue, Team Fortress two, it's a psychological horror mission. And it's been created by Chad Payne as writer and director and Anton Pelizzari, who was the producer of it, and these guys work together as Fortress Films. Chad wrote this apparently over five years, basing story on the characters, which are basically created by Valve. They said that as the viewership of their channel grew, they became inspired to increase the quality of their videos, which is why they ended up creating this feature length animation. And at the same time, they expanded their production team to make it since the release of this film, it's received a huge amount of attention, mostly positive from the game's fan community. So it's probably fair to say they are well on their way I think to achieving their goal it's had over 9 million views so far. The plots basically this and bear with me on the detail has the detail is an interesting aspect of this. So they've described it as on Halloween night of 1968, a high ranking executive of the builders league United cooperation mysteriously vanishes in mortem New Mexico, a private detective and a washed up war veteran team up to find him yet the man they hunt is more dangerous than they can possibly imagine. At the same time, the patient of a local doctor is abducted from his home, his mother having been brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. The doctor searched for searches for him on his own only to find himself caught up in a conspiracy that he may or may not be involved with. And when their paths crossed, terror and death and see brought about by a horror that challenges the sanity, and true natures of the characters involved. Now that's pretty close, I thought to what I actually saw in the film, which is why I thought I might as well use what they've described it as, as I said, I love the way this starts and the interaction between the characters which you become invested in really quite quickly, but you do kind of lose the sense of who they are during the film, which I became to realise was actually quite deliberate. There's a corrupt politician who runs a soldier recycling facility and an hallucinogenic drug that's being used in some capacity, the dock is revealed as a psychopath. There are zombies in the facility leading to Tarantino esque standoffs with blood everywhere, quite a lot of fire and the occasional burst of classical music. And then these recycled soldiers are revealed as Frankenstein like creatures. It's actually really complex. And it's only about halfway through that I felt I was getting the measure of what was going on. I began to realise it has to do with this malfunctioning respawn machine, which is being used to create these super soldiers who can be traded as commodities by the company and who are enlivened with this drug, which is branded Emesis. And the characters in their various roles as kind of friends and associates of employees of the company are all kind of caught up in this somehow malfunctioning portal, which appears appears to be kind of creating and recreating their alter egos in what appears to be some kind of recursive cycle. So I think quite cleverly, the plot is actually not linear, or at least the narratives between the characters are inter woven through what appears to be a time lapse, or maybe a tear in the space time continuum that they've devised for this. The way it's presented, and the way in which the plot reveals itself, is, is quite masterful, I think it's actually pretty horrific, not least, because it's also quite uniquely grounded in the Team Fortress lore, I've got to admit, I did get a bit exhausted with it about three quarters of the way through and, and it's the sort of thing you need to pay really close attention to, because there are an awful lot of details in it. And many of them do tie back to the story somehow. And in the end, I wasn't really too sure of all the tropes and twists and turns made it quite messy and you know, sort of a messy tale, or whether that really enhanced the kind of suspense that you felt through it. I guess you're gonna have something to say about that in a minute. The ambience throughout the film, I thought was intense. The sound design drew you into the scenes, I thought in terms of the edit, there was really great use of lighting, the red and blue colours and the darkness of the shadows were really well used. But I think for me, it was the sound design that was exceptional. For me. There was also some use of lower and higher polygon characters and props throughout it, really. But by the end, I wasn't really sure how they were supposed to relate to one or one another. Because there were so many switches between versions of characters, it was quite a challenge for me to keep up with it. Voice acting I thought was superb. There was a surprising amount of humour in it, which I thought was well done. There's this early scene, where the soldier reacts to a skeleton in corner, which kind of made me laugh out loud. And also a reference to Lieutenant Colombo, which I thought was pretty funny as well. Now what interested me as well, given that we know how difficult this toolset is to use is Fortress Films comments about their commitment to using Source Filmmaker. They basically say they want to become the preeminent creators in the engine. Well, I certainly think they've achieved a level level of notoriety with it. With this particular film, I was super interested to see there are many articles commenting and not least, because of its complexity, which makes parts of the film quite ambiguous. And as a consequence, a lot of what you see in those discussion fora is, is a kind of, you know, a critique or a questioning of what's going on in the film, which in some ways, I thought was a brilliant community making device that they kind of come up with. Now, I was thinking, Could this be made in Unreal? And I think possibly a production level it could have been, but I definitely think if they, if they hadn't done that Team Fortress-ness would certainly have been lost in the process. I think overall, probably it could only have been made in the way that it has been. Could it have been shorter? Well, probably. Could it be more overtly episodic? Undoubtedly it could. It is cut up into chapters. So you have the choice of watching it in chunks if you want to, but I think these guys have also sat and thought quite carefully about the nature of binge watching two, which is a very interesting approach to making longer form, machinima. I thought they were quite clever in how they've gone about doing this. So overall, this despite the fact that I'm not a horror fan, as we all know, I was really enamoured with this particular machinima and I've got to confess I really enjoyed it for a whole bunch of reasons, not just about the the film itself. What did you think?

Ricky Grove 10:16
Well, Tracy you have a question for you. I didn't follows all of that plot. Can you repeat it please?

Tracy Harwood 10:24
Well, I'm not sure I can. It was oh, we

Ricky Grove 10:27
Oh, I see. It's,

Tracy Harwood 10:28
it's knitted together.

Ricky Grove 10:31
I mean, it's knitted together,

Tracy Harwood 10:33
knitted, I think is a very, how would I describe it? Yeah, you've got central characters. And then versions of those central characters who kind of come in various ways throughout the story. And you've got various plot lines unfolding, at different times through the whole thing. I mean, it knitted is probably a very good way of describing it. All

Ricky Grove 11:00
right. I was being facetious. I know you. Thanks for taking me seriously.

Tracy Harwood 11:05
Go on then?

Ricky Grove 11:09
Well, yeah, sure. The most successful animated film in history is the Lion King 2019. One hour and 54 minutes. And you said this was 148? Was it?

Tracy Harwood 11:26
Something like that? Yeah. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 11:29
The Lion King, you get to watch on a big screen made by people or teams of people who do nothing but clean and organise and lay things out. It's a rather original story, that you can easily follow. The problem with this film, and it was just far too complex. However, I must say that the first 20 minutes, I was beginning to think that I might be wrong, that machinima is not a long form, medium for telling stories. But around that 20 minute mark, I started to get antsy. And then things started to repeat themselves, and some other kinds of shots, and then I realised there isn't much depth to the shots, they're all flat for the most part. And despite the absolutely brilliant sound design, I agree with you, I just lost interest. And I skipped ahead and then skipped ahead. But you really can't do that. The only way to fully appreciate the film is to watch it from the beginning to end, which made me go back to your comment that an episodic version of this would have been much more interesting because you could have designed it to create suspense at the end of an episode, so that you come back to the next episode. Even if you're binge watching, it gives you a little impetus to jump into the next one. Having to watch it straight through does not give you that little boost that you need to jump into the next episode. I also found the plot in addition to being overly complex to be very pulpy. Meaning that it used a lot of pretty traditional pulp villain tropes and pulp plot tropes. Now that is necessarily bad because there's a lot of pulp things that I like in books and in movies and things like that. But the problem once again, is that using pulp tropes, almost all pulp, short stories, pulp, comics, pulp graphic novels, were all done using short form. So once again, you have that lack of depth, so that by the time you get to a certain point in the film, many viewers just no longer care about the characters anymore, because they're either so confused because they can't follow it. Or they're paying attention to something else like the way the shots are laid out or the technique of what's going on, which is not the way for a really good film to function. You know, I would like to see if there were stat statistics on the millions of people that viewed it. How many of those people actually watched it from the beginning to the end? I suspect the amount would be drastically less than what the total view count is. However, that being said, there's much to admire in this film. In terms of the way they crafted the characters the way they worked on you Even the props, some of the props like the, at one point, there was a hand gun in, in a inside of a car, cubby hole there, and like a handgun had were along the butt. I mean, obviously, they didn't design it, that's the way it is in the game. But the fact that they chose to do a shot that showed that I thought was indicative of their desire to be detailed. And that is, I admire that a great deal in the film, The attention to detail, the willingness to, to craft the scenes as best as they could. And you're right, the voice acting for the most part was really, really good. You reacted to the characters and ways that they wanted you to there was sort of a snarky humour, oftentimes, and then when the violence came, I wouldn't say Tarantino I would say Sam Peckinpah which which Tarantino borrowed from. That's basically what he's good at is borrowing from other people. But that's a whole nother story. But anyway, that voice suddenly, when you hit the violence that just, that just pushed you back from the screen, which I thought was very effective. So overall, I liked it. And I thought it was a really good choice and an interesting choice. I just couldn't deal with the length of it. And found the story to be knows, if you're going to have something long like that you better have an original story. And it didn't, didn't do that. But But I'm really happy that I spent time watching it. And I hope this team continues making films, hopefully, films that are less than an hour and 54 minutes long, or 48 minutes long. But I would really like to see them do more stuff. They deserve to have a good audience. And those are my thoughts.

Tracy Harwood 16:59
Thank you really great comments as usual. Phil. Yeah,

Phil Rice 17:04
I really I enjoyed this film. It's interesting. Because Ricky, your point of comparison for to the Lion King. I hadn't thought about it. And yeah, when you when you hold those two up next to each other in terms of what they were out to achieve, and how they delivered something easily, you know, more easily digestible and recognisable and that kind of thing. Yeah, it, it falls flat. But I think that probably the makers of this film are very heavily influenced by the Christopher Nolan type of tradition. And the film I'm thinking of in particular is Tennet. Which is a film that will never be as successful as the Lion King. For all the reasons that this film is challenging to digest. I'm not saying that they're executing on the same level that he did with Tennet. They're not clearly, I don't think they would claim that they are. But I think that's what they're reaching for, in terms of, we've talked a lot on this show about ambiguity and the role of it, and that it's not an inherently sinful thing to do. But if it's careless ambiguity, it can spoil things. And if it's thoughtful, or planned ambiguity, it can be done very artfully. And for some reason, this film really struck me as the latter category as there is there are unanswered questions for sure. And I don't know how you can straight Tracy were talking about are they being strategic with that in terms of, you know, it's something to talk about after right? People think that about Christopher Nolan's work all the time, right, is that why is he conscious of as he's making these films? Maybe even more so than? Oh, come on. Who's Ricky? Who's Who's the director of Blue Velvet and David Lynch. Yeah, yeah. So David Lynch, I feel like he's on another planet. In some ways, you know, that he's not doing things for the sake of the modern audience. He is just devoted to the art of what he's doing. And if you don't get it, tough beans, you know, yeah, I think Christopher Nolan is a little bit more. He's employing a little bit more strategy in that regard of the audience. But it's not the same strategy that the writers and producers of The Lion King are going for, you know, they're a, it's a mass market thing. It is a very original story, and a very compelling story. But when you really if you were to break that story down into components, there's a lot of they're not cliches, but they're archetypes. That That story is built from archetypes or that for a reason, you know, their stories that get told again and again in so many different ways over a period of millennia, because there's something we need to learn from those stretches.

Ricky Grove 20:20
And people recognise them immediately. Yes, yeah.

Phil Rice 20:23
Even if they can't name them or know the origins. But yeah, they're familiar to us. It's almost in our DNA to, to recognise those threads, right. That's why That's why, you know, very, very old literature. I mean, some of the stories in you know, Genesis in the Bible is just, they're purely archetypal stories, you know, and they, and they, they mean something, and you see those themes again, you know, Cain and Abel, that relationship and all the dynamics of that, just as an example. So, yeah, and I feel like that, that these guys aren't aren't tapping into that. And maybe they should, in some way, you know, that, that those things are nice pillars that help people relate. But anyway, I wasn't turned off by the complexity, or the ambiguity. And I've, I was surprised at my reaction to the length because honestly, when I first saw it, and Tracy, I think you even put a note there, there's, you know, feature length, budget some time and I'm like, really?

Damien Valentine 21:29
Reaction, I had the exact same react, but honestly,

Phil Rice 21:31
what made me go, Okay, this isn't just, you know, some guy on a blog saying, Hey, what's this? This is Tracy. She doesn't throw us garbage. So let's give this I'm so glad I did. I really dove into it. I did not watch it all in one setting. But that's not the film's fault. That's just the nature of my time I, I tend to digest even feature length films in parts, just due to the constraints of time, free time is kind of in chunks for me. So. But I didn't mind the length of it, even though I didn't at all understand all the time what was going on? And I don't know how much of that was, because there was time between the the viewing sessions, or if it is something structural to the film that's, that's leaving those gaps or whatever. But yeah, I've kind of it made me realise I've kind of been my view of long form content is has been changing. I think we were all forced to reevaluate it a little bit during COVID, when we had a lot more time to watch stuff. And, you know, the film that I'm thinking of that I watched only just recently, like a week ago, was Scorsese's latest Killers of the Flower Moon, which I'm not comparing this film to that in any way. Because Killers of the Flower Moon is a frickin masterpiece. It really is. But it's long, it's like three and a half, almost, you know, it's more than three and a half hours long. And I would have watched that in one setting, if I could, like if I had the time, I would have done that because I could not stop watching I was drawn in. And there are moments in that film where I didn't, I wasn't sure what was going on. Exactly. Because there's, there's a section right in the middle of particular where there it's almost a montage of different activity and stuff are just like, What the hell is even happening right now. You know, it ends up bringing it all together and tying it together in the end. But I got to thinking about like, because a lot of the criticism of that film has been its length. And some people are just like, Oh, I'm not gonna sit over three and a half hours for a movie. I don't care if it's Scorsese or not. But those same people will sit down and watch a season of Breaking Bad over a period of a couple of days. Or they'll watch a you know, a British television series. If it's the traditional six episode arc. That's the same length as Scorsese's movie, you know, so now he didn't break his movie up into chapters. So I don't know, it would have taken some effort to do so there aren't any distinct lines. But you could divide that up into six parts and craft the suspense between and all that stuff if you wanted to. But in terms of overall length, it's essentially the length of a season of television of many shows. And we're consumed and people consume that when you when you sit down to watch a show on Netflix, how often do you sit down and just go well, let's just watch one episode of this. Okay, so maybe you intend that. But how often do you actually succeed? You know, truth telling, and telling the trellis is when it's a true Through serial, and not a situation comedy that you know, the constant reset every, you know, at the end of it, things are back the way they were. When it's a true serial, you're watching a very long if you're watching, if you're watching a season of Better Call Saul, that's just a really long movie. Or if they split the season in half, it's two really long movies. I think the same is true for some of the Star Wars, Disney plus TV shows that have come out in the past few years and or and the Mandalorian. and stuff. I mean, the number of episodes and how long they are really those could be movies. They're just they've just split them up. I think because they understand how consumption works of this stuff right now. So. So the length didn't, didn't bug me, I think the thing I most appreciated about this. And you guys, we've already mentioned the production strengths of it. And you're right, I agree completely. The thing I most appreciated was, I've played Team Fortress 2, I don't know, maybe a total of two hours in my entire life. And it was years and years and years ago, I played it long enough to recognise the different character classes. But like, I don't have any investment. I don't even know if that game has any lore or anything that they're leaning on here. But what I appreciated was that didn't matter. Like I could have, I would have experienced this film. The same way, even if I had never played Team Fortress two really good. Like you didn't, it did not rely on that. And yet I bet that there are some rewarding elements embedded in the film for people who are fans of the game, because that's, that's their starting fan base for this for sure. It's people who are going to just watch it because it was made with that game they love. That's a big part of the audience and very smart. But the cool thing is, is that I watched it and didn't feel left out or excluded or feel like, well, this was clearly just made for them. And a lot of films that we've seen are that way or that way. Right. Right. Yeah, they lean so much on the law

Ricky Grove 27:07
narrow,

Phil Rice 27:08
that they forget to tell you stuff. Astartes! Yeah, a star phase is a great example. Yeah, fans of of that game. We're capable of enjoying it on a whole other level than people who hadn't experienced the game. And that's fine. If that's your aim. This clearly, I can't think that was external. This effort was taken to give this a broader, a broader possible audience. And I think they succeeded in that. I liked the feel of it. It kind of gave me especially in the intro, the first 1520 minutes, like a Cold War spy drama kind of feel. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Just wonderful. And the fact that it was set in 68. It's like, yeah, maybe

Ricky Grove 27:57
that's maybe the thing that I'm catching.

Phil Rice 28:01
I think it probably a lot of those elements probably are Ricky Yeah, it's this kind of, you know, behind the lines and East Berlin kind of, kind of atmosphere. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. I think the criticisms you guys have given are valid. I do think that, that there are some complexity issues with the film. But I, I tend to think to sum up, that they entered into that with their eyes open, that the guys who spent five years writing this, I think they knew that I think they were inspired by again in the Christopher Nolan tradition, where Christopher Nolan when he puts out Tenet he knows Yeah, not everybody's gonna have the tolerance for this to the patient's for this. And I'm okay with that. Because I want to tell the story anyway. And there's an audience for it. But it's not everybody. It's not the same audience, that the Lion King or Forrest Gump or all these iconic, you know, movies and mass market stories would reach. And I think it's okay, I think there's room in in film for that, I think to it, like I said, to a degree David Lynch's the same way he's not making stuff for everybody. You know, he's making stuff that frankly, is really hard to digest sometimes.

Ricky Grove 29:13
Well, I think filmmakers sometimes because the project is so long, they're actually entertaining themselves. Yeah, not just not just the audience. You don't I mean, they're doing things that are fun for them to do.

Phil Rice 29:29
Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's so and you know, there's a risk with that. Just like there's a risk with you know, with some of the films that I make some of the comedy that I do primarily is just something I think is funny. That's not always gonna mean that a whole bunch of people think it's fun to some you learn real fast, you know, the same is true for reason for Yeah, for stuff

Ricky Grove 29:52
like Yeah,

Phil Rice 29:53
yeah, I I, I respect that even though some of the stuff I probably missed or whatever my head or I, you know, I think there were points when I was watching it Ricky where I kind of was ready to skip forward or whatever. And but I don't think that's on the film. I think that's that's, that's me that's an attention span problem for me that if I wanted to I could I could get more out of this film that I did. I think it's there. I think they put it in there. So yeah, I really, I really liked it. And I think as machinima feature films go, I mean, the production value of this is, is really strong, really, really strong.

Damien Valentine 30:39
Christopher Nolan came to mind when I was watching this as well, because I actually watched an interview with him a few weeks ago, before I watched Yes. And you're right about his, he likes to add that ambiguity, because he was saying that one of his early films he so to a test audience, and they had questions about what did the ending mean? So you said, Well, my interpretation is, and then he said, and then afterwards, his prisoners brother said, you can never see that again. We'll never do that again. Because now the audience that listen to that, it's gonna take that is the definitive answer. Because if I said, it's my interpretation is both No, that doesn't matter. They heard the director say this, that's what they're going to consider. And so he never explained this, those mystery. Unless it's important to the story, he likes to add that mystery to what's happened to give people a chance to something to think about and talk about afterwards, he said, is films an experience and something that he wants people to experience but not necessarily understand completely, and he enjoys? Knowing that people will watch it, and then they're gonna go away and start discussing it and trying to analyse it and come up with their own theories. And he doesn't want to read them. He doesn't want to know what they come up with. Because that adds to the mystery for the for the audience to do, and he doesn't want that to come back to him. But you're right about that. And so this was kind of kind of the same thing. And it is a very complex story. I think they were inspired by Christopher Nolan's work. Simply because of the complexity in it. And, you know, it was, like you I thought this was kind of a spy story. I did not expect zombies to appear halfway through it. But kind of changed the whole tone of the film. Once you started getting the horror elements into it. I really enjoyed it. We haven't really discussed that many feature length films on here. I've tried watching a few when I've been, you know, trying to make my pick. And they're just not. It's really hard to sit down and watch a feature necklace cinema. This is one of the best feature despite its flaws, because it isn't a perfect film. It's one of the best feature length films I've seen made with machinima. So these people have obviously spent a lot of time developing this story and putting effort into it. And actually played Team Fortress even less than you recognise the characters from seeing pictures of them by I have no idea who that character classes or anything like that. Yeah, you know, I've seen them in just films that we've looked at. But that's that's the extent of what I know about the game, and doesn't matter. And that I think, is good. And obviously, I feel like you did fancy the game, we're gonna get more out of it, but not in a way that hinders the rest of it haven't.

Phil Rice 33:37
Yeah, that's a careful balance, isn't it? You know, I mean, it is really hard to do this. And I think that they that they had success with that. As much as anything else about the film is treading that, that line where it's not, you know, you veer too far. One way you insult the fan base of the game by acting like you're neglecting them, but you hear the other way. And you they really, I feel like they walk that tightrope very, very nicely. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 34:08
I believe that so many tightropes in this.

Ricky Grove 34:11
Yeah. Yeah, this

Damien Valentine 34:14
is a team I think we should watch closely because they're obviously a very talented group. And this is okay. We're gonna see what they do next, I think. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 34:25
Yeah, to say that I, I found myself a while you guys were commenting, thinking that one of the problems with stopping your viewing of a feature length film and then chopping it up like I did, is that you miss things. You don't have the same continuity, that you would if you sat all the way through it. So it's a sort of Janus kind of situation where on one hand, you stop because you're not as interested in it but on the other And if you'd stayed interested in it, you'd probably get more out of it. You know what I mean? Yes, it's a hard. I'm sort of talking about my preferences. I wish my preferences I wish they had short so that I could keep my interest sustained. But isn't, as Phil pointed out, isn't that more about me than the film?

Tracy Harwood 35:22
Because it made me it's

Phil Rice 35:24
really, Ricky, I think I think we've been conditioned also, by the kind of content we've been exposed to with the show. I mean, how often have we, in our searches for pics? Have how often have you stumbled upon something that's at or near feature length? And you get a few minutes into, and it's just like, I'm not going to see anything new here. And you go ahead and jump ahead. I mean, that's, that is the norm. I think because there's a I mean, the craft of telling a feature length story is, it's not easy. It's really hard. So I think that that, that expectation is not only excusable, but it may also point to that there's something they could have done better in the first 15 to 20 minutes of the film, to keep you engaged. You know, because you haven't you're, Ricky, you're an avid reader, you're a writer, you know, the craft of, of filmmaking and storytelling. And if it didn't grip you, then honestly, the onus is on them, even if even if the rest of us on the show here can't detect what is it? Where did this film let it down in that regard? But I don't think that's I don't think that's a flaw of how you approach the film. I think it's an indicator that there is something to be improved there, that there is a trick to and it's not a chintzy trick, but it's it there is a trick to giving people enough to go on early on in a feature length to have them put on their seatbelt and stay for the rest of the ride, you know. And so clearly, then something in this wasn't quite there. Which shouldn't be discouraging to the filmmakers. It should be exciting. Big. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 37:11
yeah. Closer than any other feature, length machinima film I've ever seen. Yeah. I mean, I lasted 20 minutes before I started jumping. That's quite an accomplishment. Even though it may not sound like that to the filmmakers

Phil Rice 37:26
it is. Right. Well, there's and there were some really great scenes in that in the opening, the opening of the film is clearly the strongest. Oh, yeah. Fantastic. So great seeds. So yeah, it's it's that's going to take some study, I think on on it, assuming that they, like all of us want to keep getting even better,

Damien Valentine 37:47
fresh. And they do that, because the amount of craft they put into this is something that they want to keep doing. And they're lucky using something like the Source engine, because it gives them a lot of control. Yes, we can do if they try exactly this with Halo, or something like that. You know, the exact same story, but maybe with Halo, it wouldn't have worked because they're so limited by the chance choices and the animations available. We've worked out for five minutes.

Ricky Grove 38:15
For example, the lip sync and the Source engine. It's just fantastic. What and you know what I think what happens is as a viewer when you watch this stuff, at least, I do. If the lip sync is off in the first several lines or the first scene, I just go it's bad. Lipsync whereas if it captures you, it can be poor later on. And you're still buying it because it sets this sets the your mindset. And boy was a great, just great. So it allowed you to be able to look at the characters immediately as characters and not as cartoons. Yeah.

Phil Rice 38:56
Yeah, the lipstick and the facial expression together. Yes, possibilities in this in this tool set are very, very high. And they executed really well in those in those areas. And it is it's important, because that's one of the things that if there's nothing else in a feature film, you got to have somebody that you care about, because that's who you're writing along with, you know, so there has to be somebody that's a character that is engaging enough or characters that that you want to keep seeing what happens to them to some degree. I think that's if we were to study a whole bunch of successful feature films, that's probably one of the one of the the, you know, slap your forehead dumb, easy things to spot, right saying, Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 39:40
This one other three really defined characters and the fourth the boy was, sort of a close fourth, if you like, but the three central ones were just very clear, I thought. Yeah,

Phil Rice 39:53
yep. And great performance. As Yes, Yeah, terrific. Those are all really work for it. Well

Ricky Grove 40:00
I have to say that I had a little flash while we were talking about being back at the machinima.com, early era on the forums, I wouldn't have felt safe enough to save my real thoughts about this film in the forum. Because the Team Fortress 2 people would have just bashed me would have flamed me. So I am really happy to be here with you, my friends, who give me the safety to be able to say things that I think that I know may not be well received within the Team Fortress 2 community, because they don't want to hear some of the things that I said here, despite the fact that I admire this film. And I think you should see it more going to watch more, and we're going to follow this. So thank you guys for giving me the safety to be able to express my honest opinions. You

Phil Rice 40:59
remember, the gladiator arena of the machinima.com forums? That's where you and I met? Yes, I think some something happened to where we ended up. Kind of that's why fighting on the same side of an issue somebody that's right. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. Now all those hola they live in the YouTube comments. That's where they went. Missing. Reddit. Go back to the yeah, go better page down in the YouTube comments or, or Reddit? Yeah. For

Ricky Grove 41:29
Reddit, flame wars and Reddit. Flame

Tracy Harwood 41:32
was a well established now. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 41:36
What's really good choice. Tracy. Despite my criticisms, I really glad you chose it. And I'm looking forward to seeing what this team comes up with next.

Tracy Harwood 41:46
But you know what, just reflecting on what you guys were saying. The first because I've watched this twice, all the way through twice. Because I Yeah, well, the first time I did what I know, well, 20 minutes in, I something must have happened. And I decided to go and do something else. So it kept me for that first 20 minutes. And then it was three or four days later when I picked up and watch the rest. And I watched it. And thought, I've missed loads, I can't get back into it. I don't know what where, where I've gone wrong with it. And then I had to sort of sit and watch it all again. So I cut out some time and made it my evening's film watch from beginning to end. But I got to about 20-25 minutes into the second time. And I realised that there was this kind of like muddle in the middle. And it was at that point that I thought I it's not that I hadn't remembered it. It's just that that's where it started to sort of crumble a little bit. But my conclusion was because of the way that they had crafted it, I kind of felt it was deliberate. It was almost like, you know, loading up the washing machine, and then, you know, putting it on fast spin and then sort of seeing what, you know what, what's clean at the other end of the cycle?

Ricky Grove 41:55
Yeah, but do you watch? Do you watch the washing machine for?

Tracy Harwood 43:19
Not often? Exactly. But yeah, I did. I did. I did watch it twice for that very reason. Because the detail was just it's so intense all the way through. Just keeping that level of attention up to it for an hour and 50 minutes isn't really hard ask Actually,

Phil Rice 43:41
yes, her as Yes. Even, you

Tracy Harwood 43:45
know, somebody that can do that.

Ricky Grove 43:50
We really even Pixar has had really failures in the recent years, and they're probably the best animating ashrama animating company in the world.

Tracy Harwood 44:02
Yeah. But all of that said, it's really great to hear that you thought it was pretty pretty good machinima because I thought false and all I thought it was probably one of the best long form I'd ever seen.

Ricky Grove 44:14
Me to. I do have to thank you, Tracy for giving me the title of my autobiography model in the middle.

Tracy Harwood 44:23
Yeah, model in the middle. Perfect.

Phil Rice 44:27
So look for that book on Amazon, published Ricky's self published autobiography model in the middle. Also, if you're, we would love to have your feedback. So you can reach us at talk at completely machinima.com Or leave us a comment on YouTube or wherever else you see us promoting the podcast here. You could also tune into Tracy's new YouTube channel, which is a faceless YouTube channel that is just 24/7 live stream of a washing machine. Yeah, Oh,

Ricky Grove 45:00
that's great with different cycles. So that's

Phil Rice 45:03
right. We're trying to get her monetized so that she can she can, you know, run some ads on that. So, brilliant. Thanks for tuning into us. And on behalf of myself and Tracy, Ricky Damian, we will see you all next episode. Thanks.

Ricky Grove 45:20
Right a bientot!