Phil Rice 00:44
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast about machinima, virtual production and other related technologies. I'm your host Phil Rice and I'm here with my co hosts Tracy Harwood and Damian Valentine. Ricky is off building a bridge between the Twin Peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro but he'll be back in a future episode. So this is our news omnibus for the month we're going to talk about several items of news in the Machinima and surrounding community. Tracy, you want to kick us off?

Tracy Harwood 01:21
Sure. Yeah, it's been a busy month. Actually, some really notable things have have happened. And I guess I want to just mention some endings. I want to also mentioned some pretty high rolling accolades that have been awarded to machinima and real time productions, and also a few other AI based things. But let's start off with RoosterTeeth. I guess the much anticipated demise of RoosterTeeth was finally announced on the sixth of March with, with Warner stating that it was in discussions to sell the rights to their various series, although we're not sure exactly who with now, when Ben and I wrote the chapter in our Pioneers book dedicated to the impact of RoosterTeeth, on all things, machinima, which we published in 2021, just after the lockdown, we wrote it during lockdown, actually, although we'd been thinking about it for a long time. We knew at that point that they were in the in the final stretch, then there was a lot of difficult things going on in the company. And some of the key players were having some real challenges. And that was coupled with the consolidation of expertise across Warner's streaming empire, including machinima.com, and Burnie's departure. And all of that kind of came together. And we kind of knew that that closure was, was probably going to be imminent. So I guess it's, you know, surprising, really, that it's lasted as long as it has. And in fact, that's 21 years just over 21 years. But I don't want to dwell on the difficulties. Let's take a moment, I think to celebrate their phenomenal achievements in machinima, Red versus Blue, despite not being to everyone's taste, and including Ricky and probably me too. And, of course, part of the demise of RoosterTeeth actually, is basically that its audience has outgrown the content. I mean, Red versus Blue has been an astonishing success story for for many years, and was considered to be an exemplar of creativity for the Internet age in terms of its influence in development of things like new game mods for Halo, in particular, its episode distribution strategy, it's live performances. Its massive, and highly engaged, fan community and membership programme innovations, its creative production process, which often involve community members, its development of a talent pipeline, and new shows and its events coordinated in country by chapters that were developed and grown by the community, I think, really, it represents a significant moment in internet history when the era of the wild wild web hit mainstream broadcast media squarely in what I'd say was the solar plexus. It's also the longest running web series to date. It was Burnie Burns and Matt Hullom, later joined by Joel Heyman, and then Jeff Ramsey and others. The humour and sheer sense of fun of what it was about was engaging to so many I still recall the deep humour in this special episode of, of Red versus Blue that they brought with them to the European cinema Festival in 2007. It was called Going Global. I'll put a link in the show notes too, if you haven't seen it. We showed it in one of the main halls on campus in Leicester with Burnie and Jason Saldana doing a panel discussion alongside, they had everyone in stitches of laughter throughout the whole programme. And then I also remember later in the evening hosting an awards dinner at a local hotel. And because I hadn't fully appreciated how popular these guys were at that time since 2007, I hadn't planned for any security for them. So they were accosted by this massive group of fans a good number of whom had flown in from across Europe to meet them, which meant they actually couldn't get into the hotel, and then they didn't get their dinner either. And I just remember feeling extremely guilty at the time, but I hadn't hadn't quite cottoned on to this as early as I should have done. Anyway, given that the often overlooked aspect of machinima is the significance of the fan community. I think, following the closure announcement, I began to wonder what actually might happen to the content. Because as we all know, Warner handled the demise of machinima.com in such an utterly appalling way by just closing down the servers without any regard for creators and in effect, managing to destroy a generation really of intangible cultural heritage that was kind of encapsulated in this vast library of work. So I asked couple of folks in the in the fan community, and it turns out, they are indeed organised grabbing content and downloading as much of their favourite work as they can by by by just downloading it. And they're placing it in safe places through which as I understand it, their intention eventually is to share it on, on what other distribution channels they choose to pick. All on the assumption, I think that it's going to disappear from Warner's channels, at some point, irrespective of whatever the negotiations Warner are up to at the moment and with whatever content because they're clearly not talking to the community. I'm not at all surprised this is happening. I think, what did surprise me originally with Warner's behaviour with machinima.com was that there wasn't as much kickback from communities as I'd anticipated, or at least not one, not one that you might expect from a sort of a 12 million strong fan base. I think it'd be fair to say the clearly the creators were as glad to get rid of the perpetual contracts, as Warner was to wash his hands of all of that, too. But evidently, this is not the case this time around. There's a generation of folks who have grown up with RoosterTeeth, in particular, out of which Warner has made hay for many years, passing it off without due respect to that community isn't something that is going to happen so easily this time around, even though of course, RoosterTeeth story is, is clearly far from squeaky. And I'm sure Damien's gonna mention this as well. But there's one final thread to this story, which is that Burnie was commissioned to write a final series of Red versus Blue, which was due to air later this year. So far, I think we've not really heard what's happening. I haven't checked on that today as we prep for the show. But I understand it is still going to stream and it does seem, I think, to be fairly ironic, in the sense that Red versus Blue actually predated RoosterTeeth RoosterTeeth by some months, back in 2003. So I think it's really quite fitting that if this extra series does show, Red versus Blue will also outlive RoosterTeeth. At the end, too. I think that's that's a fun fact really. All of that said, I think it's only right that we say thanks to them for all the laughs over the years, machinima would not have been the same without them, it would not have got the recognition that it that it did without the RoosterTeeth guys. So thanks for your support and input over the years. I think if you want to find out more about the you know what happened with RoosterTeeth I'm going to try and find a way to put the chapter on RoosterTeeth on our blog as a as a free download so that you can kind of read up on it. It's it's not everything that's happened but it's a good part of the early story of how they came to be so influential in the in the world of machinima. And that kind of whole part of the backstory to the to the development really have the internet and YouTube and what have you. So yeah, Damian, you had something you wanted to add to that, I think,

Damien Valentine 09:38
yeah, the final season the Red versus Blue, there was a brief trailer that was released and there's a release date. So I'm just gonna read out what I've got here on my screen says Red vs. Blue Restoration will be available for purchase on Amazon Prime, video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and other platforms starting May the seventh and and be available for additional rental from May the 21st. So obviously, you can't watch this for free, you have to pay for it on one of those services, which surprised me actually, because I was here when I got started. It's just free on the, on the machinima.com. And it predicted YouTube really see I can't say on YouTube straight away. So yeah, so that's going to be the final season that is still going to be released, then they've released a video talking about despite the closure, this is still going to be the final project that gets put out there. I'm kind of sad that they're disappearing as well wasn't necessarily the biggest fan of their work, but I can appreciate the influence that they had on the Machinima community. And even though I said it was biggest fan, they inspired me to get started as well, because they were my introduction to machinima. I watched the first season of Red versus Blue as it was in production. I think there were seven episodes available when I was I can't remember, it was such a long time ago. And I thought, that's a really interesting way to, you know, to tell a story, and very different from the kind of stories I was interested in selling. But just the concept of using a video game to tell a story. Got my mind going because I had all these ideas, but there's no way that I could do them live action. Because if I was a student, I couldn't afford any of this. I couldn't afford a camera. And I didn't really know anyone that would want to be in front of the camera. But I knew people who liked doing voices and stuff like that over the internet that I think all around the world. Obviously, I couldn't bring them all into one location either. But you know, during some of this and so yeah, Red versus Blue got me started with machinima. And so that I can appreciate if that's too hard on myself and other filmmakers. And so yeah, it's it's sad to see them go.

Tracy Harwood 12:09
Yeah, ran it's time I think. Yeah, Phil do you, um, you know, you got you were on the ground when they were first about so. What would you like to say?

Phil Rice 12:23
Yeah, I mean, the the, you know, look, the influence they had was was undeniable, I I really, really enjoyed the very first episode. I feel like that opening conversation of the first episode, in fact, between the two guys was probably the best written thing that they've done. That's not That's not to poopoo the rest, but I'm just saying that was a real peak. And it was it was it was, it was a clever way of using digital puppeteering basically, to, to tell a story. And it got around a lot of the things that got in the way of telling machinima stories and other engines. And it was it was at a time when. You know, for the years prior to that it was not uncommon for there to be a character's face on the screen, and they're talking and there's no motion here whatsoever, because the game didn't even support the possibility of it, you know. And so helmeted characters were the ultimate cheat for that you didn't have to worry about that. He didn't have to worry about facial expression, everything. All the emoting was done with the body and tone of voice. And they, they had very, very good voice cast for a comedy show. Like they it wasn't just well written. The comedic the sense of comedic timing that they had, even as the seasons went on, and it became a little bit more slapstick type of humour, you know, pratfalls, and you know, catchphrases and innuendo. I don't know that it. It felt like when when that became the mainstay, and that's what's getting printed on the T shirts. And I mean, the whole name RoosterTeeth is really just a rephrasing of a very filthy innuendo if you think about it, right. So that that was always at the root of their humour. But when it when that became most of the emphasis, I found myself honestly, longing for the even shallow philosophical conversation of that very first episode. That's what I mean by it was, for me, it was a peek that I liked to see. That was my favourite thing about the writing that was done in the oil cleanse work with Paul Marino and Frank Dellario. In Apartment Huntin' with the Lenny and Larry series, right, when they would when they would veer off and have a conversation, there's Apartment Huntin' made in 1997. And these two lumberjacks are taking a tour of a house that they're looking to buy. And they start talking about Michael Dukakis, who ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 1988 theorising about why he lost you know, stuff like that, where it's it's like these these bits of real and absurdly kind of funny, strange conversations. And when I first saw Red versus Blue, I thought, here's somebody else who has, has learned to do that, you know, that it's not you wouldn't expect a red and a blue soldier, you know, stationed somewhere, whoever, to have a real why are we here conversation, but they did. And as the series went on, I think that it's not just that, more of their, their base sense of humour came out, but also it's what the fans really responded to it, that was what gamer humour was, is, you know, a little bit dirty a little bit, you know, in jokey type of thing. So, that's when it the appeal kind of lost its lustre for me, but that's just because of my specific taste. The only time I've ever been in the same physical space as the guys from Red versus Blue, Burnie, and probably Jason was with him at the 2006 machinima Festival in New York. That's where you and I first met Tracy, I believe. And and I wanted to talk to Burnie but I was too shy to approach him. And he didn't give crap didn't have any idea who I was or care. So yeah, that was the only time that I've ever been in the same area as them. And I kind of got, even though I'm not a, you know, a fold up like a noodle when a celebrity is around, but I kind of got this sense of I don't really know how to approach him. I don't want to sound like, you know, stupid. I don't want him to think I'm a fanboy, because I'm not I see him as a peer. But then how do you start that and by the time I've worked my way through talking myself out of doing that the opportunity was gone. So I never got to meet him. But I've heard, I've always heard that. You know, that they were they were nice people, or at least they were capable of being nice people. So I was happy to see their success. I maybe didn't celebrate it as loudly as others might. But that's because I've never, I have never played Halo. I will never play Halo. I'm not interested in that. And I I think a lot of the legacy of Halo machinima that followed. Maybe wasn't great. Is that is that tactful enough to say, you know, I don't blame them for that. But, you know, Red versus Blue was funny. And in a perfect world, it would be the only Halo machinima had ever been made. Maybe. That's a little harsh, I guess. But you know, there were so many clones of attempting to recapture what they did. And then there were others who says, well, let's, let's use Halo and go in a completely different direction. I even made a halo film at one point, working with someone, but it was a one off short to illustrate some of the copyright stuff that Microsoft was doing at the time. But it was it was it was about being silly, you know. So anyway, I don't know I have mixed feelings. I certainly, you know, don't wish them anything but good things and I am happy for them that they had this success that they did. Anybody who spends time in this machinima world and is able to actually you know, earn a living at it. Dude, that's awesome. You know, that's, that's the very, very, very few who ever get to do that. Yeah, so that's great. Yeah. And, you know, my particular taste about this or that or the humour or the visuals or whatever. isn't all that important. They they did it in a way that I feel like wasn't exploiting other people. Well, at least when they got started, I don't know much about the inner workings of the company once it got big. Humans are generally, you know, not at their best in big company scenarios. So yeah, that's, that's, that's where I'm at with it. So I'm, I don't know, I'm not sad. I feel like 21 years is a damn good run. And I hope they enjoyed themselves. You know, I hope there's not anybody that's a part of Red versus Blue. That is now left with a sense of what am I gonna do with my life? I mean, dude, yeah, 21 years to figure that out. I hope you, you know, pivot and move on to something else. Great, you know? So. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 20:47
Thank you. Thanks. So I think it's really interesting. This is a question for you. The Restoration series. Made with Halo characters has actually been filmed in Unreal Engine. Did you know them? Does that make? It makes sense? Well, yes, but is it still Halo?

Phil Rice 21:04
Well, no. I mean, we reviewed a Minecraft film several months ago, that wasn't a made in Minecraft at all. It was all Blender, right? So it's the Halo aesthetic. And that's what's associated with Red vs. Blue. I think the only downside to them using Unreal Engine will be that they'll realise how much more they could have done with Red versus Blue all along. The puppeteering thing is pretty limiting, you know? So? No, I think I think there'll be able to make it look really good that way, and maybe, you know, introduce some new tricks, because of the new animation freedom that they'll have. And that hopefully they approach it with some creative verve. And they give a few surprises to the fans, some pleasant surprises me, maybe a Halo character, maybe one of the characters takes their helmet off for the first time. You know, and we actually see, because

Damien Valentine 22:00
they did Yeah, I

Phil Rice 22:01
know. Right? Yeah. So yeah, it could be. There's all kinds of interesting possibilities there. So

Tracy Harwood 22:10
I think it was filmed and edited before this announcement took place. So I guess it was always a done deal that this series was going to happen. I guess really what I think I think the bit really that surprises me, is it? It should really go out to the community. You know, the

Phil Rice 22:29
Well, that's the thing. It says, if it has already been produced, then it was probably produced with company resources. Yeah. And and there is no such thing as a giveaway with a company like Warner Brothers or anyone like that. So they got to try and make their buck. They're not going to break even on it. And not nearly as many people that should see it will get to see it until it gets pirated. Yeah, that's unfortunate. It is. Yeah. But there's probably not any scenario where the company would get shut down in this manner. And then the remaining Red versus Blue, blue people would be permitted to create something else with that IP. I mean, that IP is now it's going to die. Like there is no more. You can't make any more with it. I'm sure that that's part of the contract. They're not getting sent home with the ability to continue making Red versus Blue. I mean, that would shock me. If that's the case. Well,

Tracy Harwood 23:31
there's some very strange things going on at Warner I think. Yeah, but

Phil Rice 23:36
it'd be nice. It'd be it'd be a really exceptional situation if they were but most the time. It's the way machinima.com And it's just maybe not quite so. Yeah. burn the house down for insurance money, kind of feel that, that, that that closing was like, you know, that just all of a sudden, one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world just nukes itself? What in the world? What who benefits from that? Yeah, why why?

Damien Valentine 24:04
Want to recently, they made a Bat Girl movie, all finished only textbooks done, and Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman, so I'm really excited for it. And they decided not to release it, because they can write it off as a tax break. And it will never, ever be released in any format. Because if they do they, they'll then have to pay the tax on it. And they'll lose the money. And it turns out by not releasing that movie, they've made more money than any of the DC Comics movies that did actually get into our releases in last few years.

Tracy Harwood 24:38
So well, they're not really a media company. They know they know.

Damien Valentine 24:44
So I would say to Red vs. Blue fans be very grateful that this is actually happening because they could have very easily done exactly the same thing and just not released this final season. So oh, well

Phil Rice 24:56
yeah, in that context. It's kind of remarkable that they are releasing it at all, because like I said, it's unlikely that they will recoup what they spent making it. Yeah, just because they, you know, companies like that they don't have any sense of how to make, make something on a low budget. To them low budget is low, and you know, is high hundreds of 1000s or low millions, they don't get it. So a guy like Epic Spaceman comes along and make something that looks like a million dollar budget, and it's just a dude in his garage. They don't have any concept for that. If they would just learn that they could weather some of these, some of these storms that they have, or having these these impossibly large budget movies, that if they don't perform a certain way globally, they lose money on them it just, and then yeah, stuff like this. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wasn't really in camping out for tickets to see a Bat Girl movie. But that's just such a waste. Yeah, that's such a waste, you know, but

Tracy Harwood 26:00
but this is where in my view, you know, the the hidden thing that all these companies seem to totally misunderstand and misjudge is the role of community. They can you know, they railroad over the community and yet community here is absolutely everything. And, you know, what are they they're just a, they're just a broadcaster, basically. narrowcast or whatever you want to call it. They are, they are not a

Phil Rice 26:30
realtor. Yeah, what they are, they're there. They're a real estate broker. They just deal with digital real estate properties. Yeah. The films. The films are just monopoly cards being traded. Yeah, it is. It's it's sad, and it's a little bit disgusting. Yes,

Tracy Harwood 26:46
indeed, it is. Anyway, so I wanted to spend some time talking about that. Thank you. I've got another ending for you. Which, yeah, this one is another long running series. This time it's Drax to do praise Second Life series, which was supported by Linden labs called the drags files, world makers, which you may well have seen some of the episodes I've been following some of the episodes for, for years now. It formally came to a close on the 16th of March, although Drax is apparently quite keen to continue as an independent reporter. And in fact, he's going to try and launch a new series in August this year. Now drugs first got into Second Life in 2007, because he wanted to document the space where people were creating new and exciting things and, and otherwise, basically just running amok. And he has a background in radio reportage, actually. So he took on a reporter persona, and produced sometimes up to three episodes a week of what he calls, advocacy, advocacy journalism. And after a few different pre op projects, he started the Drax files in around 2013 when he met Edde Altberg, who joined Linden as CEO in 2014. And the following year, he then Second Life officially sponsored the Drax files. So this is, you know, 10 years worth of reports formally representing Linden Labs. These are official videos that he's made. There's well over 100 videos per year, I believe. I can imagine a day he's done like, a showcase video of them. I can imagine that this showcase I can't can't think how difficult it was for him to pick the ones that he did in this sort of showcase. And yeah, I mean, I think I think he's done an absolutely sterling job of presenting this, you know, this, this huge body of creative practice, and people that are in Second Life, doing different things, everything from kind of performance to lifetime projects to health based projects to education kind of projects. He's he's kind of documented them all. He's been the kind of original documentary maker if you like, in in Second Life, so I think it's it's worth sort of saying, saying to Drax, well done great, great body of work there. Have to say he wasn't the first that did this. I don't know if you remember. But Phil, probably you do as well remember this from years ago. There was a group of folks called the Ill Clan which he mentioned in his review, briefly, but these guys eyes were some of the very first to do this kind of documentary style approach in Second Life. They produce something called the grid grid report. I think it was called back in the earliest sort of days. And super ironically, those same guys, you just talked about Apartment Huntin' and whatnot. Those were the same guys involved in the making of those films. apartment hunting back in 98. So that was Paul Marino, Frank de la reo, Matt Domine, Yanni, Manu Smith, Paul Jannicola and, and others.

Phil Rice 30:42
Keria Seabrooke, I think Korea absolutely

Tracy Harwood 30:44
carry me into it a little bit later, I think. Right. But all of those guys. Were some of the very early folks that that Drax showed some footage to in the in this summary video that I'll I'll share a link to. So yeah, so well done, Drax, great work, fantastic body of work talks to you and all that. I'll put some links up and look forward to seeing what you do next. I think it's it's, you know, it's exciting times as

Phil Rice 31:18
he has Drax given any indication of what, what's next. I think he wants to say that. And

Tracy Harwood 31:25
I think he wants to carry on doing similar sort of stuff. But as an independent and not so many. I think he just wants to slow down. Because anybody that produces 100 of these films, you know, the amount of work that went into producing those, it's just astonishing if you've ever seen, yeah. Have you ever seen the series that I'm talking about?

Phil Rice 31:45
I'm sure that I have, I can't recollect it right now. But I'm sure that I have Oh, my God. I

Tracy Harwood 31:49
mean, he, you know, he was, I'd say, he flew over to different countries where people were, and filmed them. No, he didn't do that. He, he got them to film themselves in country. So he did an astonishing job of editing and editing together the footage of people in their own environments with the stuff that they did in Second Life. And, you know, the three or four episodes of this, so over over over a period of a few weeks, I mean, absolutely outstanding work. You know, I, I did a conference, using some Drax's work basically trying to illustrate what living in virtual environments actually meant. And I did this at a kind of a conference in about 2017. I think it was, and people just were like, I've got up you showing, what is this that's going on, but what he was doing was documenting how people are living in these virtual environments. I think it was kind of, you know, it was, it was very much what people are talking about today with, you know, immersive experiences and, you know, immersive technologies and what have you, but he's been doing this for years and showing how they're doing it for years. And Second Life has always been at the forefront of that as a as an open world environment. Not a game, you know, they're all kind of tell you that it's, it's not again, it's a Second Life. So yeah, interesting stuff. Okay, so that's my two bits of sad news. I think I've got some fabulous news now that I'd like to share with you. These are awards of notes, just reflecting on how far machinima has actually come because some of the early live performances, maybe those game characters were made by the likes of the old clan in the early 2000s. But they were using things like Quake and, and what have you. And actually, what Superfund has seen this year is Sam crane, whose performance of Hamlet in GTA five has been gaining even more attention than it did last year. I remember, last year, we talked about it having won a stage award for innovation, and various other kinds of accolades. This year, what they did was they took it South by Southwest in March, and it was awarded a Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature, actually, I don't think it was the performance itself, but a documentary about the performance that Sam and his colleagues made in GTA five. And as it turns out, they've now got a distribution deal, which I think is an absolutely outstanding achievement. Many congratulations to them. I mean, it's taken a long time for machinima to get back up to that kind of level that we saw in those early days with the likes of RoosterTeeth being invited on to various stages globally and people like Paul Marino and Hugh Hancock doing live performance since way back in the early 2000s I think is even more significant for real time production techniques so that I'm particularly with user use of Unreal Engine five. Because a company called Electro League and another little company called Weta made, and film called War is Over, which is a film that was inspired by the music of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which, as you will probably be aware, won the Oscar for Best Animated Short, it's the first time that an Unreal Engine five film has been used entirely as the creative platform. I think it's an astonishing achievement actually. It's come a really, really long way. Because of course, its origins were in Unreal Tournament 2003, which actually was released in 2002. But, hey, the matinee tool that it is based on was in fact written by a guy called James Golding, who still works at Epic today. He's now its technical director. At the time, when it was released matinee that is, it wasn't such a great success and basically to try and drum up a bit of interest in it when it was released, Epic launched a little contest called make something unreal, which is, in fact still running today. And I guess that's pretty much stuck with it. And in some ways, I think you could probably say it's forerunner has a pretty Sterling history as well, because in 1999, Unreal Tournament was the first Unreal Engine that that included a tool developed by Internet Team Reactor4. And that tool set was called Real Time Movie Studio. So it was quite different to matinee. And a version of that was used by Industrial Light and Magic to visualise storyboards for Spielberg's 2001 film, AI Artificial Intelligence, which was nominated for Best Visual Effects Oscar in 2002, but actually lost out to Lord of the Rings, which was also using machinima techniques to create those large battle scenes, if you remember, albeit what they were using was a bespoke engine, which was made by Massive for Weta. Massive, still exists as a tool today, it's used in Maya. It's currently in version 9.1. So it's only taken what 25 years to get from prevision visualisation to production tool to becoming the primary creative platform producing internationally outstanding quality work and an Oscar for the filmmakers. I think that's an absolutely outstanding achievement.

Phil Rice 37:53
Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings, if I remember, right, that it was used in that for the generation of some of those really large scale battle scenes, they were actually kind of I don't know if they use this term back then. But basically procedurally generated armies. Yeah, yeah.

Damien Valentine 38:11
The big shots from above where you can just see Right, yeah, that's

Phil Rice 38:15
right. The assault on Eisenguard. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 38:19
But that was what massive was, it wasn't Unreal Engine. It was massive, this tool called Massive. Right? Right. That's a slightly It was what they made for doing that. Because we all thought they were using something like Unreal to do it, but but apparently not something else. Anyway, the I think the connections here are all, you know, kind of stacking up the fact that we've got this kind of long history of 25 years to come to this kind of point of fantastic and Oscar amazing. I'm sure Epic have got lots more milestones to to deliver for us as well. I can't wait to see what they do. I think they've, you know, they've been one of the most interesting companies to follow over the years. I think. So. Yeah. I've got some AI news as well. Do you want to share that? Are you sick of hearing that voice? Okay, AI news, then. Alright. I'm just gonna flag these because, you know, I think there's lots going on, but not so much perhaps relevant for real time creators. So I'll just read them off and then see what you think in terms of whether they're relevant or not. First off, this is quite relevant. YouTube, as you're probably aware, has updated its terms and conditions this month. We're at the end of March here. So just this month, it was updating its T's and C's, which state that any realistic looking video that has been made with AI must be declared. While thinking about that, that's what 99% of the content these days. I think it's really about viewers though, being able to mistake genuine footage of a person, event or location or something that's fake. And then I was thinking about that too when I was growing up. Yeah, that's still about 99% of the content, though, isn't it? It relates to creators utilising synthetic versions of real voices to narrate videos or substituting faces in footage, alterations to footage of actual events or places, such as modifying cityscapes or simulating fires. Yeah. But if generative AI has been used for script generation, it says, generating video ideas or automating generating captions for content deemed clearly unrealistic. Or if alterations are deemed inconsequential, such as colour adjustments, or basic special effects like background blurring, applying lighting, filters, beauty filters or other kinds of enhancements, then content labels won't be needed. That's thinking, well, that's clear. That doesn't make sense. And it's pretty much everything and then oh, okay, it's maybe not whatever, I don't know.

Damien Valentine 41:19
I was thinking around the YouTube settings on my channel. And oh, yeah, I was uploading a test video to sent to someone privately. And that option came up with it has to be declared that uses AI. Thankfully, I wasn't. So you have to look into it. But it's already there. And it'll be interesting to see how many people who create AI content actually bother to declare their videos that way? Yeah.

Phil Rice 41:45
Well, I will say, they've, they've done themselves a little bit of a hole there, haven't they? I mean, I'll say it's easy to correct. But I mean, first of all, their emphasis on use of the word realistic. Realistic is not an objective thing at all. So who's to say, you know, someone could say, well, arguably, you know, Lord of the Rings type CGI is realistic. Well, but no, it's not. If what you mean by realistic is, does it look like something that could really happen? And you apply your brain and you go, there are no such thing as cave trolls? So no, it's really strange. But the thing is, is that when you post a video, the form or the the affirmation that you have to give, it's much simpler, and frankly, much less ambiguous than the expounded versions that are being discussed, on Twitter and on blogs, and in the news, and wherever else is being discussed. It's like, it's really being blown way up to make it sound like almost anything could fall into that AI content category. But when you actually go to post a video, the name of the header the section is called altered content. And it asks you is a yes or no question. Do any of the following describe your content? One makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn't say or do? Okay, so what's a real person? Obviously, there's the obvious answers were, you know, the Prime Minister of Great Britain or Donald Trump, those are real people. And so if you make a video of, you know, Angela Merkel lived in the Congo once and maybe former head of Germany say something that she didn't say, obviously, that's a no no. But what is a real person? I mean, if I create a really realistic looking character in Character Creator 4 with Metahuman and a human, and it's just a made up character. Maybe it's based on a real photograph of a face, but it's not a real person. And it doesn't edit doesn't look like any recognisable person, like maybe I make it using photos of my uncle who's never been online and nobody knows. So is that a real person? And why would it matter if I make somebody that no one can recognise, say something they didn't say? If I don't tell them, hey, this really is my uncle saying that he thinks all children should have such as such tattooed on their forehead, you know, a UPC symbol so they can be scanned. My uncle didn't really you know what I'm saying? So real person just doesn't help there.

Damien Valentine 44:56
What about if, let's say I'm going to use Heir to the Empire This example here. Let's see, I've got a character model of Han Solo, fictional character, played by Harrison Ford, who's obviously a real person. And I've made the character model look like Harrison Ford. But he, obviously Harrison Ford does not lend his voice to Heir to the Empire for pretty obvious reasons. I've got a guy named Matt Finish. He does a really good,

Phil Rice 45:27
he does a really good job. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 45:30
So obviously, he's saying things that Harrison Ford never would have said. But it's also not actually Harrison Ford. It's a character that Harrison Ford played. Yeah. So that's where I guess really, there's a

Phil Rice 45:42
lot of elements there. I mean, it. The truth is, no matter how good your Harrison Ford model is, it's not going to look exactly like under scrutiny, exactly like Harrison Ford, it's going to resemble a lot, but it's not gonna look exact like it would be not hard for somebody to realise. That's not really Harrison Ford. So yeah, there's there's that the second item under do any of the following describe your content is alters footage of a real event or place. So any AI generated footage of something that's not that doesn't fall into that, like there's no reasonable interpretation that some CGI or generated landscape is a real event or place unless you unless you conflate that with the thing above, which is, let's say I rendered a really, really realistic render, of Big Ben. Yeah. Okay, so then maybe, even though technically, I'm not altered footage of a real event or place, I'm creating as a 3d rendering, and that's not prohibited. So there's a lot of ifs gaps in this that don't make a whole lot of sense. Secondly, grey, yeah, this this May, this may fill in the Big Ben scenario, number three is generates a realistic looking scene that didn't actually occur. So that's not enough to just be a photo of Big Ben, it has to be a photo of Big Ben, with Harrison Ford, climbing it in a Spider Man costume or something like that didn't actually happen. Those events didn't happen. So

Tracy Harwood 47:26
maybe, oh, maybe. Robert Powell, climbing up and hanging on the clock face.

Phil Rice 47:34
Right. Or doing a Charlie Chaplin? Yeah, he's hanging on to one of the hands of the clock face and kind of writing it down and dropping his shoe. And yeah, but anyway, so none of those things really apply. Let's think about. And that's, that's what you're presented with is yes or no. That's it. Underneath the footnote, just to finish here, and then we'll talk a little more about it. To follow YouTube's follow the policy, you're required to tell us if your content is altered or synthetic and seems real. This includes realistic sounds or visuals made with AI or other tools. Selecting yes adds a label to your content. So it's really poorly worded because like, it doesn't mean that any use of realistic sounds, qualifies. It's that it has to be altered or synthetic and seem real. And then you use realistic sounds or visuals made with AI. So there's like all that it all it's actually not that many things that fall into that category, or other

Tracy Harwood 48:44
tools. It's everything. It's everything or other tools. You could read that to mean everything. But

Phil Rice 48:52
it has to be altered or synthetic and look real. And since real is not objective, exactly. How do I know if something's The only thing that somebody can say with certainty? Is that this or that seems real to me. Yeah, I might hope it seems real to everybody else. But I don't know. You know, so it's, it's, they've got to figure out and they will, that's the way these things work is the holes will get punched in this. And then they'll tighten up the wording or whatever. And that's where the rubber really meets the road. Like what this is actually going to be right now. Nothing that I have ever made, even though I've used AI stuff in comedy films, whatever but nothing, even remotely is something that I would have to click Yes on. Nothing.

Tracy Harwood 49:47
Really nothing. No. Well, thank you good, man. It's clear as mud on it because I was looking at it and now

Phil Rice 49:58
mind you only like three or four things are A handful of things that have made I'm sure you have it but like, it's not as broad as one might think. I kind of feel like that the people who are whose propensity is to fear over regulation, by corporations or government have everything they need to interpret this in the worst, possible dystopian tyrannical way and the people who are like, come on, and just are more laid back have everything they need to interpret this in the most lackadaisical laissez faire, you know, way. That's the problem. It's not that it is either of those extremes. It's the fact that it's not really, it's not using words that are not all the words that are easily definable. And I'm sorry, real person needs to be better defined. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, and seems real or realistic. That just needs to be better defined. You know, because somebody can make a, somebody could apply a certain shader to Minecraft and make it look more realistic. Somebody can apply certain shaders to GTA five, and it looks realistic, but it's not a real frickin place. So is it ever really realistic? Just because it looks like a real automobile? On a real street, but it's made up? So all those things, these words, they've the way they've structured this. There's no pinning any of that down. So this is gonna get hammered? I don't know. I think the only people who are going to feel compelled to use this are people who are using AI content and are proud of it. Like they want people to know. Yep. That's what I am. I'm an AI artist. So I'm going to say yes. So it gives this label to my content. That's that's the only thing that is beneficial for anybody that doesn't want to, unless you're out there trying to, you know what, you know what the only thing is that definitely qualifies for this as a compelled. Yes. Is if you're deliberately trying to make deep fakes of cool of real people, real celebrities, real politicians, that's what they're trying to guard against here. You know, I mean, this could be so subversive, that not not this, but the actual deepfake technology. Well, I have to be able for anybody to be able to just put out a video showing the leader of a nation, you know, showing Vladimir Putin saying He's declaring nuclear war. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Have you guys watched? Have you guys watched any of the aftermath of the Francis Scott Quay Bridge collapse? Here in the US? No, I've seen bits of an enormous enormous bridge. And, and yeah, and one of those super tankers crashed into it, and the entire bridge collapsed. Yeah. And so somebody posted a video of it, of the event, on Twitter. You read that Twitter comment feed? And I'm telling you, it's hard to come away from that not feeling like, Oh, my God, we're done. We're done as a society. Like the things that people are thinking and saying about that. The conspiracies that are just floating out there. It was deliberate. It was Biden. It was Trump. It was racism. This has something to do with the Supreme Court decision on abortion. This is I mean, it's just crazy stuff. Crazy. You know, and that's with a real video of a real event. There are explosions on the bridge. It's a fix, just like 911. It's like, oh, my gosh, you know, I just, I don't get it. Now. Imagine if somebody can create a realistic video of one of the world's leaders that's in a tough spot right now, like Putin, or what's the guy's name in Ukraine? The leader there I can't remember. Or Netanyahu or Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Macron or, you know, the President of Argentina or wherever, and you can just make a video that is very realistic and believable and have them saying something very inflammatory. Declare, declaring war, or just saying something that's just not true. That's what they're trying to, to stop here. But are the people making that kind of follow this.

Tracy Harwood 55:01
Well see No, I mean, that's the point that really that's the thing is highlighted this,

Phil Rice 55:06
you just don't do it, and you put it out there and let it go so YouTube eventually is going to catch it and take it down. But you've already done what you set out to do. You've already got millions of items on it, you've already given people the ability to download their own copies of it and reproduce the very same tech that people are using to save red versus blue right now, you can do that with any YouTube video, you just download it and then republish it somewhere. So there's no stopping that. That's a real scary thing. So this, this just wastes that time of creators like me, like Damien, like everybody else making stuff going, Well, gee, now, is my stuff realistic looking or not to I used a sound effect? Yeah, of a Wookie farting? So is that does that make this more real? And audit? That lightsaber looks really real? Ah, that's what it does. Yeah, of course. So I know,

Tracy Harwood 56:03
it's work. All I can conclude from this is that, I mean, we're going to be seeing just a lot more labels, because what's going to happen to the content that isn't labelled that they you know, that somebody then says, oh, there's AI used in this, that stuff's gonna get taken down automatically. So what you're gonna get here is everything pretty much the 99% of content that's on YouTube being labelled in this way, because at some level, everything is using AI. And what are they really then trying to do with this?

Phil Rice 56:37
I think before it's not gonna solve right now, I think before that gets sorted out. The AI tools are integrating it to everything. Now, Microsoft themselves has it in the search engine. In in Microsoft Office. Google has it in Google Docs. Canva has it as part of Canva, the most popular online image and it's got aI all throughout it. I think by the time that they catch up without a label, this stuff is going to be so pervasive. Yes. That there won't be your right. If if what if the state of things right now isn't already what you're describing Tracy, which is that it's all in there? It will be tomorrow? Basically, it's like right around the corner. By the time

Tracy Harwood 57:21
this video is released, it will probably Yeah.

Damien Valentine 57:26
I think I made a joke about it won't be long before someone creates a an AI video generator. This is back when we were first discussing AI image creators.

Phil Rice 57:35
I remember that discussion. That was so long ago. Yeah,

Damien Valentine 57:38
I think he's last year or something of that. And sometime between recording and they have said going out.

Phil Rice 57:44
There was when Runway first came out. That's right. That is exactly how it happened. Yeah. So yeah, I don't I don't get it. And the only part of me that's the main part of me that's annoyed with this is how much of this is them really trying to protect against the kind of content that I described, where there's a bad actor, trying to use it to fool the public and cause unrest and make political things make political messes happen? Right? How much of it's that, and how much of this is just catering to the section of artists who are just tune on AI and D, you know, that are that just that they're just pissed because it's easy for someone to do something that takes that used to take longer, you know, because that opinion, I feel like that's that's the same you know, that what happened to the people that were pissed off about horse and buggies? You know, this is one of those changes that it's happening already. Like, when Ford started rolling automobiles off the assembly line, the guy who makes waggon wheels, probably, you know, started a social media campaign and was really, really pissed off. Yeah. And he died very unhappy. I mean, it's just, it's done. So I don't see the point too. Because again, like what we talked about in one of the other episodes that MIDI and music was looked at the same way. I believe Photoshop was probably looked at the same way. In terms of it's just, it just makes it too damn easy. So it can't be good. That's just not a good argument. You know, so is this to just appease them so that they can label it go, oh, you I don't watch stuff with AI? I don't. In my opinion, is that Tracy's right? Yes, you do. Absolutely. Every day. You just don't you just aren't conscious of it. It's like saying I don't like movies with I don't watch movies that have CGI. Yes, you do. Yes, you do in less all you watch is movies from the 1970s and 80s. Yes, you do. Wow, every movie has CGI in it now, even if they're using it to clean stuff up to fix things to make to beautify it, it's there. They're not using AI, but they're, they're using CGI. And CGI was looked at, I remember when, when CGI was really starting to pick up, you know, Pixar kind of put it out there and made it raise everyone's awareness. And right around that time, it used to be that the only tools that you could use to make CGI was 3d Studio Max, or Maya, or these really expensive tools. And they would take, they would take super computers to be able to render in any way. So it was just, there was no, it was a barrier to entry. And then technology started to change and machinima frankly, led the way in terms of possibilities of real time and what the benefits were of not having to wait on the engine. And the graphics card explosion happened. And blender evolved into a platform, and then all these things evolved and stuff. And at that time, there was a, there was a blog may still exist today called cartoon brew. And the primary audience of cartoon brew, were traditional animators, and I'm talking about going all the way back to the early Disney movies where it was sell, you know, sales of animation, and you were putting stuff together frame at a time. And it was this very manual, very physical process of animation. And you wouldn't believe how much the old school people who were involved with that how much they poo pooed computer animation? Not for the reason you think? Not? Originally it was look how crappy that looks. Then Pixar came around, and those people shut up. And then it's like, let's just, it's so low effort. You know, it's just so low effort. Compared to doing it, we used you know, we did it the real way. I don't hear those people anymore. Now they're not around there. Nobody's listening to that.

Damien Valentine 1:02:16
I can, I

Phil Rice 1:02:17
feel like there's a danger of being caught in the same outmoded scenario when it comes to the AR. And I'm not saying I love everything about it, I'm not changing my whole production plan to make things as easy as possible with Ayar. I'm not. But I'm also not going to ignore it or act like it's going to go away just because I pout, you know, it's here. And it's eventually going to be part of our tool sets. You know, it's eventually going to be part of iClone. They haven't announced it as such, but it's inevitable. It will be used to generate props on the fly, it will be used to generate animations on the fly. The the starters of this are already out there. It's already being worked on by Nvidia and other companies. So it's gonna be part of the process. But that doesn't make it easier for me to make a an interesting film. It just makes it easier for me to throw shit onto the screen. But it doesn't, you know, so I'm focusing on the part that will never be replaced by AI. And that's coming up with good ideas and then trying to execute them, you know, and AI will never replace that as it just it just won't. The best that can ever do is synthesise and it will probably become I think I mentioned this maybe if not on the show then in some thread where we were all discussing this, but someone just said you know this is gonna replace Hollywood. AI is gonna replace Hollywood. No, it's not. That's not did the beat did Beatlemania. Do you remember what Beatles radio was? Beatlemania was a basically a impersonator band that sculpted themselves to kind of look like the Beatles, and sound like the Beatles and same instrumentation. And they went touring all over the United States that were hugely popular. And they sounded a lot like the Beatles. They were the best Beatles cover band ever. And it was the Beatles from their prime, you know that it was all the way up through the late 60s. That era of Beatles because people love hearing that ad love the idea of seeing it and not nearly as many people as wanted to got to see the Beatles when they were around. That's the most AI will ever be is the greatest Beatles cover band, but they will never be Lennon and McCartney. They will never be the Beatles, who actually created those friggin amazing songs. They will never be AI will never do that. The best that we'll be able to do is piece together pieces of other people's songs. And every once in a while, you know, a broken clock is gonna be right twice a day, right? Every once in a while, it's gonna come up with something pretty neat. But it's all synthetic, you know, so I don't know I'm ranting.

Damien Valentine 1:05:14
I just looked up Cartoon Brew, and they got a big thing celebrating 20 years of the website. And there's a lot of CGI cartoon news on it. And they're not tank species. They're just reporting, you know, some New Jurassic Park CGI animated thing, they're talking about it, check out these still some of these upcoming things like that. So obviously, their attitude has changed quite soon. Yeah,

Phil Rice 1:05:39
yeah. And it's been about 15 years since I even visited. So it doesn't surprise because it's, it's just, it's a losing battle. You know, it's it's the waggon wheel, it's the horse and buggy. And at the beginning of the automobile era, you know,

Tracy Harwood 1:05:54
to add to your points, their Stability AI has introduced a 3d video generator, which is based on this stable diffusion model it is developed, which generates orbital videos based on single image inputs. So that's you generating your 3d output, right? That's right. That's already there. Another tool that's just out this month, Convai convAI, conversational agent, I guess, was announced a partnership with unity to enable games to make non player characters feel more immersive. And it's already teamed up with Second Life. And there's a really interesting bot demo, which I'll put a link to that you can have a look at. That's being created as a sort of the the introductory tutorial. So it's a conversational agent that you can kind of chat to that's kind of rendered out as an avatar in real time. Convo convAI, that you can presumably integrate into any any virtual environment, I think. Runway has partnered with Musixmatch, which allows you creators to bring their bring songs to life through dynamic video content generation, which is basically a lyrics to video tool. Fairly astonishing. I think. Runway is also introduced this month, a lip sync feature with generative audio, which is where you can kind of upload an image or a video. And it basically syncs the lips to the audio that you want to put through it. It's actually only in early access to the creators programme people at the moment. But it looks pretty neat from what I can see. There's Hume as as got a demo of a voice to voice generative AI, which uses what it describes as an empathic voice interface with emotional intelligence, which apparently understands the tone of voice that you're using with it, through which it adds meaning to every word, and uses vocal signals, I think, to guide its own language and speech and according to the description of it, you can talk to it like a human and it will respond faster and more naturally than any other type of voice AI. So it's another type of conversational agent, with emotion embedded into the audio design of it. That looks pretty amazing as well. Actually, I was seeing a discussion on on Facebook around that, and I was thinking, you know, what, what on earth would you kind of use that for but actually, I was thinking maybe what you could use it for is voice actor training. So you know, you kind of, you know, if you've hit the right tone, if what you get back from it is something that you wanted, or intended to, to signify with with your performance. But yeah, conversational agent. Sounds quite interesting, I think. So that's it for me on news. I know it's a real shedload of stuff. I got other stuff that I was going to share, but I think that better be me. Don't miss this month on the on the omnibus of stuff that we've got.

Damien Valentine 1:09:28
All right. Well, I've got three pieces of news. Which Phil's just moved on.

Phil Rice 1:09:38
Oh, sorry. I'm trying to get out in front of the links list that I need to edit this episode later. So I've been moving stuff as we talk about it, but Okay,

Damien Valentine 1:09:47
okay. Okay. I was just looking at it about the real

Tracy Harwood 1:09:54
Oh, no,

Phil Rice 1:09:55
I got that. Alright.

Damien Valentine 1:09:58
So first one We have the Oscars few weeks ago from recorded, and the film that won the Best Visual Effects was actually Godzilla minus one. And I afraid I didn't get a chance to see this in the cinema. So I'm gonna have to wait for it for the homeless. Now, there was a discussion about the budget for this film, which was $15 million. When you think about films like The Marvel films, which have excessive budgets, about 300 million, or even during part two was 200 million. And yet, this Godzilla film, won, and I watched the trailer for it. And I can see why it was very impressively well done. So to celebrate the win the visual effects, the visual effects artist, he puts the Godzilla 3d model out. He uploads it free to download, and it's open. It's royalty free as well. So you can use it. Oh, wow. How have you like I have downloaded it's in a blender file. I don't really have any plans for a Godzilla film. But I thought, Well, you never know. And you know, just a little bit of parts of cinema history that as well, because some first time Godzilla's won an Oscar. And I can't say I've opened it up in Blender, I've done anything with it. I don't know if I can import it into I clone, it may be a little bit too complicated. As far as polygons and textures go for iClone. But I've got it there just in case and I thought, you know, it might be useful for people. So I wanted to bring it up. And it is a big achievement for the film. So I look forward to hopefully so I can Yeah, watch the film and see why it won.

Phil Rice 1:11:56
Can I ask you a quick question related to that? Damian? It's sort of on topic sort of not but have you had any luck bringing in non humanoid characters into iClone and animating them. Like there's like and let me before you enter. So there's a process that you can bring in any humanoid character that has you know, two arms, two legs, you can bring them in through character creator using something called Accurig. And even if that, even if that mesh has no skeletal structure at all, which is typically done when the model is built, right, even if it doesn't have it, if you can at least get it into a standard T pose, then you can accurately fill out the the skeletal structure of that character, including finger bones, and it variable number of fingers. So if it's, you know, some kind of sci fi creature, it might have three fingers, or four or five. Getting the facial bones built out is a little bit more work, but it's doable, right? But that's all for humanoid characters. But like there's a film that I was working on recently, which it basically wasn't a biped, bipedal humanoid form at all. It was a four legged animal basically. And there really isn't any easy path to do that. And so unless the character has skeleton already there for like on a Godzilla, for example, you've got the arms and legs and head are all technically that could be treated as a bipedal figure, but with a tail. Is it important, right? It can't just be curved and stuck all the time. So I was just curious Damon, if you've ever imported, like so you're doing Star Wars stuff, so maybe like a job of the hut or someone like that, that's not a traditional figure. What what what you've run into when you try to import those, then to move to be movable characters in icon.

Damien Valentine 1:14:09
So I found a way to create a creature with the video games spore and export the model into a format that can be imported into icon. Okay. I did it once because there's a creature in the Rebels cartoon series called a loathe cat. It's a Star Wars catch, basically. Okay, I was wanting to Heir the Empire as a joke, just in the background for establishing shot. And the first thing I did was to look to see if anyone had created one that I could download and use on Sketchfab or something like that. Yeah. That there wasn't one. There might be now but at the time when I was doing the scene, there wasn't one. So I heard about this idea of using Spore for it. And I was able to do it but it already has the when it exports to Spore because spore generates the skeleton based on the way you design a creature? So if you design something with eight legs, or whatever, it knows how to game smart enough to rig it automatically, right? It has to move. So when you export it from the game, the skeleton comes with it. So I was able to import it. I don't know the exact process I use for it, because it was a while ago now. But the bones could be altered in iClone. Now the problem was it is through

Phil Rice 1:15:27
like the Motion layer editor. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, like you could keyframe movements. But

Damien Valentine 1:15:32
the problem is, the animations that Spore creates do not get exported. So the only way to do it, to make it move was to keyframe it in your keyframe. Okay, which was a pain, so I didn't look very.

Phil Rice 1:15:44
Yeah, for a cat in particular, I would think it would be to get used to looking right especially. Okay. Thank you. I didn't mean to sidetrack you, but I was just I was just when I saw that Godzilla model. I was curious about that.

Damien Valentine 1:15:56
I know it can be done with outbound spy. I don't know, because I've never tried it. But I've seen

Phil Rice 1:16:02
there's no way to add those bones in like, if you just brought in just a mesh. Yeah, there's, there's no way I know, to add bones for an unusual dependence, like a long tail, or, you know, giant ears or things like that. But yeah, I was curious about if. So when I basically if I'm looking for something like that, I need to look for a solution, where the, the model already has a skeletal structure in there. Yeah, and we're gonna die when Okay, that's what I suspected, I just want to make sure

Damien Valentine 1:16:32
store a secure way to do it. Although you have to keep in mind that the game is a decade and a half old. So it's not necessarily going to create the most detailed characters anymore. The problem of the cat was, there's no further on it on the model that the game creates, because the game couldn't create fur, so I've had to do some texture effects on it to make it try and look a bit furry, and it helps to have it tiny in the background. So you don't really need that kind of detail. But surely, if you want to let the cat right up close to the camera, you're gonna see that there's not gotten fur on it. But that is one way to create fantastical creatures that don't necessarily need real basis. Okay, well, so that was that. Alright, so next piece of news. I was watching the future games video show the other day that you know, it's one of those things where they shoot traders for upcoming games and updates on them. And again, we've covered a few times before called blockbuster Inc, which is a spiritual successor to the movies. So that a trader came on, I thought, well, there's come a long way since we last talked about it. And at the end of the restage, which is sixth of June. And wow, yeah. So you can it's on Steam. And the trailers pretty interesting. They were recreating bits. So obviously, from movies, like the thing is, obviously Barbie and Ken from last year's Barbie movie. And it made them look like the characters in it, sort of cartoony versions of it. And I thought, Well, I'm gonna buy this when it comes out, because I enjoyed The Movies. I enjoyed the business management side of it, because it's fun. But I also really enjoyed the movie, making part of it. And I'm gonna give this a go and just play around with it. I don't think it would replicate what I did with iClone. But as a bit of fun, why not? And when I was looking at that, I saw there's actually a demo, which there was a demo years ago. But now a more recent one is called Prologue. I downloaded it I met to play it before this recording. So I could talk about it, but I didn't get a chance to do that. So that'll be something I talked about next month, I think, because I'm interested to see how it's evolved since that very early demo that I'll

Phil Rice 1:18:57
try to play it before next month's recordings as well. So we can discuss it. Yeah. All

Damien Valentine 1:19:01
right. That sounds good. It looks interesting. Yeah. And then the third piece of us, obviously went to see Dune part two. I see it twice and loved it both times. And I've been devouring any interview I could find with Denny Villeneuve, because I feel like there's a lot to learn from the sky as a filmmaker. And I came across one where he's being interviewed by Steven Spielberg, as believe it's a special is one of those things is a special screening of June part one, but he was there present and they talked about the film before the screening took place. And so Steven Spielberg is asking all kinds of questions about the film. And the bit that I wanted to talk about was, Denise says, when they're out filming in the desert, that very limited times of day that they can actually film in because it gets too hot for the camera crew.

Phil Rice 1:19:58
I remember you telling me about that. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 1:20:02
So they can do it in the morning. And they can do it in the evening. And they have to plan the lighting very carefully. So what they did for this one is, it doesn't go into details. But what I pieced together was they 3d scanned the dunes they wanted to use. And then they imported those models into the Unreal Engine, which is very specifically said, the Unreal Engine says this is where the machine and values comes in. So they could simulate the lighting in real time, and figure out the time of day that would best suit the scenes they wanted to create. So they know, like there's a scene where Paul and Johnny are sitting on a dune having this romantic scene, they don't want to do it, they have to film it multiple takes from behind and in front. So they had to know when was the best time to do the front scenes, and when was the best time to do the back. And they could do that in Unreal. And it was able to save them a huge amount of time. Because they knew exactly when to be set up, and how long they would have to do or that particular shot. If they needed to do it again, they know to do it the next day at the same time. And then they could while they're doing that they could get set up for the next bit that's over there, whether the lighting would be in the right place. And then they can immediately go over there and do it. But then it gets too hot. So then they stop today. And I just thought that's a really interesting way to use machinima and the Unreal Engine because we've heard about previous, no figuring out where characters have to be in action scenes and stuff like that. But I've never had one just figuring out where the sun's gonna be before it gets to the day. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 1:21:36
Fascinating.

Damien Valentine 1:21:38
So that's my news for the for this month.

Tracy Harwood 1:21:42
Wow, what a packed show.

Phil Rice 1:21:44
Yeah. Well, if you have any comments, you our listening audience have any comments on any of these stories? Or on the opinions that we've expressed, feel free to drop us a line as a comment on the show, wherever you see it posted or via email talk at completely machinima.com. We'd love to hear your feedback and love to interact with it. And thank you for joining us and on behalf of myself and Tracy and Damian. Have a great day and we'll talk to you next time. Bye bye