Damien Valentine 00:44
Hello, and welcome to a new month of And Now For Something Completely Machinima. I'm joined by Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove, and Phil Rice. Alright, so I'm gonna start with May the Fourth be with you, because two days from now is the fourth of May, which is Star Wars Day. And I have chosen a Star Wars film to go alongside that.

Ricky Grove 01:09
Oh my god, you're kidding.

Phil Rice 01:12
Yes.

Ricky Grove 01:13
You chose a Star Wars film. That's so out of character for you.

Damien Valentine 01:17
I know. I mean to surprise everyone. I'm

Phil Rice 01:19
glad that this occasion came around Damien for you so that you had a chance to finally pick a Star Wars related movie! Yeah.

Damien Valentine 01:28
Well actually has been a while since I've chosen one

Tracy Harwood 01:31
last month.

Damien Valentine 01:35
Secret stash I just literally go under a blanket iPhone watch. Right. It's called Star Wars AT-AT Walkers. And it's it's kinda like a film footage from a nature documentary. And they've filmed these Imperial Walkers walking along, but I've done it like they're wildlife or else, you know, you see a nature documentary of elephants, a herd of elephants going along. It's like that. And they go through all these different environments. And, you know, starts off they're acting like you'd expect from Star Wars, but then they start doing things like scratching their legs or looking at water. There's a scene where they're asleep. Which is I

Ricky Grove 02:20
thought that was very funny.

Damien Valentine 02:22
I thought, I know I'm picking anything Stars for awhile, have been trying to do things. But this is so good. I had to do it. Because it's just so different from what you expect the Star Wars machinima. The

Tracy Harwood 02:33
director, Jeremy Cummins? No,

Damien Valentine 02:36
yeah. Yeah, Jeremy Cummings. I can't see I'm familiar with any of his other work. But I really liked this. I'm looking at now he hasn't actually done that much else. He's done a couple of

Ricky Grove 02:51
he did Pie in the Sky, which was another short film. Yeah. And then he also did a tray kind of a resume film. Yeah. A reel Yeah.

Damien Valentine 03:04
Well, I've seen in this Star Wars video is very impressive work. Yeah. Nice. Check out pie in the sky. Yeah, that's why I chose it is is fun is really well done. And it was perfect for me the fourth so what do you guys think?

Tracy Harwood 03:18
Shall I start because I have done a bit of digging. Okay. All right, let's start with Jeremy, shall we, um, he actually has a specialist professional career as a as a character animator, he's in fact, he's got almost 20 years of career at a bunch of animation and special effects studios before he lands at Sony Pictures, image works in 2017. And then after a couple of other career moves, worked as an animator for Industrial Light and Magic between 2120 21 and 2023. And he is currently the senior animator at Tippett Studio. Yeah, he's got credits on films like Ant Man and the Wasp, Matilda, Spider Man and Avengers, among others. So this is another film by an industry professional, clearly working on developing an Unreal pipeline to see where he can place his own character animation making expertise. Actually, I love that these guys do this. Because unless you do the sort of digging that I do, you're never going to know this. But I like to sort of, as you know, try and figure out where he's come from. So, you know, I quite liked the way that they kind of produced these really interesting experimental shorts and then put them out there in their in their own right. I know their testing and developing their own kind of workflow. I was gonna say this guy doesn't seem to have a direct link to Star Wars, that you know, the films and of course he hasn't shared It's part of the Tippett Studio portfolio that he's been working on. However, Tippett studio projects do include book of Bob affects the Mandalorian and other films in the in the franchise. And as well, they include films like, as you all know, Jurassic Park and various films in that franchise, and also Starship Troopers and Mad God. So it's probably fair to say there is kind of a connection somewhere on this one, although I couldn't find anything specific beyond what I've kind of found out. I think what's interesting, specifically here, and particularly with the timing on this one is that you probably, Ricky, you probably know, this, Tippett Studio was recently acquired by an Indian special effects company called PhantomFX, which is bound to realise some changes, not least, because their MD has said that they're, you know, their aim with the combined expertise of Tippett is to revolutionise what they describe as the VFX industry, particularly focusing on on the Hollywood set, but they their goal is worldwide. So I would imagine there's a bit of underground development going on, and this guy is trying to sort of set the scene for whatever his next role might be within this kind of changing landscape. And we already know that there are a lot of guys working on Unreal, who are professionals. In fact, some of the films we've got this month are are indeed professionals, putting themselves out there as indies, testing out the the Unreal workflow in, in many ways. Do you want to talk about film a bit as well. You know, obviously, it's mentioned to

Ricky Grove 06:55
be doing just fine. You don't have to ask us. Yeah, yes, we're all the way baby. Sure.

Tracy Harwood 07:00
Okay, well, he's used unreal 5.3 and a bespoke rig that he's made. And obviously, that's come from his, his professional work. And he's obviously got access to some brilliant sound effects for the machinery. I think the sound effects are what just drew me in on this one straightaway. I love the overall aesthetic for this. Um, you know, it's kind of it's not really a side of the, AT-ATs that I I actually remember in Star Wars films. I also really love the the reference to Attenborough's planetary ecosystem, documentaries. You know, that I thought that was that was that was inspired. And and obviously, it's got that kind of subtitle Migration. Although what you've got here, I think, isn't migration across the savanna as you would in an aberrant Attenborough film, but you know, it's migration across a planet. So you saw, for example, open plains Africa type. And then you saw the steppes regions of Asia say, and possibly you also saw an attempt to sort of portray the characters through the aeons of time as well. Because, you know, these machines wouldn't have a lifecycle like a living animal, one would assume, I don't know, I thought they were I thought there were more than more than one type of reference to, you know, sort of the passing of time and a natural kind of environment.

Phil Rice 08:40
And with the migration term, also, I think there was the double or triple meaning. Yeah, have you know what's going on? Mechanically here, he developed these assets in Maya and now he's he's brought them into Unreal Engine. So there was that? Yeah, that's a migration as well. Yeah. I'm sure he was conscious that

Tracy Harwood 08:59
I think you're right, I think there was a lot going on here that's kind of hidden in this. I thought the lighting effects were they weren't really unexpected, I mean, the the atmosphere on the on the, the the planes in the mountains and that sort of sense of passing time and the weather and the times of day, I thought it was absolutely stunning. It's like these machines are being portrayed as being at home in their natural habitat. That the the fact that they slept argue argued and we're itchy and a bit goofy, at times, I thought that was just such such a fun thing to do. And then among all that kind of clanking, which I which I thought I mean, I watched it a couple of times the editing was absolutely spot on. In terms of the you know, the the sound and the movement. I thought it was incredibly well done. There was a point quite early in that video where I actually thought I really felt as the viewer of it, I was curled up in a hide watching them. And And at one point I thought, oh my god, it's got you spotted, because it actually sort of seemed to kind of look at you I thought it was, it was brilliant Have you imagined sort of being faced by, you know a unit like that out in the wild, what would you do and then quite apart from the machinery sounds, which I thought at times are a bit tank-like, the criticism I've got really is that some of the animal sounds didn't make quite so much sense to me. And that's because you recognise the first sort of sounds that they meant apart from the clanking noises as being cows, maybe of the kind of Texan Longhorn type. So these kinds of AT-ATs do appear to be a little bit behaviorally like a cow or maybe an elephant, as you said Damien. But later on the sounds were not what you would expect a cow to make. They were kind of more reminiscent of big cats. And at time, I also thought that sounds a little bit like a predatory Dino from Jurassic Park to so I kind of picked those and I have found it's

Phil Rice 11:12
a good air Tracy, one of the sounds, because I recognise it from a well known commercial library. One of the sounds is actually an alligator growl. Oh, okay. So I gave it definitely, it does have a big cat sound, but it's also a little more guttural. So it has a Antillean rip reptilian implications to it? Yeah, yeah. Well,

Tracy Harwood 11:34
I mean, you know, I've spent town time out on the African savanna. So I was thinking maybe what they would, you know, the cows sort of thing. Maybe what they were trying to go for was maybe the buffalo, which, frankly, are some of the most aggressive critters, you can actually come across, out in the bush and whatnot. And I thought maybe that's what he was aiming for, you know, because they do make sounds a little bit like that. Maybe, maybe a bit more, guttural grunting than than mooing. But that that bit, that whole kind of sounds bit just broke me out of it a little bit. Although I thought, you know, the portrayal of them as cows generally was really quite, quite funny. And I also love the feedback from a couple of folks on the on the on the chat as well. One of them said, it's so rare to see the wild AT-AT in its natural habitat untouched by man's hand. Now, if only we could capture the birth of these majestic creatures, that would really be something. And then another one commented in return. I think Galactic Geographic has an exclusive holid of a wild AT-AT birth, but it's behind the paywall. And then there was a really another another really funny comment, which made me laugh which was love how their knee joint sound like my uncle dropping his bag of spanners. So overall, I have to say, this is one of the best Star Wars films I've actually seen. I mean, what a great way to celebrate May the fourth and all that I think it's, it's it's yet more testament to just how creative folks can get with the Unreal toolset. And I think this guy's done an amazing job with this, irrespective of the fact that we know he's a professional, which really, to me just means the bar is raised for him. And one would expect it to be good. But if this is really good, and I guess what we might expect, given what I said about this studio, this Tippet Studio takeover business, I guess we might see more people attempting to play with the IP in novel ways, given the kinds of comments that are coming out from that particular studio that's taken them over. So loved it. Thank you very much.

Ricky Grove 13:51
The problem of you going first is that all of my notes are just useless. Sorry, because you're such detailed and cogent and intelligent observations, there's little for me to add, you know, so thanks a lot for that. Tracy.

Tracy Harwood 14:10
I'm sorry.

Ricky Grove 14:12
Several things that are I can say that you didn't say was that? Surprisingly, there's a there's a kind of tenderness and humour in the film that is surprising, considering the fact that these are death dealing machines in the Star Wars universe. The humour of turning that on its head I think was was very, very funny. I love the design of everything. Obviously, he's a pro and he's gifted in that, although I think because he's so focused on animation in the cinematography, he's less skilled at sound, because there were many problems with the sound as you pointed out, so Some of the others were, why wasn't there sounds, ambient environmental sounds at the time, there could have been interesting sounds when the that with AT-AT's were nuzzling each other, or sort of character like sounds that reflected the type of anthropomorphism that they were doing which whether they're, he thought they were elephants, or he thought they were, you know, pig, cows or dogs or whatever it was, he needed to spend more time on sound, basically, and be more creative with it, because he would have added an element of believability of what's that word? verisimilitude to the to the scene, that would have made it even better. Although, you know, he probably did this in a short amount of time and was focused on getting it up. If that's the case, I thought it was just marvellous. You're right. It is one of the better Star Wars films. However, I have to say the other short film that he had in his YouTube channel was called pie in the sky. And it was a robot, pizza delivery. Robot who suddenly decides to go off programming and have fun with all the pizzas. And that I think, was a better film, because it had more engagement. I mean, once you saw the ATA T's, and what was going on, the film was over, essentially, in terms of plot in 30 seconds, a minute. And although it was enjoyable to watch the development, everything, and I liked the parody in the satire of it, the pie in the sky had much more involvement and as far as characters, because eventually the pizza box that he sort of threw away has an alarm that goes off that says you're you're not delivering the pizza, you're not delivering the pizza. And of course, the robot freaks and runs all over the place. So there's a there's a character thing that appealed to me more. And it was done with the same technique of creation in Maya and then porting to Unreal, and, and the environmental work. And that was just as effective. So I would recommend, and it's a short one, too, it's like four or five minutes, I would recommend pie in the sky as well. It'll just take you a little extra to watch. So it's a great, he's a very interesting filmmaker, and I like him a lot. But then again, being a pro like that, you'd expect a high level of quality to it.

Phil Rice 17:47
Yeah, I think what what captured me about this this film was it kind of it taps into, I think, a magical movie moment, which was an I remember very fondly because as a kid who was a Star Wars fan. The first reveal of these, we used to call them ad ads before the internet. I don't know if that was common or not. Nobody knew how they were supposed to be pronounced. I think it's probably more correct to say it the way Damien did where you just spell out the letters, but we call them at workers. The first time that they're revealed on screen is one of the one of several absolutely magical Movie Moments in The Empire Strikes Back, which is, you know, for my money, the best Star Wars movie that's ever been made. dramatically and otherwise. But the first time that they're revealed it was just this this fascinating these animal like mechanical creatures, there seemed I think, first their first scene through the binoculars right far off, and then they get closer and then and there wasn't always this anthropomorphic sensation about them, even though they were clearly machines. And this is kind of leaning into that feeling about these walkers that they have animal like qualities. I think they were designed with that in mind to play with that in our in our minds. I think if it was just if that scene played out where the invasion of Hoth was just really large ships. It wouldn't have been nearly as impactful as these strange machines we had never seen before. So I kind of feel like I don't know what the age of this filmmaker is. If I had to guess with with the kind of experience and resume he's got, he's probably you know, somewhere around my age or or Damien's age, you know, that he he had some of the childhood fascination with these things in Star Wars and he's young Yeah, this is a chance to kind of bring that to life and really lean into the animal aspect of it. So, to me, that's a lot of what makes us effective is the that kind of history that it's leaning on? You know, the sound, it's not perfect. There's, he's clearly got access to a nice library of the actual adult sounds, because you can hear them, you can, you could recognise them if you if you've, if you've paid attention to Star Wars, there's a certain there are certain sounds that are just unmistakable. And yeah, he tried with, I think, limited success to mix in real animal noises. And I liked the intent behind that, I just don't think that it ended up being executed terribly well. There's there are techniques that are used, that have been used quite successfully in films over the years, where you may have a large mechanical thing. It doesn't even have to be, you know, personified at all, but just this large mechanical thing looming, and there will be like a metallic groan that will happen that rise, just the sound of large metal, but it resembles a little bit like the moan of a big animal or something. And it's just it's a really effective, it's almost become cliche. It's been done so many times in so many different movies, but it's still effective. Like, it's, it's a neat sound to hear that just for a moment. It, it sends this weird message of this thing's alive, even though you know, it's not

Ricky Grove 21:39
also that it's immense that it's huge. Right, right. Yeah,

Phil Rice 21:43
it's such a strange thing to think of communicating size with sound, but it absolutely can be done. And, and so that's what he was. That's what he was, I think, endeavouring toward here. And you know, he wanted to give them a little bit more of a biological aspect. So yeah, a real animal. Sound library. Make sense? But I think that his his skills clearly are. He's invested his skill set in individuals in the animation and that kind of thing. And we've talked about this many times before in the show that, you know, somebody, finding somebody who is a master of all those things is pretty rare. You know, people, people are strong in one thing, and maybe not as strong in the other. So, but no, I enjoyed it. I feel like it ran a little long for what it was, I think Ricky is spot on that if there had been, you know, something, something of a narrative, something to kind of move things forward or give a different point of view or something. And I don't know exactly how that would be done. But I just know that it was missing, you know, that that would have made the length more appropriate. But I don't think that that was his objective. From from what I can tell. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, either. And, and from the point of view of someone who, like this person who has worked in traditional film, this is very short. Right? Yeah, we're coming at it from the world of short film. And this feels a little long. And if he's hearing if he would hear us say that he'd probably laugh and think what this is, like, as short as you can get, it's almost just a trailer length, you know, but, you know, that's, that's just, that's, I think that's just the perspective of you know, what we've spent years absorbing as content and looking at and stuff so, yeah, for me, it was a little bit long, but it was it was well executed. And it did it tied in, you know, kind of brought in the senses of the Attenborough nature documentaries, and of course, leaning on that Star Wars history about these mysterious I want to call them creatures they're not of course, they are. They're just, they're just their death dealing machines. That's right. Yes. But yeah, you know, I think many many, many fans of the Star Wars universe at various levels. There's always a little bit of excitement when you the few times in the canon movies that you do get to see these things again, you know, because it was, like so many things in Lucas's original Star Wars movies. It seems like so many times the coolest things or the coolest characters to you only get like, just the briefest little time with you know, think about Boba Fett. Yeah. Before it was turned into this whole thing and he's got a race and the the Mandalorian and all that stuff was blown up in the original movies is like just tiny little screen time and yeah, and everybody was fascinated with him and they issued a special edition Star Wars figure for this, this guy that has two lines and is just, you know, Darth Maul is another one just one of the coolest looking guys and just, you know, all acrobatic with his shorts, and he's booked. There he is. And he's dead. You know, it's like, I don't know Lucas loves doing that. And with the AT-ATs to it's just, we see him for a 20 minute scene. I think it was if that and then that's it. I think what maybe there was one in the Ewok forest Damien you you know, maybe Yeah, I know, they had the two legged ones. Maybe there was some at a distance on on.

Damien Valentine 25:34
There was one vendor, there was one of these very briefly, and you kind of want to have to get between all the trees. Yeah,

Phil Rice 25:41
it was. Shot almost. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so you know, anyone who loves I think that these made an appearance in Rogue One as well. In that final battle there, so. Yeah, so to get a little just time devoted to those, it's, it's appreciate it even even if it you know, wasn't perfect, and probably wasn't intended to be, you know, a standalone piece of entertainment, given the story behind this what he was

Ricky Grove 26:14
trying to do, it's almost a proof of concept film, right

Phil Rice 26:17
way. Right? Right. So the fact that it even reached for even unintentionally, these things that we're now criticising the these lenses we're criticising it through is is an achievement. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was it was,

Ricky Grove 26:30
it was enjoyed. It's a perfect representation of real time cinema today. Made in Unreal, I mean, it shows you exactly the kind of quality that you can create the kind of impact that it can have, even though it was short. Although the skill level is pretty, you have to be pretty high level skills to to be able to create that because even despite the fact that unreal is fairly clear, in terms of its workflow. It's not something that amateurs can jump right in and

Phil Rice 27:05
grab not not and get these kinds of results. That's for sure. Right? Yeah, great pic. Oh,

Ricky Grove 27:10
really enjoyed it.

Damien Valentine 27:11
I'm glad you enjoyed it. So I think we're gonna wrap that up for this episode. So let us know what you think of this film. And be sure to check out pie in the sky as well. I know I need to watch that as well after you finish recording. It's good. It's good. Yeah. If you have any feedback or you want to contact us for anything else, please send us an email at talk at completely machinima.com and we will be back next week. Take care and may the fourth be with you. And may

Ricky Grove 27:39
the fourth be with you. Take care you