Phil Rice 00:44
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production real time cinema, whatever you want to call it, and related technologies. My name is Phil Rice and I'm here with my co hosts Tracy Harwood and Damian Valentine. Hello. Ricky is off skinny dipping. So we could not keep his webcam turned on for that. But he'll be back with us at our next episode. So this is our news omnibus episode, I'm going to kick things off by reminding everyone of how to get in touch with us. Because while we, we've, you know, we've got presence on x, and we scour the web for this info, but tips from you, our listeners are more than welcome. Because we can't possibly see everything going on out there that's important. So you can reach us pretty much through the comments of anywhere that you're listening to this. So if you're, if you're taking any sin on YouTube, feel free to pop something in the comments there. Or if you hear about us on LinkedIn, or Facebook or wherever else, we're spreading the word, that's fine as well. The surefire way to get info to us would be through email, which is talk at completely machinima.com. So we would welcome not only your feedback on the show, which we value greatly, but also if you've got tips, or things that you want to hear us talk about, this is the episode where we're not focused on specific films. We're going through what's happening out there. So I'm gonna go ahead and start off real quick with just one thing that happened fairly recently. About a month or so ago, maybe a little longer than that now, there was a new AI video provider that kind of made its debut called

Phil Rice 02:49
No, it's ope it's the one by open AI. Is it Soma? It starts with an S. Oh, yes. Yeah, because there's another one that's AI music Sora. There we go. Sona is the AI Music One, which maybe we'll discuss that at some point when I've had a chance to play around with it. But Sora kind of made some waves when it when it splashed because they released a series of, of videos that were generated by this text to AI text video generator. And we were aware that there's some pretty strong opinions on both sides about this whole technology and you know, where it's getting its source materials from is a big point of controversy. We don't really have an official podcast position on that. I think there's there's some diversity of opinions, even just in my own head on this not to mention between all of us so but it is, it's noteworthy I think it's worth watching, I think it's it's significant and something worth keeping an eye on. So by us bringing it up like this, we're not we're not promoting it or insisting that it's the way to go. But just that, you know, it's not insignificant, it is something to watch, it's going to play some kind of role in our creative world going forward. So Sora released this series of videos that were, kind of a whole order of magnitude, better quality looking than than we've seen from the front runners of that text to video, generated AI stuff like Pika Labs and Runway and there's numerous others out there now. But Sora these were, frankly jaw dropping some of these videos that they were showing And a lot of the glitchyness was not as noticeable. And I think maybe the most noticeable thing was how long they could generate video and still keep a level of consistency to the output, which that may not seem initially significant, but it is, if you've ever experimented around with Runway, or even Pika Labs that even after the reason that they let you render clips in about four seconds is because things start to kind of fall apart in terms of the integrity of the image after that point, and Sora seem to have overcome that. Now. It's not I don't think it's still available to the public. It seems like maybe they've opened it up to a select group of creators or beta testers, I think, if I'm wrong on that, you guys will correct me, but but the videos were, well, to people who like that medium, they were very impressive, to people who don't, they were very alarming. Both reactions, I think, are understandable. What's significant is what has come out here in the last week or so from the time when we're recording this. And that is that it's come to light or a light has been shown on the fact that there's some pretty significant post production work that was done on those clips that were put out there by Open AI and by Sora. Was it somewhere in the fine print that there was post post production, maybe, but they certainly didn't mind people looking at those videos, and assuming that those just came straight out of the Sora text video engine, without any alteration. And that is pretty clearly not the case. And not just in simple ways, like colour correction, or, you know, maybe even, you know, reducing graininess or things like that, and we're not talking about that type of post production, I'm talking about, you know, replacing heads on on on humanoid figures, because it was distorting weirdly, and things of that sort where it's I mean, significantly altered CGI altering of, of the image. And there's been various reactions to that. And, frankly, the reactions to it, or as various as the reactions to AI art itself, that there's some who are like, oh, you know, what's the big deal? We all do that, you know, it's the kind of almost pretending oh, we knew that, you know, we knew that was probably going on. I mean, come on, you know, no, we didn't know we didn't. And, and more importantly, I think, is that the company that released those videos, they knew that we didn't know that. And I realised that it's maybe a, a thorny subject to bring up, you know, honesty and integrity with regard to AI art, when there's so many questions of honesty and integrity that are at the at the root of it, you know, about how these things train and where they get their stuff from, and is what they're doing theft. I kind of I tend to lean maybe more towards the camp of. Okay, so if I'm a visual artist, and I look at a whole bunch of different paintings from from other artists, and I get inspired by that, and those become, let's say, my influences, and the same can be said in music, you know, I listened to tonnes of Pink Floyd or Nine Inch Nails or Beethoven. And that tends to sculpt how I create, it's just natural. That's how we work. And I guess one case that could be made is all AI generated AI art is, is it's a computer that can do that a lot more efficiently than than we can. It's looking at stuff and maybe even copying stuff in an imitative sort of way and whatnot. There's there's holes in that argument, I'll fully admit, but that's kind of that's one side of the way of interpreting AI art. And the other is it's just ripping stuff off and piecing it together. I think there's merits on both. I don't think that question is necessarily settled yet. But regardless, I think it's a different type of honesty problem when a company is putting out there as promotional videos for a product that I would assume they're going to be charging for it at some point they're gonna be commercialising, monetizing, making money from it. And they're they're letting this perception be that this is what our tool can do. Which is a little bit different statement, I think then this is what our tool can do after a professional CGI and post production artist has altered the footage even further and turned it into something beautiful. I think that's important. Even though like I said, there is a lot of grey with regard to, you know, the the honesty of the AI artventure. itself. But I do think it's an important distinction. I'm curious if you guys paid any attention to that what what your thoughts, thoughts are on that?

Tracy Harwood 02:49
Viggle

Tracy Harwood 10:46
Well, if that's true, Phil, that's technically mis selling. And that's that's,

Phil Rice 10:51
it might even be a violation of law. I don't know, maybe they buried something in the fine print,

Tracy Harwood 10:57
maybe to say that these

Phil Rice 10:58
things were tweaked. But nobody noticed that. And kind of wonder, isn't it? That they were glad no one noticed that? I don't know. They mean, you

Damien Valentine 11:08
say you were saying? Yes. False advertising or something? Absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 11:11
Right. It's smooth sailing. It's sale of goods and Mangia. You know, you talk about buyer beware, and all that sort of stuff. Don't know what the American legal position is on mis selling. But here it is. It's wrong. It's

Phil Rice 11:25
a pretty serious thing.

Tracy Harwood 11:26
Yeah, absolutely. Pretty serious thing. If that's what it is it if you know, if it's been portrayed as one thing, there's a price on that one thing, and it turns out that that's not how it's done. And that's not what it's capable of doing, then that's misselling? Yeah. I think that's a fairly cut and

Damien Valentine 11:47
dry thing. I didn't look too closely at this particular instance. But I saw the headline in our notes here. I thought, yeah, that doesn't sound too ethical. There was well,

Tracy Harwood 11:59
it's not just, you know, unethical. It's wrong. Yes. Yeah. And it breaks the, you know, yes, fundamentally. But I have to say, I have entirely skipped that episode, because unfortunately, I was away. So I missed all of the fallout on it. I saw that you meant you've sort of seen it. But I haven't actually had a chance to look at what's okay.

Phil Rice 12:23
What are we gonna dig into that further later? Yeah, yeah. What

Tracy Harwood 12:25
are they saying in response to the the furor around it? Have they actually commented on it?

Phil Rice 12:32
I'm not certain about that. I'm not certain that there has been an official response yet. Because? Because, yeah,

Damien Valentine 12:39
well, maybe they know, they've been caught, and they just don't want to say anything. Well,

Phil Rice 12:43
you would think even if that was the case, someone would come out and justify the decision. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 12:50
I mean, how have they been caught? That's the, I mean, what's the process for uncovering that kind of thing?

Phil Rice 12:57
The the story that, that called it to my attention, the person had actual source video clips of what the AI rendered footage was before the adjustments were made. And then what it was after now how they obtained those I don't know, is it a whistleblower? Kind of thing? Is it something else? I honestly don't know. may have been a dumb idea for me to bring up when I haven't haven't dug into it yet. But it's fairly new.

Tracy Harwood 13:27
Are they fake videos that then somebody is trying to claim? I don't know. He said,

Phil Rice 13:34
a competitor in bad faith.

Tracy Harwood 13:38
That's an awful lot of misinformation. I think it's definitely if you've got something like this, I think it's my advice would be to check it out. Okay, properly. But if they have done that, I mean, what a stupid thing to do.

Phil Rice 13:52
Yeah, you think you'll dig some more

Damien Valentine 13:54
into that? If there's a competitor, they'd be very quick to be able to say actually, no, this is genuine. produce another clip, and we'll show you how we did it. And you can Yeah,

Phil Rice 14:03
that's the thing is which of those which of those levels of dishonesty is the more corporate risky? Yeah, having having the issued the video under false pretences or fabricating video to make it look like someone did? I mean, good grief. There's this either way, that's just filthy. So but

Tracy Harwood 14:25
I don't think we're dealing with an exactly. I was gonna say clean slate, but you know what, I mean, I don't think we're nobodies squeaky clean in this either.

Phil Rice 14:35
Yeah, it makes you wonder, you know, if, if, if the whole endeavour of this was, you know, regardless of where you end up, falling on on AI art it seems like that because the technology was moving so quickly, that this was kind of move rushed into a bit pretty quickly before these kind of like I think analogous to maybe some of the the stuff related to stem cell research and medicine, right, that this technology is there. And it's so promising. And there are some ethical questions around stem cells and where they're harvested from and all that stuff. And and there was this propulsion, by the promise of the technology that just propelled people forward before answering those things. And then yeah, now you're in a weird place with it. And I think there's, there's something to be said similarly with, with AI art, that there's some real ethical questions about, you know, mining, the output of other artists without their consent, and just moving forward with it. And under the banner of well, it because we can, yeah, that's not really a good enough reason.

Tracy Harwood 15:52
But you know, what I mean, it's really kind of interesting that you're talking about the same company, because I've picked up another thing that that won't share with you now. But this is a this is also a Microsoft piece of work that has been done and and I picked up picked it up, because it's interesting in how that they, how they've dealt with it. And because Microsoft are in bed with Open AI. So there is a kind of a connection there. But the bit that I was going to tell you about is this tool that they've called VASA1. And it's a tool that will create lifelike audio driven talking faces using generative AI. And it's not out in the world. And they currently have no plans to release it, it is simply a development that they have made with, with the technology to illustrate that this is possible, and they've released a research paper on it. Which is, I mean, most of these guys do this, they release a research paper long before it becomes a product if you like. But the bit that I was going to say before you brought this Sora of thing up was the fact that they've said they haven't no plans to release it. And that the image examples that they've included in this paper are are purely illustrative and have not, you know, do not represent any real person, if you like, I kind of was going to gonna raise the point, well, I wonder how long, they will resist the temptation of not putting it out in the world. Now I'll share the link to that paper with you. But it's really interesting that you're saying well, they put something else out under false pretences. They Open AI, and yet on another tool set, they're not prepared to do it. This, I don't know this. These companies have vast I don't know, you know, under what, you know, what ethical principles they run, you know, they review what it is they're doing, whether there is consistency in that approach. In that approach, I get the feeling there isn't. I get, you know, once one group of folks does one thing, and another group of folks does another. But certainly in this particular tool set that I'm talking about, they are withholding it and clearly they're withholding it because of the very significant implications from the potential for this kind of tool to get in into the hands of bad actors, I would assume. Now, either way with your story, if it's, you know, if they really have manipulated it, make it look like it does better than it has, or somebody's trying to undermine it. You know, there's an element of bad action there isn't that Yeah, same company though. That's the bit but you know, that kind of what you know, what, what can you say? I just, you know, it's moving not just too fast for us as consumers of this stuff, but for then as companies working with it, I mean, what more can you say?

Phil Rice 19:21
Yeah, I kind of I don't know. There's a there's a fun element to AI that I really would love to be able to just enjoy guilt free you know? Yeah. Seeing seeing you know, seeing a Instagram video of Michael Jackson but with with Arnold Schwarzenegger is voice singing. Fabulous.

19:45
Oh, when? Oh, dear blue sky. So that is broken high and blast out to you.

Phil Rice 19:54
Oh, yeah. There's a whole thing on Instagram, a whole set of reels where it's Arnold Schwarzenegger is voice doing either replacing someone else's voice or doing sound effects for like there's one that's it's a video of of dirt bikes going over desert dunes and all of the engine sounds are Arnold. I the whole thing. Oh, it's like, okay, I love that. But like every time I, you know, want to go enjoy something like that. It's like this whole looming sense of Oh, man is this whole thing? You know, wrong. Is it okay? Yeah, it's a weird time. It's

Tracy Harwood 20:37
it's there, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, did he? Did he see the Viggle Image generator? That's what I thought you were going to tell us about actually the vehicle one. You know that. I mean, this has been meme. Meme supreme, I think across the across the internet, and again over the last couple of weeks. This is the Joker with, you know, is this guy standing in for Lil Yachty? Is it the rap singer?

Phil Rice 21:08
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, it has been named all just crazy. Yeah, absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 21:14
Crackers. This one. It's on discord, you go onto discord. And you can replace any character with another character in any video. And it's relatively straightforward to do it. There's a bunch of video tutorials on how to do it, you'd kind of have to tidy it up a bit with another AI to get the clothing to move a little bit. But it's it's basically a style transfer. You know, an approach to style transfer between videos, which I think is kind of really cool. So, yeah, another one Viggle AI. That one's called. I thought that's the one you're going to talk about. Because that's the one that everybody is kind of highlighting at the moment. Then there's another. I've got a few AI things. Yeah, go ahead. Well, Google DeepMind, has created a new AI model called Genie. Oh, well guess things called Genie that can create playable worlds in the style of 2d animation platforms, using an image is a prompt or a sketch or a text description. And there's actually a quite why they've released it this way, I don't know. But there's a there's a Twitter thread about it that's worth taking a look at. So you've kind of got, you know, a playable world environment from a text prompt now. I mean, that's just astonishing. Then Stability AI has introduced its stable audio 2.0 model that enables high quality, full tracks, with musical structure of up to three minutes long, from a single text prompt. I mean, that's also astonishing, amazing. Excuse me, but according to some, it's not quite as good as Suno.

Phil Rice 23:12
That's the one I was trying to think of earlier. You know? Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 23:15
yeah. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting. Somebody, one of my colleagues at work, this last few days, created a theme tune for my research institutes. Using chatGPT to generate the lyrics and Suno noted to generate the sound and it's, it's pretty good. I have to say, I didn't know we were so well thought of by the internet, but clearly we are. So you know, my Institute for Creative Technologies has now got its first signature tune. It's great. From sooner that was primarily primarily, then, Musk has announced that a Grok 1.5 vision, which, as I understand he aims to connect the digital and physical worlds with this kind of multimodal model. As I understand it, it's about to be released sort of imminently. So probably by the next month, next month's News episode will be able to talk about that in more detail. And I can share a link with you in the meantime, how it compares to some of the other generative AI models that are multimodal as well. And what else did I want to share with you? Yeah, one more on the generative AI. I don't know if this is a sort of thing that you might be interested in. I kind of find these things. interesting because they remind you just how far the technology has come in a in a longer period of timeframe than you might imagine. But I did find a really interesting for me, video, by Art of the Problem about the history of the development of generative AI and it's actually a documentary. There's you know, some interviews with some key scientists in the development of generative AI, including some sort of dead ends they reached in the in the development process. It's about 30 minutes long, but it's kind of worth watching. If you're interested in, where does it come from? Why does it do what it does that kind of thing. And that's a little YouTube video, that's I'll put a link on the show notes for as well. But that's it on the on the generative AI updates that I've got. I mean, you know, I suppose each week that goes past each month that we talk about it, there's a load more stuff that kind of happens that we, you know, the the playing field becomes a little more clear, in terms of, you know, how are the texts evolving? What are the key issues that are emerging around them? And how are they being used by bad actors? And what do you need to look out for? Because all of that is what we're witnessing, in kind of real time. And we're having to navigate that actually navigate it as creators, but also reviewers in the in the podcast, too, because, you know, obviously, this AI stuff is it's filtering into the work that we're seeing in ways that are not so clear to many folks, I think. It's kind of an interesting one. I got some other updates, or Damian, do you want to have a go with your updates? Because I know you've got some great ones? Well,

Damien Valentine 26:35
yeah, I've got two things I was talking about a question I'm going to ask both of you. So first off, there's a new plugin, or thing for iClone for generating buildings. And I haven't tried it out yet, there's a free trial version. And then there's, you have to pay for it if you want to actually use it beyond the trial period, and it's kind of like building blocks, where you have these build your buildings, big. They're not like Lego bricks, where you have to build each brick individually. But the big blocks, midsection of the building can choose the shape of it, how high it's going to be. And you can cut bits out so you you're not just having a square shape, and it goes up high or spreads really wide or anything like that. You can do all kinds of interesting shapes with it. And then once you've got the shape set, you can then place windows and doors there was on the top so you can put the top of the roof roofing and bannisters for the railings for you know, if you only kind of balcony. And it looks like it's a very fascinating tool. And you can also change like the texture of the walls, I think it's gonna be a very useful new feature for icon because you can build your city or whatever structures you want. And you can make it unique to your film very easily, without necessarily having to learn how to do 3d modelling to create the same kind of unique structure that you want. And whether it's kind of a European style construction set, I don't know if there's plans for more styles to be added or if they're going to rely on the community to build them. Well, how easy is to bring in your own. But I thought it was worth mentioning that there's some videos on the religion website to show off how it works.

Phil Rice 28:31
I believe that they've I believe that they've already released one, at least one content add on pack for this. So that is probably going to be the model going forward. I mean, hopefully there will be a way for for users themselves to do that if they want to put the time in for that. But I think I think there's going to be some different architectural styles that you can purchase as add on packs for this if that makes sense. That seems consistent with with with the way that they've they've done other types of content. It does look very interesting. It seems like years ago, they would release for like city building, for example, they would release a content pack that had a lot of modular components, but they were all fixed in nature. And you could you could kind of interlock them together almost like Legos and build some pretty limited types of sets. And this is this to me feels like with it being procedurally generated, it's it's going to be so much more flexible and so many more possibilities can emerge. So it does look very interesting. I'm not sure what the I'm trying to find what the the pricing is on it. They've got a early bird special. Okay, so the yeah Have you? The early bird special? For the plugin itself? is 149. I don't know if that's a member price, or if that's the list price is 199. And then they have the first pack that they released that I mentioned. It's called the French style pack. Yeah. And they're offering that offering that with a bundle for an extra 50 bucks. So it's not cheap. But if you were, but I mean, if you think about things in terms of, you know, money is essentially a representation of creators time, right? Whether you're hiring someone to do work for you, or if you're spending the time to do it yourself that that's money you could spend doing something else. And I mean, that's, that's supposed to be the whole idea behind money in the first place, right? Is it's a physical representation of the value of time. So if you're going to be doing a lot of building like this, then then that's probably a pretty reasonable price. If you're not, then that's, that's, that's pretty steep.

Damien Valentine 31:06
Yeah, if you're just doing one scene, it's probably not worth doing it. But if you're going to do lots of city scenes in your projects, might be worth looking into.

Phil Rice 31:15
One thing about it, I'm curious about maybe when one of us gets to test it out, we can report back to people on this. But you know, a lot of a lot of people that are using iClone because of the advanced rendering possibilities that that you can do by bringing your project over into either Unreal, or into Nvidia Omniverse is some types of assets. There's a there's a question mark there sometimes of how well they're going to transmit over to those third party platforms. So I'm curious about, I would assume that anything procedurally generated is going to have the prop is going to end up having an extended licence that lets you export to those other places. But I don't have any way to know that for sure yet. We'll have to, we'll have to play with that. And see, there's

Damien Valentine 32:11
the change the export licence setup. So in theory, all content now can be exported. In practice, that doesn't work, because I've had issues with some of the coding content packs, and characters, saying that, you know, we don't have the licence for it when you're trying to do it. And I, I have contacted them, and haven't had the full reply yet. I got a reply with some questions, which I've answered, and I'm waiting to hear back that's got nothing to do with this particular plugin. It's just about right clothing control, that's

Phil Rice 32:47
a good direction for them to be heading in for sure. Because it was pretty, pretty complicated waters to navigate for. So any step in that direction is good. Let's hope they keep moving things that way. I hope. So.

Damien Valentine 33:01
Hopefully, by next time we record some more answers about that one, probably

Phil Rice 33:06
the mystery behind that of how to solve that. Something behind the scenes it's going on, it's gotta be figuring out how to make sure that the the artists who create the content are satisfied with the compensation that they'll get for that extra usage. You know, that's got to be what? That's got to be part of the part of the challenge of it. Because I believe that, if I remember, right, it used to be that for the extended licence, you're paying more for it. And so then the artists getting compensated more as well. Yeah. So if they figured that out, and we're and we're able to apply that across their creator network for people populating their content store. That's going to be a big

Damien Valentine 33:44
part of it. But these are actually official content packs that right. Yeah. A little different there. Yeah. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there. But hopefully, we get some answers there. Good. So the next thing I tried, we talked about last month, the blockbuster Inc. Demo. Let's look at the demo. It's called the prologue

Tracy Harwood 34:05
conditional lock. Yeah, yeah.

Damien Valentine 34:09
So I tried it out. And there is a demo, which I have installed as well, which I got from the when the restart of steam years ago. The demo is very different from the prologue edition. The demo is a much earlier version. So I don't know if it's still available to download, but don't get that because it's anyway, the prologue session, you loaded up, you start a new game, and it asks you if you want to do this tutorial, so the first time I ran through it, I did that. And it's very much like the movies. It's a business simulation game. And it teaches you how to do all the business side of things like hire your staff, build the office offices for the writers and the producers and the maintenance team and you know, all that stuff. And they gets kind of into the filmmaking

Phil Rice 34:56
as their alcoholism. because that was a big part of the movies. Simulation was managing the drunks.

Damien Valentine 35:07
I think that's gonna be in the game. I didn't get far enough in it to find out.

Phil Rice 35:11
I mean, it's Hollywood. So yeah, absolutely.

Damien Valentine 35:14
So it teaches you basically everything you need to know. And then I loads up again over the weekend, and just played the game itself. I don't know if there's going to be a free mode like the movies did by you just get everything to this edition, it gives you the, I think is that the 1930s, or the 40s, or some some early parts of Hollywood history to play around with. And you can choose what kind of when you start to serve the game you choose what kind of movies your studio is going to produce in this couple of different options, though, I went with action and mystery, and then the themes as well to go alongside with vampire and cyberpunk just to see what would happen.

Phil Rice 36:08
Empire cyberpunk movie in the 1930s.

Tracy Harwood 36:12
Yeah, that sounds like a horror hammer.

Phil Rice 36:16
Don't metropolis, basically, yeah.

Damien Valentine 36:19
So what these options do is they give you the base, the starting content that you have. So that's costumes for your actors, and the decorations for your set, and stuff like that. And so I built up the studio with for the, you know, the production team. And then you can build a set. Now in the movies, the sets of static things, you can choose which one you want, like there's a starship bridge as an office, as a school corridor. As I come involved, it's a long time ago, but you place that and that's where you get and there's a couple of each set has its built in set of animations that you can choose. So if you've got the starship bridge, there will starship like things like Captain in the seat and the crews being flown around, thrown around the room and stuff like that, you won't get those options if you're in the corridor, in the school corridor into that, and you won't get the school corridor options on the starship bridge. Whereas this, you build a set. And it's basically a square. And there's a theme to it. So I've got the cyberpunk wine. So it looks like outside building graffiti on the walls, and some high tech stuff. But other than that, it's basically blank. And then what you can do is you can decorate it with props. So I put some signs up on the wall, you know, until neon signs in this big futuristic door, one of the walls and a big air conditioning unit, which I'm sure it didn't happen the 1930s. But you can still build it there anyway. And then you can place you can set what you want to film there. So I had this, the movie I had was five scenes, four or five scenes. And I did various different fight sequences, so that you place the characters and you set what animation that they're going to perform. But when you actually place them, you can place them anywhere on the set, you're not limited to very specific locations like you were with the movies. So you do that, you can pick what costumes they're going to wear. And then you set where animations are going to be. And it can be any combination you want. So I had one where one character had a sword and was doing this acrobatic stunt thing through the air. And the other character was just kind of standing there. And it's kind of stepped backwards or something, but not in a way that would make sense of the scene, because I wanted to see if you could do random stuff like that. And then you place it when the cameras gonna be and you can set what kind of camera move it's going to be, I don't think you can control the camera manually, it's more like it's going to point at his character. And then you can say if he wanted to switch between characters off, he just wanted to focus on that one or he just wanted to be remain static. And it's very zoom options and focus options and height and stuff like that, which I didn't play around too much with that but it was there. And of course with this thing set in the 1930s and when I started it's all black and white. And it's very grainy to the camera is authentic to the time now imagine when as you play through the game, more advanced camera technology is going to become available so you will get colour and less grain and you know, more modern technology. You'd expect to do that and then you start production the all the characters in the game they go around making movie so that the actors get on stage, the camera crews there, the directors there, you just let it run. And then a couple minutes later you've got your movie and you can watch it. Obviously this test video was terrible. But you know, I wasn't expecting to do anything great with it.

Tracy Harwood 40:17
Oh, you're going to share with us?

Damien Valentine 40:20
I don't know how to do that yet. Oh, I do know that it's possible because I looked and I seen people sharing their videos on Tiktok. But I don't know how they did it. Because there's no button that say, export, or anything like that. Really? Yeah. So I don't know how it must be saved somewhere. And I haven't found it. I tried going on to the steam disc discussion page to see if anyone said it. That I wasn't covered. So there's got to be a way to do it. I just don't know how to do it yet. But maybe it's true. They were catching up with OBS or something. And they just cut it.

Phil Rice 40:57
Yeah, maybe. So.

Damien Valentine 41:01
Yeah, well, maybe they've got an advance copy of the game. And they're releasing stuff that it's not necessarily in this prologue condition of the game. So it made me want to dig up the movies get in play around with that. Because obviously, this is just a demo version and very limited content. Because I enjoyed playing the movies, I enjoy playing the simulation part of it as well as making movies. So it brought back a lot of good memories, that now some things I noticed for this, when you build a set is the set construction tool. You can save them, and you can share them with other people, including on the Steam Workshop. It's got Steam Workshop support for mods. At the moment, it's just sets as far as I can certainly

Phil Rice 41:46
feature. Yeah. But

Damien Valentine 41:49
I believe when the full game was released, other mods options are gonna be available, like costumes, and I don't know what else they're gonna put

Tracy Harwood 41:58
economy then yeah, yeah. And

Damien Valentine 42:01
of course, good thing about Steam Workshop is all the content is free. So you just go on there, he find what you want, and you download it into the game, you just press the subscribe button, the game will automatically download and add it to itself. So that makes it very easy. Very handy. Yeah, so I'm very intrigued by this game. Expect I'll grab it, and then it gets released next month in June. Because I really enjoyed the movies. And I'm interested in playing this spiritual successor to it. And I do really hope there's a way to export movies, because I think there's a lot of potential there.

Tracy Harwood 42:38
For sure, it sounds really yeah, they're

Phil Rice 42:39
almost certainly it has to be in the main game. Yeah. Yeah, perfect.

Tracy Harwood 42:43
So machinima really filmed

Damien Valentine 42:48
and it's kind of cartoony style like the movies did but not not. The movies was a little bit over the top saturation, like The Sims was not quite as much as the Sims. But from what I've seen here. I think there's options for that. But if you want to do more serious, you've got those animations there as well. Yeah. We'll see what happens. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 43:13
Well, I've got some game updates that I wanted to share with you. Do you remember when we were talking with Ricky about the you know, the difference between game machinima and what's going on with Unreal and what have you the some of these things I'm going to share with you now kind of tap into what I was talking about, in relation to what the future of Unreal might actually be. probably come back to that when I've gone through all the different points of view like the first one I want to share with you is a new Jaws experience, which is being created for Roblox. It's called Jaws Infested Waters. Now, it's a survival game that's been developed by orange comet and universal products and experience in it. And it actually, you know, it's very cartoony, but it's very reminiscent of the original film, of course, and I'd be really interested to see what what folks kind of do with that because, you know, it's, it's, it's, as I just said, it's a classic kind of film turned into a game. Well, I don't know, what can you do with it? They're gonna, people are gonna get eaten not like that. But maybe maybe there'll be some interesting takes on that. But I really want to see what comes out of that. For the reasons that we were talking about, then you must have heard of Palworld that was a kind of a spiritual successor to Pokemon that was released. Well, I'm not sure if we we actually have highlighted this one in our other news update It's I've been waiting to see for some if there are some interesting machinima has come out with with it. I haven't honestly seen anything that I would call interesting. However, JT Music have created a rap. And you know, we covered a JT Music video last month and we beat the hell the hell out of us too. And we basically sort of said, well, you know if you ever want to find out about what a new game is all about, have a look at a JT Music rap. Well, they've really nailed this one because you know they've highlighted in this rap all the kind of key aspects to do without you are basically the part of the production cycle for the game, and how it's a grind to play it, which probably explains why there aren't an awful lot of machinima being made with it just yet, but I think it's an interesting machinima that JT Music have put out about it. So I still wait with bated breath as to what comes out of that one. You must have seen the GTA 6 trailer. Oh, yes. You must have seen that. Yeah. Inspired of course by Well, it's a Florida location. Yes. Beaches, wetlands and mud bogs. You have mud bogs there, Phil.

Phil Rice 46:25
Ah, yeah. I mean, you know, in the Everglades itself, it's a swamp. We're all live in a swamp over here. So okay.

Tracy Harwood 46:33
Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, you know, as far as I can tell, there's still no date for its actual release. Another 2025 one. Ish. Do you think anything is later do

Damien Valentine 46:48
you think three? I

Phil Rice 46:50
think they're gonna they're gonna wait until this thing is spectacular. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 46:56
Do you reckon?

Phil Rice 46:57
I think that's that's that's they they caught a lot of flack for the remastered releases that they did have the earlier GTA games. Do you remember that when GTA three and they and they caught a lot of flack for that of there were a lot of bugs and stuff didn't translate real well, and it felt rushed. I think they heard that. And I do and I don't think they're going to make that mistake with GTA six. I mean, they didn't with the release of the trailer, there was speculation for six to eight months of GTA six trailers right around the corner. All this pressure all this public pressure to and they did give into it, they released it when they were ready to. So yeah, I think that's probably mean they're sitting in a really nice position. And they've done a fantastic job, I think of keeping the community around GTA five alive for this long. They're still releasing gta online, like content and events and things. They're still doing that. Yeah. And I think that's how they keep the fan base interested and alive and yeah, so I don't think there's gonna be any rush to get this out. It won't be soon enough for anybody that wants to play it of course, but no, I think they'll wait and I think it's gonna I don't think they're on the down downhill part of their slope yet at all. I think I got every reason to think that the they're still on their way up in terms of getting better. In the games, some

Tracy Harwood 48:37
because machinima has been such a big thing for GTA five. I don't know what you think. But I'm just curious to see how the Machinima community of creators will make the switch to six. Because they're very wedded into five, aren't they? I mean, we've been looking at GTA five machinima for so long

Damien Valentine 49:01
started.

Tracy Harwood 49:01
Yeah. Well, I mean, on the show, yes. But I mean, before that, yeah.

Phil Rice 49:08
There was a lot of there was a lot of GTA 4 machinima activity before five came out. And it had a similar toolset. But the GTA five, the Rockstar Editor, and director mode and all that is way more advanced in five than it wasn't four. So it really didn't. It didn't. It didn't require a lot of effort for people to make the move. And I would suspect that they're going to add additional features to those tools. Yeah, I think there's, I mean, they'd be stupid not to frankly, there's it's it's it's such an important way. It's the best advertising that they've ever had, is what they let their users do with that game. I mean, that's that's kept it on. left on the tip of our tongues and on conversations and in front of people's eyes for over a decade. That's an amazing achievement. Amazing. So, yeah, yeah. And especially considering that it's not an open world game, you know, it's one thing if you look at a success story like Minecraft, and yeah, they're adding more content to the game each year, they add more and all that, but essentially, it's still just sandbox, but because the possibilities are infinite. You can see how Okay, well, you, you can always have a new experience in that game. And when GTA five, okay, the online component, there's some randomness to it, there's a whole, there's a whole role playing phenomenon that has come up in GTA five, that was never part of the intention for the game or the out of the box capabilities of the game, but people are just using it that way. And, and they'll basically, and people will live streaming their experience, or they'll just go and just do it for entertainment. And you just go in and you take on a literally a role and just do stuff. And like it could be something as as banal as I'm going to be a taxi driver and accept fares and transport players where they need to go, and you'll see it and you would think that that would just devolve into, you know, this Dionysian madness, it doesn't typically, I'm sure there are people out there who, who grief, right, who turned it into that. But the videos that I've seen, I mean, just people just, they're using it as an RPG in this weird way. So yeah, there's there's I just, yeah, I hope that they do keep the quality level up. And I think they've got every incentive to do so. I think they know. All eyes are on them. Yeah, for this, there's tonnes of anticipation. The Florida thing is they've never done Florida setting, have they? Not? Well, I guess my city is Miami technically right. But this is this is extending out quite a bit. This is you know, the Everglades is not Miami. That's, that's our that's outskirts. So it's a larger map again. Leonid and, and frankly, and I say this as a Floridian but Florida it. GTA has always been from the very first top down scroller game has always been heavily laced with satire, political satire. And, I mean, Florida is just easy, an easy target, you know, with the whole Florida man phenomenon and all that stuff. And just, I mean, you guys may not be exposed to quite as much talk about that. But here in the States, yeah, Florida has got a reputation for being just a little bit crazy. As someone living here, I can tell you, it's not all like that. But that is the rep. That is the reputation and that's the stories that make the headlines is, you know, someone literally behaving like a zombie and trying to eat someone. The crazy drugs that are out there now and all that and Florida gets a little taste of all that stuff. Florida's got high end, it's got some of the wealthiest people in the entire country. And it's got the absolute reddest of the rednecks as well. All in one place, you know, a trailer park right down the road from you know, mansions So, yeah, there's lots of lots of just fun possibilities there. So you know, that frankly in like Vice City, Miami itself doesn't capture all that. You got to go out into the, into the rural and it looks like that they're, they're going to enable the player to do that. So yeah, it's, it's, it's going to be fun. And I'm I am a stone's throw from Miami. Like I live right on the other side of the Everglades. So I'm particularly interested in this title, probably in a similar way to GTA five is probably particularly exciting for Ricky being from LA and that's what it's based on. With GTA four. I think GTA four is more, more based on New York, right? So yeah, yeah. So there's there's kind of it's kind of exciting that element of it. So Oh, I wonder why it's not necessarily going to be realistic. But it's not supposed to be supposed to be fun. So seven,

Tracy Harwood 54:36
seven, where will seven be?

Phil Rice 54:39
That I don't know. I don't know. Interesting, maybe maybe back to New York, but I mean, that's, that's years away. So

Tracy Harwood 54:48
yeah, probably beyond our lifetimes, right? They're going on? Yeah. Anyway, so the next one I wanted to talk

Tracy Harwood 55:06
So this one Marvel has also posted a game trailer. Or is it a film trailer for a game called 1943? Rise of Hydra Storyworld?

Phil Rice 55:22
Can I just say it's getting harder and harder to tell?

Tracy Harwood 55:26
Indeed, that was my point.

Phil Rice 55:29
I mean, it's to the point where it's kind of frustrating. You got three three types of trailers out there now. Yeah, legitimate movie trailers, game trailers that you can if you're not watching closely enough, you can easily mistake for movie trailers. And then you've got fake trailers, stats, where nothing exists. There's nothing that can make you feel more stupid than falling for a fake trailer. I actually fell for a fake trailer for I Am Legend 2. I Am Legend is the the Will Smith adaptation of I think originally that movie was Omega Man with Charlton Heston. You know, it's the end of the world and there's a virus and whatever. Everyone dies at the end of I Am Legend, but I saw oh my gosh, look, I Am Legend 2. And there's Will Smith. And I started watching it. My wife is the one who said, Didn't everybody die. And I'm just watching it. And I could just feel my facial features just sagging just as I'm starting to get angry. Just like I can't believe I fell for this. Well, there you go. But yeah, the game trailers sometimes it's like, you should you certainly can't tell from the thumbnails. And sometimes it takes a little bit into the trailer itself to catch whether or not okay, is this a 3d rendered environment? Or is this a movie?

Tracy Harwood 56:54
Well, God knows what this one's gonna be. Because

Phil Rice 56:57
yeah, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I haven't watched it yet. So I don't know. But you should, because

Tracy Harwood 57:02
this is this is exactly what I was talking about on the Unreal. You know, what are they trying to do here create all these kinds of ludic worlds? Well, this is this is exactly that. Yeah. And, and it's being made in Unreal Engine. And it's, it's being made by a company called Skydance New Media and Marvel games, obviously. And the idea is that there's this ensemble of heroes, who must overcome their differences and collaborate to confront their common common enemy. And this one is also scheduled to be released in 2025. Which, you know, it's going to compete with GTA 6, and others, you know, I mean, most well, I guess we'll see how successful that will be. I tend to think, you know, because just as just as you have just said, you cannot pick up that this is a game from the trailer at all. It just looks like another Marvel movie. And my guess is, because it's a film studio that's working with a, an experience kind of company, these guys have gone a little bit of a learning curve, I think to go through to figure out how IP for films can work in a gameplay context. And then on top of that, you've got to then think about, well, what does that mean for those that might then appropriate that content to create machinima? Because that will happen, you know, you can't put a game out and then expect, you know, either Let's Plays not to be put up on on the channel, all that content be turned into a new story. It's new stories from machinima creators. And I don't see any of the groundwork being laid for that side of what it is they're trying to do in terms of just, you know, mixing these two genres of, of entertainment, if you like. So I think the IP side of things is going to be really interesting once these things kind of get going. But interestingly, with this particular one, I don't know if you saw the game development developer conference couple of weeks back at that Kim Libreri, who is the Chief Technology Officer, Sorry, Chief, Chief Technology Officer for Epic Games. He was demoing Unreal Engine 5.4 with this particular content, Rise of the Hydra actually showcasing it at that event, and the fidelity of the characters and the assets that were on that screen that you were you were looking at in that conference. They were absolutely astonishing, because obviously 5.4 You know, it's got a bunch of new tools within it, including various kind of physics tools. So you guys were talking earlier about, you know, how do you create physics properties for things really quickly? Well, well, in 5.4, they're built in, you don't need to, it's another free tool set, and it's there and it's ready to rock. So 5.4 looks to me like it's pretty astonishing. But like I said, it's a, it's a film, in a game engine, and gameplay game mechanics are going to clearly come into, into force in this sort of thing. This is exactly what Unreal had in, in their mind when they started to go down this route. I think this is exactly what they were talking about. So it's a really interesting development, I can't wait to see what happens to it. I know we're a year away from it, but this is where I think this this whole thing is going. And then you know, and then what machinima becomes from that will be really interesting to see once these films start to get into that space, which they are doing right now. Then the other one that I wanted to share with you is this really interesting one called Harold Halibut. This is uh, this is what you call it a hand crafted game. I don't know if you've seen this one at all. It's

Phil Rice 1:01:21
I've seen it prior to like, I've seen and seen the trailer that you released here, but I've seen this somewhere before. Oh, I thought I thought that we had discussed it on here. But I don't think we have so we hadn't Yeah. This before. It's a fascinating aesthetic. This game. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 1:01:37
Well, it stop mo animation. Which is to create it using stop my animation is just absolutely. Well, a unique I think I'm really seen a game being created in this kind of way. 14 years in the making. That's another sort of interesting aspect to it. I can't wait to see machinima being made in this because it looks, it looks beautiful and interesting. And the story world just looks. I don't know this, there's just something kind of friendly about it. I don't know whether folks can do much with that sort of aesthetic these days. They don't seem to be inspired so much in that way. But it just looks so interesting. To me. It's actually a game about friendship on this kind of city sized ship on a spaceship argh or whatever. And the quest in the game is to find the meaning of home which is you know, couldn't be any more kind of apple pie. But I bet there's some really interesting shorts that kind of come out of it, either, you know, twisting it in some way or spicing it up or, or just you know, extending the kind of characters that seem to be so embedded within it. It just looks really fascinating I think. And I can't wait to see what folks do with this one either. So there you go. So and that literally just look so the trailer that I shared with you was launched several weeks, several weeks back but the game itself has literally just launched as it has okay cool so mid mid April it launched so I

Phil Rice 1:03:18
must have seen the trailer when it first when it first came out it looks like it came out in November. Yeah, that's right.

Tracy Harwood 1:03:24
So I'm looking forward to seeing interesting I did try and see if I could find anything you know any trailers any machinimas that folks that made with it yet but I think I you know it's probably going to be quite a nice one. But I I am looking forward to that one. I think it will be quite intriguing I've got a few other things do you want to carry on for a little bit? I've got a few more Sure. Well, I I saw some really interesting projects that I'd like to share these are not actually machinima, but Oh, my God, they're so interesting. And I think you commented on those on them as well. Phil, I think I saw you comment on them. The first one was the Black Milk studio has created this kind of stunning series of Yeah, really fascinating, unrelated shorts in this sci fi anthology. And as I understand it, what they're trying to do is explore the past present and future of humanity. And I thought it was a little bit black mirror ish. It's called 1000 Suns. I know you picked up on the first one ICE, I watched all of them yeah. Did you watch them all have you? I haven't seen them yet. But my God I thought they were amazing. I was fascinated actually by them. The last one that the Disney one that yeah, they call it in loving memory

Phil Rice 1:04:45
moral and or something like that. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 1:04:47
Well, well, no. Tomorrowland. That was that was the bank see? Disney.

Phil Rice 1:04:57
That's Tomorrowland tomorrow. Next. Oh, okay.

Tracy Harwood 1:05:01
Oh, that's what you were referring to. I thought you were referring to the Banksy installation on one of the beaches in England a couple of years back, which looked just like that. Which is fascinating. But it's, it's, I think it's really interesting. They've used a bunch of creative technologies to create they're selling, but it's basically real life, real life acting performances. So they've used 3d printing, 3d scanning and mo cap and whatnot, but it is kind of real live performances that they've, they've done with it,

Phil Rice 1:05:33
though. There's more live action to this than you would believe. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's actually quite astonishing, is when I commented on it over on x. My first question was, and my first assumption was, well, there's got to be Unreal Engine involved here. Yeah, but no, it's not, like at all. Yeah, like it's most mostly live action. And that, yeah, there's some CGI, they're being really kind of they're keeping their cards close to their chest as far as what, what specifically they use for CGI. But I mean, it's gotta be one of these top tier tools like, I don't know, cinema 4d, or, you know, one of those high end ones like that. But what was surprising to me was how much of this was practical effects? How much if it was on location? Yeah, you know, and yeah, the 3d printing thing is particularly intriguing. The very first episode, there's a guy who spends the whole episode in a spacesuit. That spacesuit was 3d printed. The guy, the filmmaker, 3d printed it in his apartment, painted it, the parts in his apartment, put it all together and remarked on the fact that, you know, I wish I had known prior to this, that the super glue disintegrates once the temperature gets low enough, because one of the cold scenes that they showed was on location somewhere really cold. Iceland. Amazing, isn't it? Yeah. So and there's many more episodes to come. Yeah. How many, many, many plans like dozens. So it's a very exciting development.

Tracy Harwood 1:05:40
I'm really fascinated see that I should definitely what we've we've subscribed to our channel to subscribe to it. So we'll see what happens. But it's not machinima at all. It's just

Phil Rice 1:07:24
not at all. It's kind

Tracy Harwood 1:07:26
of like a machinima approach, though to real filmmaking.

Phil Rice 1:07:32
That's you couldn't put it any more perfectly than that. That's exactly right. Yeah, this is okay. And it's and it has an astoundingly high budget look. Yeah, but it is not. It is not high budget.

Tracy Harwood 1:07:49
Yeah, it's brilliant. So there you go. That's, that's fascinating. The next one I wanted to share with you is probably what we would call mAIchinima with AI. And this these just cracked me up. These are a whole series of films by a studio called Abandoned Films. And the one that I wanted to share with you is a Star Wars 1950s super Panavision 70 style short made with generative AI tools, including the script. Where

Phil Rice 1:08:20
are these coming? I've been seeing these and they are hilarious. Where are they coming from? It's an amazing well, just just a really bizarre look. And who Yeah, this it's just wonderful. So

Damien Valentine 1:08:34
watch it, but it was at in May 2019 50s. Yeah, that's right. Yeah,

Phil Rice 1:08:39
that's a serious Yeah, guys. There's somebody doing this same thing on Instagram right now. With music. Oh, okay. But and so basically they're the primary artist is an album cover artist guy. And he does use AI in some of his work. And he takes commissions and you can specify whether or not you want AI art used in the work or not. So he could do it either way. But then they're advertising this basically advertising this artwork with these songs that are that are absolute homage to old style of music like 50s and 60s, old pop music. But with absurd and frankly, sometimes over the top modern often R rated lyrics it's it's just hysterically funny. Well,

Tracy Harwood 1:09:47
it's a kind of style transfer but you know the picked the

Phil Rice 1:09:50
bill. Yeah, yeah, that's a great term for it.

Tracy Harwood 1:09:52
Well, I don't know what the content that they're using the 1950s. Would that be out of copyright? I don't think it will. would be with it. Because when you look at the images, they are the, you know, you can for a second see the original film. You know the old film The 1950s film in it, you can see you can for a second see, for example, do it who was what was John Wayne's son called that David David Wayne was the one that did all the, you know, the, you know, the, the kind of for Jurassic Park, so

Phil Rice 1:10:35
my not my area.

Tracy Harwood 1:10:38
But you can you can see, it's him and you can see some of the 1950s female characters like like Elizabeth Taylor and all that kind, right. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of the content that's probably been probably skirting the line of I would say it's been fed in Yeah. Something and then style transferred out probably using something like Runway maybe because that's one of the things that that could do, wasn't it? style transfer? Interesting. Oh,

Phil Rice 1:11:06
yeah. Midjourney and Runway are definitely involved in these.

Tracy Harwood 1:11:10
Yeah.

Phil Rice 1:11:11
But yeah, it's impressive. The Yeah, the style. Yeah. Brilliant.

Tracy Harwood 1:11:16
But you know, like said that, I saw Jurassic Park, Terminator, Transformers Blade Runner. And I

Phil Rice 1:11:23
think it's got to be used in something like Eleven Labs for the voices to you think? Possibly, yeah, some kind of synthesis like that has got to be involved.

Tracy Harwood 1:11:31
I'm amazed as a whole channel on it, though. Because I mean, I would have stuff

Phil Rice 1:11:34
had been. Yeah, there's apparently a real appetite for him. I haven't

Tracy Harwood 1:11:38
dug into who these guys are, though. So I mean, it's just saying that every scene it's brilliant. Yeah. At a level is it's interesting, and fun. Anyway, then the other one that I wanted to highlight, because I'm kind of intrigued by this guy's approach is and it's a film project, not again, not machinima. Well, probably not machinima. It's called Vikings and Aliens. And he's using, he's using Kickstarter to generate his funding. And he's trying to raise 85 and a half thousand pounds. Yeah, to make this film. And so far, he's got almost 1000 pounds from 12 backers, and he's only got 12 days to go. And that will probably by the time, time we get this out, there will probably be like one day to go or something. Now, he's posted a really interesting video about it. They are using Unreal Engine in it. But this creator is he's, you know, he's a director, he's clearly, you know, there's clearly got Viking heritage in him. And he basically wants to tell a story that's kind of much closer to the traditional heritage of Viking culture. And I hope he gets there because having looked at what he's produced, it really is very interesting, you know, he said, The aliens are not, I don't, I don't quite know what he means by alien is, he said that it's, it's not what what you might immediately think of. So I'm guessing, you know, alien might mean alien, as in the sense of illegal alien means in the US kind of thing. I'm guessing there's an element of that in it. But I think he's picked the wrong funding strategy for it, somehow. I mean, Kickstarter, people giving 10 and 20 quid here and there, is never going to reach 85,000 doing that, in my view, unless this goes viral. Unless it reaches many more people than it has, he clearly seems to have kind of abandoned that kind of approach in terms of the promotion of it, because I saw it a couple of weeks ago, which is when I dropped it onto our board. And I haven't really seen it since I'd be really disappointed for him, if he doesn't manage to raise the funding for it. Or at least, if you can think about another way of doing it that sort of gets him there with less money. I don't know quite, quite why he thinks he needs so much to make it. But yeah, I kind of wanted to raise that one too, because it's, it's an ambitious project that I suspect will fail, just at this hurdle. That will be that's

Phil Rice 1:14:25
a that's a really, that's a challenging number to hit.

Tracy Harwood 1:14:29
It is, isn't it? I mean, why so much? I'm not really sure. Maybe he's, I don't know, again, I didn't look him up to I

Phil Rice 1:14:36
mean, that's a reasonable budget for you know, for a film, but it's just that's a big ask, if you don't have an already if he had an already established fan base that was big and stuff like that, and then maybe, but it it kind of feels like it's they're starting from zero, you know, in that regard, and Man Oh, man, it's so hard to generate buzz. For something new. It's not leaning on anyone else's existing IP. It doesn't appear to. So yeah, that's a that's a tough one. They're they're probably going to have to retool and think about it differently on how to how to get it done. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 1:15:21
And I hope they do that, or at least I hope they find another type of funding strategy for it. Yes. It looks to me, like a great concept. Yeah. But I've seen

Phil Rice 1:15:34
Kickstarter work for some projects. Yeah, I have, but it's not, it's not. It's not the usual story. You know, it's there exceptions, the ones that do succeed with it. So it's, it's not unthinkable. But yeah, you gotta have a real you gotta have a real marketing endeavour behind that, just putting it on kickstart, is not going to get any inherent attention at all, there has to be a lot of push. And again, like I said, not starting from zero on fan base helps a lot, you know, that you've already got, maybe a mailing list or someone that you've put together, that that's already been supporting you in other ways over the years. And now here we are, finally, we're here, boom. And I just have to assume that they don't have that with, you know, such a big ask, and they've got 12 or 13 supporters. So that, that just simply means that they're there. They're probably hitting this a little too early, you know, in their lifecycle. As for for our fan base, it's, it requires so much work to build those.

Tracy Harwood 1:16:45
Yeah. But we seem to wish them well. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 1:16:49
Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 1:16:52
And then the only other things I wanted to mention, well, you know, RoosterTeeth story. I had an email because I'm sort of subscribed, happening for years. That what they said in their last email to me was the that from mid April, there would be no new subscriber content, and that its website, and apps would be shut down from the 15th of May. I gotta say, it's not 100% clear what that means for their content. So there's obviously more to come on this one. The only other thing that I saw these guys do was uh, you know, the they did a, let's play Halo for the last time vid for old times sake kind of thing. The four of them that were part of the core team. Can't say I watched it, but it you know, it looked like a bit of a sad story. To be honest.

Phil Rice 1:17:45
I'm seeing there are at least I think I'm seeing there. The red versus blue restoration. Is that what it was called? Yes. I think I'm seeing that on Amazon. But I'm not sure if it's yes, that's why it hasn't actually been released.

Tracy Harwood 1:18:00
I didn't think it was going to be released until sometimes

Phil Rice 1:18:04
Amazon shows a title that's like, you know, coming out there yet. It's just to alert you to it. So that's really what happened to me. I thought I haven't even tried to watch it. Neither

Tracy Harwood 1:18:13
have I. But I mean, the my point really is what's going to happen to all the content and you know, bearing in mind what we said last time about what the community are up to, I think this Yeah, yeah. That's interesting, Bill, quite an interesting one. And then the very final thing I want to just sort of mention is that fantasy fair Second Life Film Festival has been running, which is led by Chantel Harvey and Sofia Widdershins. And by the time this ep goes out, it will have already run its course it ran between the 24th of April and the sixth of May. And unfortunately, I didn't really get in anytime to sort of drop into the programme. I don't know if you guys did.

Phil Rice 1:18:50
But by me,

Tracy Harwood 1:18:52
yeah, well, I'm fairly certain there'll be some pretty astonishing Second Life films being shown in there. And I kind of look forward to catching up with what they've been doing actually, through whatever Chantel and Safia put out. I did notice one of the awards though, was for a really well known Second Life machinima called Lap. Well, I can never remember his name, but that I mean, folks could used to call him Lap but LaPiscean Liberty passed away recently. I didn't I didn't actually know that that had happened. No, Chantelle reminded us that the work that he did, and I have to say I do recall, in the very early days, he ran a channel which hosted actually the European machinima Film Festival that I directed in 2007. And he ran a channel called AView TV, which I think streamed quite a lot of our content at the time. So yeah, I'm sure that that's a very moving tribute to to Lap, I'm really sorry to hear that kind of news. So I would suggest that I don't know if Chantal is planning the YouTube series for this year's festival, or whether the individual creators are just posting their own films. But what I will do is endeavour to check out what it is she's doing with the content and make sure that that's on our show notes. Because I know she's as we are recording at this moment in time, in the midst of her festival. I won't bother her until at festival, just to double check what she's up to. But we wish them all the best in in that in that festival. So that's it. That's my news done this month, a heap of stuff. Thank you.

Phil Rice 1:20:46
That's all.

Tracy Harwood 1:20:46
That's all. Yeah, nothing else. Nothing else that I picked up anyway.

Phil Rice 1:20:53
Well, great. Again, I'll book end this again, with a reminder of how to get in touch with us. If you've got comments on any of the news we've discussed here or you've got some hot tips for us on on stuff that's going on or some insights that we may have missed or glossed over. Be sure to reach out to us either through the comments or through email talk at completely machinima.com. Thanks for joining us and we will for on behalf of myself and Tracy and Damian and Ricky who is probably all shrivelled up like a prune from his skinny dipping. We will see you next time. Bye bye.

Tracy Harwood 1:21:36
Anyway, so the next one I wanted to talk about

Damien Valentine 1:21:38
carry. I need to take a quick bathroom breaks and just carry on without me because I can listen to this later. Okay. Yeah, I will mute. So.

Phil Rice 1:21:46
Thank you. Thanks.