Damien Valentine 00:35
Hello and welcome to another instalment of And Now For Something Completely Machinima. I'm joined by Phil Rice. Tracy Harwood. Hello. And of course Rickey Grove. Now, this this week is actually your pick your film picks. So let's get right to it. What have you chosen for us to have a look at?

Ricky Grove 01:06
I've chosen a film that just was released not too long ago, maybe a couple of weeks, called cinematic experience GTA by salva per diem, GTA is Grand Theft Auto, of course. And it's a short film that immediately reminded me, in fact, I think it's very much like I wouldn't be surprised if this salva Medea saw this film and got the inspiration. But in 1927, a man named Walter Ruttmann, took a 16 millimetre camera and walk. He was a German filmmaker, and he walked all around Berlin. And he took all sorts of film short clips of things that interested him. And the result was Berlin Symphony of a Great City, which is one of the founding early documentary films of the 20th century. And it's delicious, it's delightful. And this is essentially the same thing. Instead, rather than being shot in a real city, it's shot in a virtual city of Grand Theft Auto, which is basically Los Angeles. And what you have are primarily close up shots with depth of field for the most part of various places, people, things, and moments in the city of Los Angeles, virtual city of Los Angeles and GTA. And there's no narrative. There's a fun soundtrack, sort of slow rock soundtrack. You could use any soundtrack I think this works well because it adds to the sort of urban feel of the film. And there are many marvellous things in the film. And it isn't until a little over halfway through that you finally get a wide shot. Everything is in close up of all of these people in places. And you've when you get to that wide shot, it just reminded me how effective camera distance and camera angles can be. Because that wide shot of Los Angeles the skyline of it was just breathtaking. Even though it's in a virtual game, as opposed to shot in Unreal or shot in, in unity, or Maya or anything like that. It was just marvellous. And there were several moments in the in the film that were very poetic for me, there was a shot of washing on a clothesline. With it flapping in the breeze. There was a hitchhiker. At one point there was a fight between two men. There were various emergency personnel rushing a fireman, close up of a fireman, police officers. There was a guy in a laboratory that I thought was remarkable. These were all little poetic moments that suggested stories behind them, at least in my imagination, that made me believe what it was I was seeing, even though it was shot in a game. And the quality of rendering was certainly not super high. But I really really enjoyed this film and was really taken by it. I didn't do a lot of background like Tracy usually does, but Salva Padilla has some other types of films that are very similar to this. And I found myself quite impressed with it, even though it was done in a traditional style machinima, and I enjoyed it. And I was really looking forward to your reactions towards the film. So what did you say?

Damien Valentine 05:11
I really enjoyed it. I think I came, I watched it and I had a very similar reaction to you, Ricky is, is good to see the snapshots of all these different characters in this virtual city, because GTA is one of these big open worlds. And it's programmed to be like, as you're going through, it better feel like a real city, which means the people that you see walking around and doing things, right, they're acting like they're living up their lives. So this film catches some of those moments. And it's not, they're all doing different things. You know, if it all just been people running around shooting each other, I wouldn't have been interesting. But this because it's, it's a real world. It's a real city, obviously renamed for the game. But these are very relatable moments for a lot of people. Or even if you're not necessarily that familiar with it, they're relatable, because you know that they are grounded in reality, to some degree. So it kind of gives you that feeling of this is a real virtual city, interpreted by real people, and it kind of makes you wonder, was many other games like this as well. There's Red Dead Redemption, cyberpunk and Skyrim and Starfield, and so many other big open world games, you kind of wonder what other videos like this can be made? Those, it's kind of inspiring, just to catch him moments of lives in those other games. Because that'd be very different. I mean, Cyberpunks gonna be more same, it's slightly more futuristic. But then you get something like Skyrim, where it's a fantasy setting, but the characters are still acting like, they're, they're living their lives in this fantasy world. So you could do a video like that in that game, or in Starfield, where it's up in space, and you can see characters doing space stuff, but it's still their everyday lives. I think it'll be interesting to see more videos like this. So yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yes. It's almost like a

Ricky Grove 07:10
personal essay film. Yeah. Which is what this Walter Walter Ruttmann did in Berlin, he just walked around the city that he loved, and recorded things that were interesting, say, for example. Well, if you did that, Damien, you since you are a different kind of person, you would have different things that interested, you know, and you would film things that are different, and it would be different. And that's why it's a personal essay. I think it's a great idea. And I urge filmmakers who are watching this to do that. If

Damien Valentine 07:43
you don't feel comfortable going out to film, just sit and what people watch for a while. And you'll give you a similar taste, because you're going to focus in on what interests you. Like, I know maybe someone's wearing a t shirt with a film you like on it. So you're going to notice them and see what they get go to. Or maybe if they walk into a shop that you like going in yourself in you kind of wonder what they're going to buy, is it something I would buy? And well, what I found myself doing is after the pandemic, and things started opening up, and I'd be sitting down watching people thinking, what were they doing when everything was closed? How to what did they do to entertain themselves when they couldn't go anywhere? What experiences did they have? How did they keep in contact with their friends and family? And did they stick to the rules? Or did they break the law and things like that? You know, your imagination kind of goes wild a bit. And this is this kind of film is along those lines. So yeah, I really enjoyed this is a great pick Ricky.

Phil Rice 08:39
Thank you. Yeah, I think there's, there's, there's two elements to this, that you guys have both touched on. One is the sense of choosing what is interesting, like you said, one of the one of the most interesting things that that I did with my son when my son was very young, like three four years old, I had an extra Pentax digital camera, and I taught him how to use it and just gave it to him. It's his going through that real later of photos he took was fascinating. Because he's very intelligent kid. And it was it was a I learned more about him from that than maybe anything else because it was it was it was a montage of what he found interesting. And yeah, this is this is this has got that element to it that it's you know there's there's a million things to observe in GTA or in the world too. But yeah, it's our focus is what's interesting what, what captures our attention if you want to call it that, and there's that, but what really I think puts this over the top is the photographic skills Till that was shown here. So it's not even just shot selection, which is at least half of it. But then just beautiful shots and the very effective use of depth of field to help bring even more into focus what it is that is interesting to the to the person who took the picture that the camera shot, just just a masterclass in that. It's, it's amazing to me salvo I went and rewatched the film about an hour before we started recording here. He's got two subscribers. Yeah. This film has well, maybe a couple dozen views at the most. Phil one of us. Yeah, yeah. So. But clearly, this is not somebody new to not just photography, it wouldn't surprise me if salvo doesn't have some kind of background similar to Epic Spaceman where he's a, he was a photographer of some kind, you know, and that he brought that skill set in. But then having done stuff in GTA, you know, I can, I can watch this film, and I could analyse it, and I could tell you how the shots were done. But I could also tell you that none of them would come naturally or easy. That there's, there's some real craft involved here, tweaking of the shots in the Rockstar Editor afterwards that these things don't happen naturally. So it's actually a complex skill set at play here. And the fact that the channel is so new, just to me just raises more of a sense of mystery, which may be Tracy's gonna dispel that mystery here, I don't know. But like this, from the appearance looks like someone that just came out of nowhere. But clearly, they haven't been doing nothing in the meantime, you know, so. Yeah, it's just extraordinary. It doesn't have a narrative, and I didn't miss it, like at all, like a narrative would have been a disappointment a

Ricky Grove 12:16
narrative would have would have been ruined it because it would have taken ambiguity out of it. Because it would have told you what it was you were seeing and how you should react to it, it would

Phil Rice 12:26
have told you the why, behind why these things are interesting, indeed. And to me, an enjoyment of this film was not knowing that, right, and just letting it kind of wash over me almost in a, like you said, Ricky poetic fashion. That's, that's the experience of this film. So, I mean, it's just beautiful. There are areas where this 10 year old game is showing its age a little bit compared to the fidelity of characters in particular that you can get from Unreal Engine, now I get it. But my goodness, gorgeous, beautiful game. And and, and this is just a, a wonderful, fresh look at a city that a lot of us have spent quite a bit of time in. So I thought so too much like that film that you referenced, Ricky must have been for people about Berlin, that even Berliners themselves probably, you know, we're we're moved by the experience, even though it's a city they've spent time in. So yeah, it's nice, it's very special. I'm really glad that you found this and that you picked it. Thank you,

Tracy Harwood 13:37
I've probably got a little different take on this, this one is going to be quite interesting. I saw this as a slice of life a video kind of in the style of late 70s, early 80s and vibe somehow, I guess that's the game coming through actually thinking about it. And I saw what what's what I thought was, you know, a montage of characters just going through the daily grind in this sort of virtual world. And I suppose really, initially, what I thought was maybe what he's trying to do is, is connect the rural environment to city life. And maybe, you know, that was grounded in the in the world related storytelling. But then I realised you're not actually seeing people connect with each other in the film, that just the just things that are happening. So the things that I noticed, obviously, same thing I saw, you know, I got the sense of crime agencies doing their thing. In the in the in the world, they're seeking and destroying whatever is there after you've got the gang members doing their thing. You've got the first responders and the medics and even the pastor's doing the cleanup job. And then you've got everybody else just trying to get on by as best they can, with all this shit happening around them. That's kind of the slice of life thing that I took from it. However, it actually starts with a sound excerpt from a classic documentary, which was focused on the life of Nina Simone. And it was called that documentary was called Nina and historical perspective, and it was by a guy called Richard Peter Broadus. It's quite clipped in this cinematic, you don't really fully hear it. But it's basically the line where she states everybody is half dead. Everybody avoids everybody, in most situations all over the place, and most, most of the time, and she was talking about the way people relate to one another or not, and how in her work, what she tried to do was make stronger connections between people to move them. But mostly her words from that interview really are associated with freedom, and what it is to live without fear. Which she described in that as a as a way of seeing and being in the world. Now of course Nina Simone was a singer who sang about love protest and black empowerment. So I think it's probably worth mentioning also that one of the most famous quotes she's known for is I live in both worlds, the black and the white world. To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world black people. And I mean that in every sense. Now, obviously, that's been picked up most recently in the in the Black Lives Matter movement, but I think there's probably a deeper level of thinking that's gone into this cinematic film that tries to capture the essence of the dark hearted nature of the characters that are, you know, in this GTA world, and for sure, Padilla's presented this work in a slightly different way. Albeit at some level, you can see a very literal context being used from the, from the clipped quote at the beginning of that video. And of course, picking a game like GTA for reflecting the kind of sentiment of Simone's words is quite an inspired choice because it shows the interesting mix of beautiful creatures with rich characters in all their glory. Now, I thought originally, the film creator, this Padilla guy had taken the clip from from a video that was released on on the 10th or around about the 10th anniversary of someones death, which was April 2013. She died in April 2003. And I'll link to that in the show notes so you can kind of hear what it what it what it is she actually said. But I think it turns out that it isn't, it's actually come from the music's creator. And I want to mention something about the music used too, because I think there's quite an important connection here. It's actually a track called Feelings and it's by gigaton I spell it FUXKYODI, you can go ahead and say it, bug cod, very appropriately. I found the piece actually with lyrics, which I'll share. But it was actually only quite recently released. The cinematic doesn't have lyrics I'm not too sure where he's got the soundtrack from. He's either edit out edited out the lyrics, or he's got a connection with the musician. And obviously, that music hasn't also got masses of following as far as I can tell, but it's a perfect selection for the film. And I definitely feel it's, you know, they complement each other very well. The cinematic is certainly a much better video than than the image that the music's creator has got on his video of the music. He's actually a rap artist. And whilst I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, I'd say looking at it it definitely seems that GTA is a real place for some of the live recordings that he's put up on his channel. Anyway the cinematic itself I think is is it's quite well you know you've said it it's well edited. There are some great game excerpt selections in it that's that actually reminded me of a real life film I don't know if you've you've seen it is only recently come out. It's it featured Sean Penn Ty Sheridan Mike Tyson. And it's called Ashphalt city or blackflies. And it's very much a portrayal of you know, sort of slice of life. video if you like of paramedic set in New York on a night stint. So it's not it's not a lay in. But it's kind of got a los santos sort of vibe. It's violent beyond belief. But then I wonder why on earth did I did it make me think of that film? Because, you know, there's obviously a dialogue in that film. If there is violence that you see, there is none that you see in this cinematic, but you know, it's there, you just don't see it. And I, I realised, it's because what you've got in the real life film is the showing of it, or at least the aftermath in the cleanup bit. But the, you know, the cinematic, if you like, is the in between bit of that story. It's the, it's the depth of character format, or the start of the depth of character formation that is missing from the characters in that in that film. And yet, the two of them probably make a really good pairing, I would have thought. And then I thought, well, we've seen these kind of in between story components in a film. In a shorts, in some of the other films that we've reviewed fairly recently, you remember the one with the two characters on the train that really short short? Was it made in Sims? Philip,

Phil Rice 21:19
Sims one here? Yeah, I mean, that was for the robbery, I think it was called something

Tracy Harwood 21:21
like that, where you saw no action whatsoever. And yet, you've got a real sense of something terrible that happened there. And similarly, you kind of got a sense of something more in that, you know, there's, there's ones about the relationship, toxic relationships that we reviewed a couple of weeks back, also saying grand, grand theft auto, and I think one, one of them had a sort of a cyberpunk II type feel to it. So So you kind of got the sense that these games can can do everything. But the violence really well, in some respect, but anywhere, it just made me think of that film that I'd seen that just was a bit more mainstream, which was a slice of life film of the sort, you don't see very often, I can actually find nothing about this creator. Other than the fact that I'm looking at the profile of the stuff that I did manage to find, with his name on it, and some connection to the type of music that he was listening to the that's exemplified in this short, I think he's probably a French student, obviously, one with an interest in rap. And that's been the only conclusion that I could draw from this. I think the only real criticism, criticism I have basically of it is that I would always encourage the creator to include more information about the works of others that he's used, such as the music, and the voice clip. And, and that's probably a comment I would also make to the musician too, because that clip from Nina scinote, Simone's interview also wasn't referenced in his work either. So that would be my overarching comment, if this is a world, he's going to start to create some, you know, work in, then he needs to have due respect for the work of others. So I would definitely pick him up on that. But overall, I really enjoyed it. It was a really interesting film to sort of think about, and, you know, just just simply because of that very first sort of couple of seconds and quote, that sent me off on a completely different path to where you went Ricky with it. Because it never even crossed my mind to look at it in terms of more avant garde filmmaking processes, but there's probably so there you go. That's my thoughts.

Damien Valentine 23:51
It's interesting that we've all got very different takes on this one, which is part of the fun of making the show, isn't it? Yeah, look at films differently. But yes, I

Phil Rice 24:01
just want to add one more honourable mention, to the clothesline scene that Ricky had had mentioned very briefly. That Ricky

Ricky Grove 24:11
for us a winter the meaning of the film.

Phil Rice 24:15
Ricky for you, the wide shot is what took your breath away. For me it was the clothes on the clothesline. The way that they blew just it. I just found myself just surprised, like, wow, this is from that game engine. I mean, just just beautifully done. Like I looked at it in terms of like, like Damian, and I would just like, oh my gosh, can you imagine how hard that would be to do an iCone! Just hang some clothes on a line and let the wind blown beautifully. It's like, holy cow. This engine is does it? So? Yeah.

Ricky Grove 24:50
My associate Association, although you're right, that Nina Simone, quote was at the beginning and I remember it. It didn't impact me this Same way, did you Tracy, my connection was with the Walter ruff Minh film The Berlin symphony of a city, that if you go back and you know, you can Google that and watch a bit of it on YouTube, you'll see how similar those things aren't. So my connection immediately went into that and all of the mean things that were associated with that. So it's fascinating to see a film that allows such a variety of interpretations. And that just makes it even better. Yes, I agree. I want to bring up something I want to bring up something that is came to my mind after watching Damian's AT-AT film, thank you fell, shot inside of originally Maya, and then poured it into Unreal. That is the sort of the modern real time cinema that we've been covering quite a bit, versus the traditional machinima which was shot inside of a game engine. One of the things that has always appealed to me about that traditional Machinima is the fact that it that scene with the clothesline you pointed that out, where the where the the clothes were in the wind, you could do that in Unreal, you could make it look absolutely gorgeous and unreal, but the level of work involved in making that happen would be staggering. You know, maybe not for super pro, but it would be hard. The thing that always is interesting to me and I've always been attracted to is the the, the ease the simpleness of going into a virtual world and making a movie inside a virtual world. The crudity of that is what I found interesting, can only mean now we're looking at films that become increasingly more like professional level films, which is what traditional machining was, was kind of rebelling against in the first place. You know, Hugh Hancock was saying I don't have the budget to be able to go and shoot this massive, huge film, but I can do it inside of machinima. And all of the audiences were watching machinima accepted that, you know, there are only really been a handful of traditional machinima shot inside of game engines that handle the level of rendering and beauty that we see on almost every unreal film. And although I like the unreal thumps and I find them interesting, they more and more lead towards the sensibility of a modern, Pixar, Disney DreamWorks type of film. And I'm uninterested in that, frankly. I mean, I can admire them, I can talk about them, I can recommend them. But what I really like is those scrappy filmmakers who got inside of a game engine and suddenly got an interesting idea from a character or a situation and made a film inside of French democracy, which was a huge hit in the Machinima world traditional machine or oil. If you look at it from a professional point of view, it's crap. It's absolute crap. But I love that film. I love it because of its context, its political context. And the very fact that it's crude is what makes me enjoy it. So I'm interested in hearing what your ideas about traditional machinima inside of a game engine versus this modern moving towards professional level on Unreal Engine type of I don't even call it machinima. It's not machinima. It's a real time filmmaking is what it is. So I'm interested in your observations and thoughts about what I've said and also the difference between those two things.

Phil Rice 29:07
Well, okay, so the technological landscape, out of which machinima emerged as in that, you know, rebellious state of mind, like you said, Ricky had a lot to do with resources, computing resources, hardware resources, the software resources, just plumb not being available or feasible for a no budget or low budget. Indie creator. You know, this machinima emerged at a time when when Pixar was rendering their films, it was a server farm. And still, it would sometimes take hours and hours and hours just to render a single frame of something like Toy Story, for example. And that just wasn't feasible. So that's part. That's the part of machinima saying Now we're not going to do that we're going to do this instead that you trumpeted. That's the part that most people remember. And well, that whole picture has changed now, right? All those tools are within reach. You know, even if you don't go the icon route, which can get expensive, when you're, you know, you've got the software itself and the plugins, and then content and all of that, and it can, it can rack up, you know, a bit of a bit of a bill. But if somebody just wanted to go in there and do it all in Unreal Engine or even unity, for that matter, there's ways to do it. With no monetary investment, you know, you still got to have a computer to run it, of course, but I think those are those along with blazing fast high speed internet, which negates the download time problem that we had, you know, machinima emerged at a time when streaming video wasn't even a thing at all. In any context. Nobody was doing streaming video, like it didn't exist. YouTube didn't come around to what 2005. So So that's part of it. But I think what it's easy to forget is that that wasn't all that the Machinima pioneers, like who were standing up and saying no to. It wasn't just about technological expediency. That was part of it. But, you know, I think a case could be made and we'll never know. But I think a case could be made that if you you know, God rest his soul. If he were still around today, I think he would still part of him would still be attracted to you. As he went along, he had more and more doubts about whether or not machinima was a good platform for him because of intellectual property issues. Primarily, you know, that basically, I'm going to invest all my work and time into this thing that ultimately then someone else is going to be able to tell me whether or not I can submit it to a film festival or or, or, you know, make it more widely available or sell it or whatever. So he openly questioned a lot of that stuff and, and invest a lot of time and research into alternatives to get free of that kind of webbing of IP problems that happened with with machinima, but I think, you know, he also was he really had that rebel attitude he liked. Kind of bucking the system. You know, I don't know if those two things ever would have ever been able to be fully resolved. You know, that that rebellious spirit combined with I need to eat you know. So, right, I think machinima machinima have the kind the distinction that you're making Ricky still has an appeal. But it's it's not framed in the same way as it was when machinima got started. You know, when machinima got started, there was you didn't have the option to, to craft with readily available resources, craft and render in real time, in any other way. It just wasn't there yet, you know. So. But I think that there's there's an element to machinima that I think kind of ties into the same spirit of almost like guerilla filmmaking, I think is the right term, right? Yeah. Or the avant garde, frankly, for that matter where it's, it's, you know, and there's challenges with that, even in real world filmmaking, the whole guerilla filmmaking thing now. And maybe this was this way back then too. But nowadays, you can't do anything. You can't go anywhere without a permit. You have to have basically governing authority permission to even take pictures somewhere. You know, and and it's a it's a it's an oppressive oppressive environment. For someone who just wants to go out and make a film and not worry about that stuff. You can't you get arrested, you know, so but there's still that that sense and so in machinima, you can still do that. Now. You have to go into it with your eyes wide open about what that if you go into a Grand Theft Auto Five or soon Grand Theft Auto six To make a film, you have to kind of have in your head the understanding that this will never be fully mine. And maybe that's okay. You know, maybe ownership isn't all it's cracked up to be. You know, it's certainly not everything. I mean, I've, I've been one of the loudest mouths about it IP issues around video games forever. And yet, I'm still I'm working on a traditional machinima in a video game right now. Like right now. So it's not everything, and I won't own it, you know, like, I'll be able to put it on my YouTube channel, but you know, but there was something that drew me to, for this one that I'm working on now. And for several that I've released this year that are in game engines, that there's, there's still something that draws me to that environment. And it's not just that it's easier. That's part of it. The, the, the ease of just being able to open up the virtual world of Red Dead Redemption, or Grand Theft Auto, or, you know, for people who know their way around Second Life, I'm sure there's, that's part of the draw too, is you just go in there. And there's, this whole world is just there. And it's been built by other people. And so there's, it's, it's, there's unpredictability, and you're not sure what to expect around the corner, and all of that, right. And then, and then if it's a game, and a well made game, then it's even more amazing because they've programmed the people to, to live out lives, essentially, you know, I mean, some of the some of the characters, there's a, we've maybe we've talked about it on the show, there's an NPC routine in Grand Theft Auto Five, where a dog daily goes to visit the grave site of its owner, and sits there at the grave. And then at a certain time a day goes home. This game worlds are full of stuff like that, that are interesting, as just a crazy detail. Yeah, there's a there's a cave, in Red Dead Redemption to that I don't, I don't know if you ever encounter it in the full playthrough of Arthur's story in the game. But there's a cave that you cannot get to. You can't climb to it. There's just no way up there. But there's a guy up there. Some minor like with the with the pickaxe and everything. And he's batshit crazy, crazy. And just ranting and just I mean, he's like having some kind of bipolar freakout or something. He's just nuts. And there's extensive dialogue you could have with him. Nothing can really come of it. I mean, you can cheat your way up and get up there. And he's up there. And there's a little campfire that you can never see from the ground. Like he's he's holed up there. This guy has just made up. And it's not even part of the main plot of the story. You know, these game worlds are full of stuff like that. And it's always been, I remember Ricky when Grand Theft Auto four first came out. And you and I spent several sessions in multiplayer just riding around on a motorcycle. And I know, just seeing what we could see no, no agenda. We weren't out there to shoot anybody. We were just, we just wanted to see what's up. We ended up finding this whole, like a homeless encampment that was in the abandoned subway tunnels. Yeah, guys around a burning barrel warming their hands and muttering to themselves. And it was just fascinating.

Ricky Grove 38:47
I remember your reaction to

Phil Rice 38:50
it. It was just, it was just amazing. So you know that to me, that's something unreal engine, there's just no such thing as that. That's that doesn't exist in Unreal, then it makes a difference in the unpredictable. You know, it

Ricky Grove 39:04
also affects the way that filmmakers get inspired to tell stories, write the story that in an AT AT is a story that he's taken from a feature film. Yeah, the idea from that, whereas the story in the GTA cinematic experience was taken from this guy's walking around and seeing things and responding to them in a different way. Personally, I prefer that. Yeah, as opposed to traditional. And I think it's a richer way of being finding things to respond to. In game worlds like that. I mean, when you told me about that batshit crazy guy. Immediately story ideas came into my head. It's somebody's gonna do with Star Trek. You're gonna do the same thing that everybody else does. Oh, Jabba the Hutt. Yeah, he's gonna leer at some girls and yeah, America via the fuck

Phil Rice 40:04
yeah, okay, there's Yeah. Interestingly, some of the newer Star Wars IP where they stay completely away from the whole Skywalker storyline, those people are finding the most interesting, you know, where we're where it's or exploring, like, you know Damien's doing exploring this novel that has never seen the big screen at all. And it has as it's not related to what's already been made as movies, it's, it's, it's something different. So, yeah, even even within the context of the Star Wars universe, that that newness, I imagine that some of these open world, Star Wars games are probably pretty interesting in terms of these characters and whatnot, I always I always wished that Mass Effect was a little bit more that type of open world instead of a very linear, mostly linear narrative that you were to follow. Because the worlds that they built they're that big, that big station that was kind of a central thing and the early Mass Effect games just fascinating ideas, but there wasn't any way to really explore it in a GTA like way Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I don't know I rambled myself way off into a corner there but good code I think I think the conversation about you know what, what what propelled people towards machinima has changed. But there's still something to be attracted to there. And, and they're still, you know, ground to be ploughed there and, and, and things to be discovered and reacted to and whatnot. And I hope that tradition continues, you know, as long as there are companies making games like cyberpunk, and you know, the GTA series, and Red Dead Redemption. And there's probably numerous ones out there. I don't know how open world Fallout is. But Fallout is a really interesting game world idea. But I haven't played it enough to know if it has those hidden gems. Like we're talking about Ricky or if it's just a Mass Effect, like, linear storyline, I have no idea.

Damien Valentine 42:19
Bethesda Games a fairly open world. Okay.

Phil Rice 42:23
So that's encouraging me to very popular, there's a lot of interest in those worlds. I'm assuming that there's some elements of that in Starfield, for example. I don't know from experience, but I would assume so it sure looks like it. And yeah, there's a lot of a lot of very fertile ground there for true machinima. So I hope we see more of that. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 42:49
Due to me sort of giving you my take on it. Really, I think. I mean, Phil said a lot of things I would have picked up on I think we are in a time of different tools and also a time when people people in in different creative industries, like like the film world, or looking at other industries that they perceive to be successful, engaging in engaging the same kind of target audiences they might be wanting to engage with. But using a different type of toolset. So you've got you've kind of got the ludic world of the games versus the film world. And so you know, you've got an engine, like Unreal, which, you know, started off as Unreal Tournament, with matinee, embedded within a game worlds, and what they've basically done and so let's make this even more open for people by extracting that toolset and making that just sort of a standalone, but it's still rooted in the game world, the world of game mechanics, if you like, it's just that now what they're trying to figure out is how do you get game worlds into their tools toolset? Or, you know, how do you? How do you transcend that link between the film and the game worlds? And that's basically why they're going after the film industry at the moment because they are very aware of how a lot of these film companies are seeing that they can find a new life for their assets if they turn them into some kind of interactive experience, which is what what they're trying to do with with Unreal so I think you've kind of you know, I think you're seeing the the the sort of the cusp of the emergence of new types of ludic environments using world such as Unreal Engine and what you've got is basically a clean slate type. Approach. With this with This world with this toolset, where anybody can put in the assets that they would like and create a game for one thing because you know, you can create game experiences in Unreal Engine. That's what Unreal Engine fortnight is all about, you know, platform for game stuff of which has some really interesting things coming out. We're going to be talking about one next next week in the in the News episode, in fact. But that, you know, that, you know, what they're saying is, it's it was hard back in the early days to use games as creative platforms. Whereas let's make it easy for people. That's what matinee was. So I think what they've tried to do is harness how people want to reuse IP. But just make make it easier for them to do it and, and then you've got the sudden realisation that actually you can do other stuff with this as well. Let's use it for just creating real real time stuff in the in the cheapest kind of way possible. And that's what we've been going through the last couple of years people sort of playing around with the toolset making some pretty high quality looking content, but without putting into it. the ludic qualities that you would expect from the game based machinima. But they are linked. I do see them as being linked. I do see that's kind of you know that ludic space? Being connected to the unreal space, if that makes sense, because if they're

Ricky Grove 46:39
connected as a concept, but but in terms of practical filmmaking, nuts, because what you're doing and Unreal Engine is starting from scratch. And all of those possible things that Phil was talking about the ranting guy, they Yes, yes, washing on the line, all of that's just gone. You can't use any of that. And that was the stuff that interested me in traditional machinima.

Tracy Harwood 47:04
Yes, I can understand that. Yeah, I can definitely understand it. But I think what they've done is allow for a much bigger ecosystem to become involved in the, in the process. So I'd add an indie level at a single creator level, where, you know, you needed all that sort of pre developed content in order to sort of create something that was kind of fun and interesting, with the with the sort of the, with the unreal world that I'm talking about, you know, that ecosystem comprises of the mod creators, the asset creators, the, you know, the mo cap, folks, the Reallusion fact, you know, they've got a whole kind of ecosystem as of, of tool sets, if you like that kind of expand that environment, which means in theory, you can at least create eat relatively easily the sorts of content that you might need to be inspired from, from a from a from a game world at an earlier time. So that's how I kind of see it, connected and different if you like, it's not

Ricky Grove 48:15
the point. But the thing I'm trying to point out is that in order to be able to do what you're saying, and unreal, take that ludic idea and put it in to an unreasonable hire, you have to develop a range of skills shall take so much time that it takes away from what the original idea that machinima was about, which is get some tools, half, you can learn fairly quickly. Do some captures make a movie? Yeah, that was the whole fun of it. And then everybody was around that idea of sure it was crude, maybe the faces weren't rendered, as well as they could be an unreal, but nobody cared about that because you were making these. I mean, Red vs. Blue is a perfect example of that. Although it's not my favourite type of machinima. It's so simple to make and yet they emphasise the writing the craziness, the the Samuel Beckett life aspect of war. Now Now let's just say that the creators of that were in the present day, and they go well, yeah, let's do that. And unreal. Well, we take them month after month after month after trying to learn all of the various skill sets in order to create the characters, create the environment, import them into Unreal, then learn inside of unreal how to animate them and run the cinematic and the whole idea of being able to respond spontaneously to situation is gone. Yes, I do have as a more traditional professional level of animation and

Tracy Harwood 49:54
but I don't I don't have the vision was ever to do what you just described, I think the vision was always to think about how films could be made into ludic experiences. And through that process, then content could be created. That's what I always thought the vision was for Unreal Engine. And it's and it's not what it is at the moment. And that's what you're describing. That's what we're seeing. That's what we've, we've, we've observed, we've observed people using it in ways that it wasn't anticipated to be used for, but I, I never saw it as being what it is, currently, shall we say? That's never how I saw it. I think we're probably a few years away from how the vision of it was imagined, which is that the film's become games.

Ricky Grove 50:52
And All right, well, let's check in in two years, okay. Yeah, we'll see how whether the bat was involved into into a game based system we'll see. But but fascinating,

Tracy Harwood 51:07
inspired games, a ludic system.

Damien Valentine 51:11
So I've been think about this for a while as well actually Heir to the Empire. Because at the end of the book, there's a huge space battle, hundreds of ships. And in AI clone, I, when I started this project, I never expected to get to the end of this book, so I didn't really think about it. So I established a visual style by animating everything in iCloud because when there were battles, there were very small scale things very easy to animate. And, and I've been thinking, I, there is a temptation, I'm not going to do it, because I've already established the visual style for the series. And I don't want to get back with. But there is a Star Wars video game called Empire at War. As a strategy game. It's got space battles and ground battles. And it would be so easy for me to just place all the ships have them fight out in a multiplayer battle. And there's even a cinematic mode, you press spacebar, and the interface disappears, and the camera kind of goes down. And it automatically cuts between different things. And I don't have to worry about animating every single laser blast that's going to appear on screen and stuff like that. So that there's any kind of temptation there just because it's so much easier. On the other hand, I kind of like the challenge of doing it all manually. But you know, I've just been thinking about how that my approach is different. Now compared to now if I was making this film 10 years ago, I would have used the game, I would never have a thought about using iClone for battle. And, you know, doing these backgrounds to videos, this is the closest admission in the traditional sense that I've been married for quite a while because I find like a game. And I'll just go in and get some footage. Still camera, but just something I could use as the background on this particular site is from June Spice was, again is another strategy game, not something you'd expect to be used for machinima really, because it's not really designed for that. But I found there's an option to turn the interface off. So you're gonna know the data, you just got the desert, and there's things flying around in the background. And that's, that's perfect for what I wanted in the background. And I make these, I kind of miss those old days of loading up a game and going in and finding things to shoot. Or that's the end part, I have to plan everything. There's no happy accidents is no, all that's happening, I'm going to quickly point the camera up to a to capture it and see how it can work in the game. You can that stuff happens all the time. Even if you're planning things fairly, meticulously things are gonna happen that you don't expect. And sometimes they can be really helpful. Sometimes they're not. And you have to work around it. You know, at the Sims characters, you know, walking around, like these really exaggerated movements. Sometimes that works for your film, and sometimes it will ruin the shot and you have to do it. So up and do it again. That's part of the fun of doing it is that you don't know quite how it's gonna turn out to do a big budget. So, Dune Part Two shots at the big scene at the beginning when they're out in the desert and the Hakone has come down and then hunting them. When they wrote the script. There was no plan for an eclipse in it that was never planned. But when they worked out the filming schedule, and they realised there was going to be an eclipse as they were doing that scene. They decided to make sure they shot that Eclipse as it was happening and incorporated into the scene. Give it that red light. That was just so great. Yeah, and that's what we're supposed to be guys talking about. thinking, yeah, in iClone or Unreal, you're not going to get that. I know that's a live action film. But that's kind of thing will not happen in, in icon or unreal, you have to make it happen. If you want an eclipse, you've got to do it. Whereas if you're doing it in a game, and they have a sky that changes, you can get things like that happening. And then you can decide if you want to incorporate it or not, and obviously, with you, and they did, and I admire that kind of things happen.

Ricky Grove 55:32
I think finally, what it comes down for me, is the difference between amateur sensibility and pro sensibility. The Pro sensibility is something that I just don't find myself that interested in because it works on traditional and somewhat stereotyped views of story and character and all of it. And that's fine. I mean, I love doing too. But in terms of machinima, I much prefer the amateur, no commerce idea approach. I think it allows for more creativity and as more variety and as the difference between the ad ad film and our cinematic experience shows that they also have different impacts on on the viewer. And I prefer the cinematic impacts GTA 5 by Salva Padilla, and it's just a matter of preference. But thank you for sharing your ideas about all of those things. And because it was on my mind, and the first thing I thought was, well, what am I pals gonna say about it?

Tracy Harwood 56:39
We always have something to say.

Damien Valentine 56:42
I'm glad you brought it up. Because it's been on my mind from a different perspective. I just said, so I'm glad you got a chance to talk about it. Right.

Tracy Harwood 56:49
I do you know what, I think it's something we'll come back to again and again, because I, you know, there is definitely this move to merge films into games somehow. And vice versa. And I, you know, you've got to ask the question, why they want to do that. And it's all because of, you know, that whole, that whole sort of thing about games being very successful, much more fun, much more engaging, and the fact that you can kind of, you know, lose yourself in the ludic quality of that kind of experience than you can in a sort of, you know, spectator situation where you're, you're sat back and watching a film so, so, I think this is something that we will touch on a lot in the in coming and coming time.

Damien Valentine 57:46
I hope so. Alright. So I think that wraps it up for this week. Thank you to my co hosts, Tracy, Ricky and Phil. Welcome. If you've got anything to talk about the film we talked about or if you want to do anything to say about traditional machinima versus the the the the iClone Unreal approach, please let us know at tock at complete machinima.com and we will see you all next week. Take care. Bye bye bye