Phil Rice 00:35
Hello, and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, a podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I'm one of your hosts, Phil rice, and I'm here with Damian Valentine and Tracy Harwood. I don't have to make something silly up about Ricky not being here this time, because Ricky is actually at a horror convention. His wife, Lisa is quite the accomplished author, actually, Lisa Morton. And she recently published a book I want to say maybe about a year ago, related to the horror genre, basically a nonfiction book. And it's been getting a lot of attention and actually is up for an award. So they're going to the convention for that. So very exciting for the both of them. I don't know if Lisa is a listener or not. She probably hears enough of Ricky without the show. So, but if so, we certainly wish wish them the best and hope you're having a great time. This episode, we're talking about Ricky's pick. Because basically, the the way that the scheduling for the recording of this show went, we kind of It wasn't till the last minute that we realised that Ricky wouldn't be able to be here. So he had already picked a film, and didn't want us to just skip it. And so he basically, he pre recorded a little bit of commentary to kind of set up his pick. So we're gonna go ahead and hand things over to Ricky for a moment here and let him tell us about the film Ricky, tell us about it.

Ricky Grove 02:31
Hey, guys, I'm sorry, I couldn't be there. I'm off on a trip with my wife, Lisa Morton to the Stokercon convention in San Diego. She wrote a book called The Art of the Zombie movie, and it's nominated for an award. So keep your fingers crossed. We'll get it. In any event, I wanted you to know the a little bit about the film that I chose. It's by a group called LensNation. And they use Star Citizen as their tool for creating machinima. It's part of the 60 seconds of horror contest. They, whoever entered the contest had to only 60 seconds to be able to put together a horror film. They wrote an original poem, The poem is the text. And then it's supported by some shots inside of a ship that creates a sort of eerie, menacing quality. I liked it a lot. I thought the editing was excellent. There was a wonderful vocal performance by the guy. I kind of wish there was some sound design even if it was rudimentary to give her a greater sense of place, and a sense of menace. I think it would have enhanced it a bit. They probably rushed to put it together, although I'm just guessing. But for a short film, I just thought it was excellent. And the poem is very much in the HP Lovecraft style, so it's eerie and odd set in space. It could be the seed of something bigger I think so I really really liked it. LensNation has 33 videos on their YouTube site with over 1000 subscribers. They mostly do sketch comedy. Although they do have some serious toned videos like this one. I particularly like their sketch comedy and and how to defraud your space vehicle window. Which was very much in the red versus blue style of comedy. I liked it a lot. I hope you guys liked it, too. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say. I'm finally I've grown find that the Star Citizen community of filmmakers. I think there's a lot of creativity there and I would urge any listener to go over there. and see whether they you could be part of the community and make some films there. There's we've reviewed some really good ones here, which I'm sure Tracy will remind us of. So thank you guys. I'm really sorry. Again, I couldn't be there. But I will be with you next time. And I hope you liked this film. Goodbye. Okay,

Phil Rice 05:20
excellent. You know, the the first time I actually I watched Ricky's video about this, about his pic before I watched the pick or knew anything about it. And I was relieved when I watched the film, because if I misunderstood and I thought that the contest was made for that they had 60 seconds to make the film. And so I did not have very high expectations here of even in Star Citizen, what can you get done in 60 seconds, but know that it turns out that it's that I'm stupid, and it actually has to do with the duration of the film. So yeah, let's let's, let's talk about that pic. Tracy, why don't you kick us off?

Tracy Harwood 06:17
Yeah, of course. I love this actually. So yeah, it's called 60 seconds of horror contest 2953. And it's by LensNation. And it was released last October. You know, what's really weird this month, actually, is that all our picks are really dark. And in some way or another, bizarrely, because we don't coordinate what we're going to pick, but bizarrely, they're all kind of related to loneliness in some way or another. And this one is, is is just that. Let me tell you about LensNation to start with. It's the professional name for Bobby Sandhu's studio. He's an Australian creative producer. He's an illustrator, and a machinima Creator and He is a TV show host, actor, director, screenplay and dialogue writer. Now as an actor, he's best known for his Punjabi film work, which you can find listed on IMDb. LensNation does product photoshoots things like headshots and drone photography and virtual tours and events and, and what have you, but also, he's quite into VFX animation and infographic effects on his videos. He's got another YouTube channel called 100GalBaat, which has considerably more followers than this channel that you'll see this video on. And that one is focused on comedy videos, including cluding some machinimas but that one is mainly I think, in GTA five. But these are with Punjabi celebrities, and it's clearly targeting an Indian audience. And when you look through the portfolio of work that he's done, I think it will probably be fair to say that Bobby is actually quite a petrol head, most of what he does is to do with cars of one sort or another, or trucks in the desert, and what have you. Now, clearly, he's also an avid fan of Star Citizen, and this films made in Star Citizen. In Star Citizen, he's created artworks and drawn sketches from around the game world, he's also in the process of creating a set of armour working with his son who's early teams that they plan to release to the community. So really, as I understand it, just in a way to support the community. Now I get the sense that the Machinima side of things is actually a collaboration between Bobby and his son, which I think is a really cool idea, because probably, all the other aspects of his work takes him away from his family quite a lot. So I imagine that that's probably one of the driving forces for for the kind of work that we're seeing it. Anyway, with this particular film, I was I was particularly taken with one comment that he made in the description. And he said that it he was inspired by how he feels whenever he goes for deliveries on outposts in the game. He asks, Who lives there? How long have they have they been there? What if they were cut off? And he also comments that that's me. And these are his fears, pretty much most of the time. So there's a there's a context to this, which I think is really quite interesting. Now, what you have here, I think is quite a compelling and powerful film. It's a it's basically a poem that reflects on the torment of isolation. Now I was going to say loneliness actually, but I'm not into I'm sure that would be true in this because it's not about loneliness per se, but about the central characters imagination of what's in that isolated place with him driving him insane by the fact that it's not interacting with him as a human might but might expect but but playing with his psyche, making him feel insane, unsure of what's true and what's purely imagined, effectively driving him mad in the process. And for example, you you hear a fly, buzzing but you don't see a fly. He's stabbing at someone, but there's no one there. And maybe it's just happening in his imagination anyway. And he's looking out the window for something but there's nothing really to see and, and all of that sort of stuff is, is going on. So I think it's a film about the fear of being isolated and left alone or deserted, or maybe also about losing faith. I think he kind of needs a bit of a Wilson to talk to, or maybe a Hal perhaps. And I think that's interesting because, in, in Sikhi spirituality is nurtured by solitude. However, the feeling of loneliness carries with it a certain stigma being of being forsaken or abandoned. So I think what you've got through that is the the sense of pain as a consequence of the heightened intensity of solitude. And I think that comes through quite strongly in this really, so I think there's a spirituality that's being portrayed here. Now, the writing is really quite beautiful. It's, it's, I could just only really describe it as poetic. But of course, it's really quite literal to we've seen this kind of work done in machinima before perhaps a little less literally. But certainly portraying the sense of being driven mad by the virtual environment, the character finds himself in I'm thinking fill of that 917 that you did with Krad Productions, which also had that kind of sense of madness in it or psychosis? And also, do you remember? Do you remember Ignis Solus by Litfuse Films? Oh, yeah. Which was years. And yeah, I mean, this is 2000 2007 film when I looked it up. But that one was also about isolation or what it's like to be in a game and there's nothing really much going on around. So you're, you're sort of searching around for something and it's the, the, you know, the portrayal of the characters' persona, and how they're dealing with this kind of isolation. Now, Ricky's comments on this, were really also about me the the quality of the writing, he thinks it's almost Lovecraftian, in its eeriness, that didn't really actually occur to me until he'd said that. And I can really see what he means by that. He also comments that he would have preferred more sound design. Now, I think the words actually take over as the sound design mostly, I mean, like I said, I did hear that, that fly, or I thought I did, maybe it wasn't a fy. And I'm not sure, therefore, that the lack of a sound design actually bothered me that much. And partly, the reason for that was because I felt like the creator was playing with sound, as in the lack of sound as a device for the suggestion of madness. Sometimes you hear it sometimes nothing. Is he imagining his behaviour? Or is it really happening? And I I actually thought that was a particularly clever aspect of the of the film. So, you know, all in all, I thought this was another really great pick by Ricky, and it's just a shame that he's not here that we can kind of debate some of the points in more detail. But yeah, those are my thoughts. I don't know what yours are.

Phil Rice 14:14
I, this is easily my favourite of all the lonely films this month, like, hands down. It's just delightful. It's got a simplicity to it, but not annoyingly. So it doesn't feel like it feels like that if they had if they weren't under the pressure of a contest, that this is still this is still an aim worth worth achieving, you know, that like the approach here? I don't think that the sound was omitted because of lack of ability. I don't know. That's just my hunch is that it didn't occur to me that it was a deliberate device. That's very insightful. It's a very real possibility of very plausible that that's what they did. But I just, I didn't feel like it needed it. And yeah, I would I would love to talk more with Ricky about that at some point of what what made him think that that it was missing because I didn't, I noticed that it was absent, but it didn't. Didn't seem like it left a void at all not being there for me. I love the way that that things were portrayed visually, the whole vibe of this film reminded me of there's a 2009 film starring Sam Rockwell called Moon to feature length film, and he is on a, he's stationed on a moon base and is isolated and is losing his mind and his imaginations getting the better of them. And it's not the only film that's done that either. That's that to me, it's one of the more effective ones. It's got a delicious soundtrack as well. Beautiful music. And Sam is amazing in it. And this this has that same type of vibe. There's another. There's another machinima pick that we did. But I couldn't for the life of me remember what the name of it is. But it was made in one of these sci fi games. I don't know if it was Star Citizen or if it was something else. But there it was somebody alone on a ship. And I believe in that one. It was just near we were hearing narration of the of the person's thoughts. And that's the thing is, is this it's you know, what isolation can do I mean, this is this is not theoretical. This is what isolation does to almost everybody. There might be certain people that are wired just right to handle true hermit lifestyle, but for most people, it doesn't take much isolation at all. To drive them a little nuts, you know, even people who think I wouldn't mind the quiet. I wouldn't mind not have anybody. Yeah, you would. Most people would. It. It is maddening. The spirituality side of it. Again, I didn't I didn't get that off it but I totally see it now that you mentioned it. CS Lewis, famous author wrote a lot of stuff related to Christianity and spirituality in general and stuff. Friends with JRR Tolkien. Excellent writer, and a lot of his descriptions of hell have a lot more emphasis on that it's aloneness, solitude, more than any, any, you know, fire and brimstone kind of vision. And I think that's a much more compelling and frankly, much more terrifying idea of hell than, you know, pitchforks and, you know, devils poking with pitchforks and barbecuing or something. I mean, that that that would probably be really awful. But just Yeah, it's, it's anyway, yeah, that does come through. I didn't get any Lovecraft vibe off of it. Even after he said that. Yeah, it was. I and maybe it's just because my, my, my conception of Lovecraft might be just immature or limited, but I tend to think of it in terms of, you know, Cluthlu, and some very specific, malevolent personalities involved and things and I didn't I didn't really feel like that was a necessary component of this, that this really was mostly about the effects of solitude of extreme solitude. And I've I can remember moments in games where it's a sign of real immersion in a game when you do start to empathise with NPCs like that, you know, where you start to think about what's their life there's there's there's many games where there's opportunities for that I'm sure Starfield is that way I haven't played it yet. There's some there's some NPCs that you run into in in Fallout where it's that way where they're just so off on their own Red Dead Redemption two has a couple of those hidden in there as well. So this is a it's a it's a theme that a lot of different games consciously or not end up toying with and so I I can see why this was appealing to Ricky that he likes any any machinima that shining a light on a corner we're not really paying attention to directly is always a that's a winner for for Ricky it's it's it's one of the things he loves most about machinima and I enjoy as well. So I just loved it, it was... I have no criticism of it at all. Honestly, it doesn't mean that it's perfect or that it's, you know, technically. There's no technical wow moments in this really like everything about it you look at it's like, I know how they did that. But it's the choices that they made in making it and you know, the whole it's almost become come a horror cliche now but the fast, fast head movement thing. It's so effective. It's been done so much, you would think that when you see it, you just go add that again. But no, it works. Yeah, it really works. It's a strange image that that's been used in so many contexts, and it's still effective. So yeah, I really, I enjoyed it a lot. Again, it's my favourite pick of the month. Damien, what do you think?

Damien Valentine 21:09
We're used to talking about other games and what one of the things that came to mind was in the first Mass Effect game, you know, when you go on random planets, and you're driving around, and you find those little huts with one person that used to live in there, and they're dead, they're missing? Exactly. And you kind of it leaves you wondering, well, what happens to them, because you don't get answers to it. So you just find it, and there'll be there and the stuff the gears will abandoned. And maybe there'll be a body and maybe there's nothing there at all. There's no trace of them. There's no log, you just have no idea. And this is the kind of thing that probably did happen. To you. When I first watched it, it reminded me of a meme that was a scene not long ago, and it's been going on for a while. It says you're not afraid of being alone in the dark. You're afraid of not being alone in the dark.

Tracy Harwood 21:59
Oh,

Damien Valentine 22:04
yeah, that's what came to mind when I was watching it. And then it kind of has that that feel of space madness and isolation of what happens. And when you, I need to explore more status and to try and find out posts like this, because I've had trouble getting it to run on my computer. So I haven't got very far with it. But it kind of makes me want to see if I can tweak the settings and get into a playable state just to go out and see what else I can find like the little remote outposts. And I think it kind of this film kind of captures that. What happens to those people that are living, either by themselves or in very small communities, on isolated planets, far away from civilization, why are they even there? Like this is a barren planet, it doesn't give you any value of being there. So why is he there? Because it's not like he's running a mining outpost or doesn't seem to be any kind of sensor array or anything like that. So what's the point of this base? Why is he there? Does he choose it? Or is he assigned there? It kind of leaves your imagination to run wild. And the other question that left me with was what happens when someone visits this base and finds him you know, they're dropping off supplies or that hasn't sent a check in signals to say he's alright, there's no report so someone's come to investigate why he hasn't sent any charges me transmissions or anything. So at some point, someone's going to come to this base and find him either in this state or worse, or missing or dead. You don't get the answer that in this in this film. And I liked that because you kind of imagining these kind of possibilities of what happens later on. So I like that as an open ended possibility there because you know, is this person going to attack the visitor? Or are they going to be in such a state they're not even aware the visitors even arrived? Or, you know, it could be anything? So I like that and I hope we don't get an answer. I don't want a sequel, or anything like that. I like this just a sample taste of someone living in space by themselves driven mad by isolation. And you know that term space madness, which appears in sci fi quite a bit and this kind of captures it very well. So yeah, I was very excited for this film. I think maybe one of my favourite picks as well. So yeah, Ricky that was a an excellent choice. And I think I need to pay more attention to star citizen in star citizen machinima.

Tracy Harwood 24:51
Yeah, hopefully run our course on Star Citizen machinima with the copyright discussions that we've had on this one.

Damien Valentine 25:00
Yeah, is they don't want people to use the actual main assets. Yeah. Especially the celebrity actors that they've got for the single player game. They don't want them being used. Maybe that's part of the contracts with those celebrities or something whisking kind of vague. So there are some tight restrictions on Star Citizen machinima. Obviously, this one isn't affected by it. So yeah, we should keep an eye on it. See what happens? Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 25:30
that's a good point. Because maybe what we'll see is more of these kinds of films of, of the, the NPC type stories rather than the main, the main characters.

Phil Rice 25:42
Yeah. Yeah. What was that one that we saw? That was really impressive. aggressed? Yes. Yeah. Which I think it ended up kind of getting a little bit torpedoed by those restrictions, made it where it was tough for them to move on. So yeah, this is this is a nice way forward to kind of explore those uncharted regions, which I think probably fits really well with a game like Star Citizen, that's the whole supposed to be part of the whole point. Right. So yeah, yeah, great pick Ricky. So, what we're going to do for the rest of this month, because Ricky is actually going to be out for the entire month. So what we've decided to do, and we'll debut this in our, in our next episode, we have created a generative, generative AI version of Ricky. Based on basically pulling from the whole, you know, we've got how many episodes have we done now? Over 130 130 episodes, right? So basically, we've we've let that be what it trains on, on all the stuff that Ricky has said, and we're going to try it out not as a permanent replacement. Of course, there's no replacing Mr. Grove. But it could be a nice solution for the podcast for vacation situations and things like that. So we're gonna try it out. And I'm pretty excited about it to see see how that goes. So in our next episode, we will debut with, with AI Ricky, and I believe the next episode is we're going to be covering a bunch of news and such, so that'll be some good opportunity to, to kind of run that through the paces. So thanks for joining us. We'd love to hear your feedback. You can do so anywhere that you see this show. If there's an ability to comment, you can leave us a comment there. Or you can email us talk at completely machinima.com. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. If you've got comments if we talked about your film and you know, you want to let us know what you thought of what we said. That's great. And we will see you on behalf of myself, Phil and Tracy and Damian. We will see you in the next episode. Thank you