Phil Rice 00:40
Music. Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. My name is Phil rice, and I'm here with my co hosts, Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove and Damian Valentine.

00:58
Nice to see you.

Phil Rice 01:02
So today we're going to, we're going to be talking about Ricky's film pick for the month, but he's got some kind of news related items he wanted to share with us first. Why don't we kick off with that? Ricky?

Ricky Grove 01:14
Sure, just a couple quick ones. I'd like to everybody to know that I won the grand derriere award just recently, it's because I purchased a Alienware laptop specifically for games with a RTX 4060, and if anybody knows that's a good mid range graphics card, it could easily play 1440, P um, type videos and capture, and I started playing with it a couple of months ago, and I kept getting all this stuttering and drop frames, which, if you know as a gamer, is awful. And I just thought, Oh no, I made a terrible, terrible choice. That's I did all this research, and it was just wrong, wrong, wrong. Well, I kept playing with it and kept playing with it and got used to it. And finally, one day, I was fiddling around with some settings, and I noticed that Windows, Windows 11, had set automatic selection to the video renderer for whatever I was doing on on the desktop. Now, the motherboard that I have has two types of chipsets. It has a chipset that's a Discrete Video I mean, that is a general video renderer that you use for going to YouTube and all that stuff. And then it has the RTX, 4060, well, the default setting is Auto, and Windows 11 chose the discrete, I mean, the the general chip set on the motherboard, which was in no way could handle gaming. So I went in and I changed it from audio, and I selected the, you know, the 4060, for the game, voila. Everything is flawless. It's perfect. And I felt like such an ass for not thinking about that possibility. So I invented an award called the Grand derriere award, and I am the first official winner. I think perhaps in the future, we might be awarding it to other members of this group, but I'm not going to speculate on that. I'll just let it go. So I just wanted you to give you a tip, if you're having troubles with a new laptop and it's stuttering in your video. Check the graphic settings, and if Windows 11 is set it to auto. It could be choosing the main the smaller chipset instead of your graphics card, just change it to the program. You can actually drill down to any program, specific program you want to choose to render, but make sure it's using that 460 that you paid all that money for.

Phil Rice 04:07
So here's my friends, yeah, in your defense, though, Ricky, it's it's the way that those things are supposed to work, when they're working right is that the the operating system will detect what type of application is running. And so if it's a game that would use a 3d card, it's supposed to switch over automatically. That's the way Auto is supposed to work. So it is very interesting that it, for whatever reason, was not working. So yeah, that's, that's a, that's a good tip. Normally, you don't have to fiddle with that on on a laptop. It will just, it will use the appropriate card, right where? Yeah, so, yeah, that's interesting, which it's

Ricky Grove 04:44
part of the reason why I never suspected that it wouldn't be using it, because I just assumed that it was using the 460 until I found the settings. But just in case, if you get a new laptop and you've got a fancy dancy card on it and it's and it's stuttering, it may be that it's. Using the the high quality 3d video card on there, so check it out. The second thing is, is that I am upgrading my system that I built about three years ago, which was an ATX size, and I'm moving to a mini ATX, because I found the the process of doing that and the research on it intriguing. Now, a mini ATX is a little more than half the size of the computer that I had before, and it's hard to believe that you can put all of the components, including a full size GPU. I have a AMD, 60 800x XD graphics card, which is 396 centimeters long. It's a fairly long one, and it fits perfectly in this case, which is a Lee and Lee a three Dan mini ATX case, which I heard about. So what I'm doing is I'm doing an upgrade. I'm cannibalizing parts from the old unit and then upgrading the motherboard and the cooling in the new one. So I realized part of the reason why I do this is just to because it's fun to do, but also because I get to use new technology and research new technology, and it's a lot of fun, and the total cost of the upgrade is somewhere between six and $700

Phil Rice 06:38
for that at all

Ricky Grove 06:39
that improved CPU and improved RAM. I'm going up to a from 16 to 32 gigabytes with a faster speed, and the computer will actually sit on my desk. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful computer, but I just wanted to tell everybody that an alternative to to buying an entirely new system is to research, and that's the most fun part, is doing all the research, research what you have versus what's new, that's compatible, and then upgrade in that method by cannibalizing parts from your old system, because you'll save an immense amount of money. It's a lot of fun, and you end up getting a much improved performance. And there's lots of the mini ITX format is just fantastic. There are about eight cases that have come out by Lee and Lee Cooler Master thermal take several other groups that just have unbelievably beautiful cases. I mean, they're, they're esthetically remarkable, and they're so nice and light and airy you can and they actually allow you to use liquid cooling in it, although you have to figure your your space requirements pretty well, and all of those prices have come down massively. If you buy 2023, liquid cooling, you're paying half the price that it came out at. You can get 100 and pay for $120 for liquid cooling for a mini ITX. That works perfectly, flawlessly. Now I like AMD processors over Intel, because Intel runs hotter and has more and draws more power. So I like the AMDs, but liquid cooling works perfectly on an Intel. So anyway, to keep this short, I'm having a lot of fun. I'll do a blog post on our post to show you some what the finished product is, and what I went what I went through, and everything and and one last thing, I discovered a new build maker on YouTube that I want to recommend, a guy named Mr. Matt Lee, and that's the name of his channel, Mister Matt M, A, T, T, L, E, E. He does a brand new type of build video, meaning that he starts with the components, and then he builds the entire computer to turning it on and showing you how it works, and he doesn't say a word. It's all done. Wow. It's all done with pantomime and with very careful and enjoyable, funny editing. And he shows you the process. So any problems that come up, he allows it, like, for example, in one video, he made a mistake, and he didn't figure the size of something. And so he goes to install it, and it won't install. And so he stops, and he's like, you see this? Oh, am I an idiot kind of thing? And he takes it up. And then he then he has the thing. He says, What an idiot, I did this. And here's the new thing that you can do. And he shows you the new thing that he did. So and he does it without that high you know, you gotta get this. This is great, isn't? Brown, you know this crazy high energy bill video, people that I just can't stand. So anyway, if you like cool, laid back Bill videos, Mr. Matt Lee is the guy to check and he does everything mini ITX ATX. He does budget, he does high end, and he's very funny. He does pantomime, and at the end, he does outtakes of things like, for example, at the beginning of one of his build videos, a guy from off camera throws him a screwdriver, and he catches it flawlessly, and then goes down to build. Well, it took about seven takes to do that, and he has all of the takes of the, you know, the screwdriver hitting him in the head, the one that he misses and falls down. You know, it's just very amusing. So Mr. Matt Lee, and that's it. That's all I have for my notes. Now, going into my pick for the video that I chose. Now I know you guys admired my last video pick very much. I know Phil particularly admired it, and Tracy admired it very much. Damian was the only person who didn't use the term admired. So I wanted to make sure you guys knew that I cared for you. So I chose a machinima that you wouldn't admire but you would enjoy. Okay, so the name of this choice is the game of video. It's a machinima video essay, and the author, the creator, is Colin owl, a U, L, L. He's an Orlando based filmmaker who does digital video. He's done several experimental films. He's also interested in classic type videos. He's an imaginative filmmaker, and this is an essay which surprised me that we would find one here today that is a brief history of machinima. Now it's only about eight to nine minutes long. So that sort of Time Link, you're going to leave a lot out. So I accept anybody's criticism that, oh, he left this out. He left that out. But I think as a general overview of machinima and its development and its current state, I think it's pretty interesting. I like the production values. His narrative voice, he's he's obviously not somebody who does a lot of narrating, because he tended to read in somewhat of a monotone, and it sounds like he's reading from his script. But that's not too bad. I mean, for Christ's sake, I watch television documentaries that have that quality in it, you know, that are on a professional screening. So although that's it would be nicer to have somebody who was more skilled at narration. It didn't hurt it, and he covers everything well. He at one point he makes the mistake when he talks about the original machinima.com he puts the logo of the future of machinima.com on there. I was disappointed that he didn't at least go to Google archive.org, Wayback Machine, and get a screen capture of the original machinima.com site, which was very distinctively different from the other. So that was a bit of a misnomer, but I didn't catch him in others. I think Tracy, you'll probably be able to help us for if he made him any other mistakes, which I'm sure he has. But the thing that he his perspective, is talking about games, he says he came for at the end of the day, he says, I came for the experience of the game, and that echoes my feeling about gameplay. And so when I got involved in the cinema, I wanted to recreate that experience of being inside of this game, this world, if you will, and the possible stories that could come up. And I think Hugh Hancock had the same thing. He wanted to bring qualities of literature and movies that he liked and bring them into machinima and use games that had a similar mood to the stories that he wanted to tell. I think they're very good. Machinima. Filmmakers do that a half life two Machinima is very different from a GTA machinima. And so the idea of using experiences, the focal point of machinima, is very good. And then at the end, he has a really interesting quotes, a guy named Miltos shit I can't even read my own writing Miltos Morales manifesto of art after video games, which I thought was really a very useful pointer towards the future of video we'll get into more discussion of this. Yes, as Tracy brings out different qualities, and you guys have comments, and we'll save that for the end. But that was my take on it. I liked it. It wasn't a brilliant machinima, but I thought it was a if somebody was coming to machinima for first time, this is a good way to teach them about it. All right, have at it, you guys.

Damien Valentine 15:20
Ricky, I think what you just said, If I had to explain what machinima was to someone, this is the video, I would send them to give them a sort of introduction overview of how it all came together, and a look at some of those early films. It did bring back a lot of memories of those early days when he started talking about Hugh, I found myself missing Hugh. And yeah, input, so yeah, I had to pause it to give myself a moment to

Ricky Grove 15:49
collect yourself. Yeah, yeah. I thought

Damien Valentine 15:52
it's interesting. It's a good way to look back at the medium as a film. It's not particularly groundbreaking. I think it doesn't need to be. It's just explaining what missionary is. Yeah, you're right. It does miss things out, but that's to be expected, because it's such a short video, I think the key moments are included. You don't have to include every single detail, every single film that's ever released, because you'd be there. This thing would be weeks long if you did that. But you know there's he showed some clips in different films, and thought, I remember that one, and you know that there was some pictures of interviews with Hugh Hancock, and he didn't focus on them long enough to to read them, but I suppose you could always pause it and then have a read and then resume. So, yeah, this is a very good mini documentary, I guess, of machinima. I really liked it, and I'm kind of interested to see if he'll make any more, because I'll see a lot more to say about machinima, yeah, and I thought he did it well, and you know, he could explore more of this art form that we're all big fans of, yeah. And

Ricky Grove 17:04
by the way, uh, one thing, thank you, Damian. By the one thing I forgot to mention is that this is an interesting perspective of somebody who was not there when machinima started. It's a perspective of somebody who's post machinima, who's probably tail end of machinima.com the new machinima.com so I thought that was an interesting way to look at it in a way.

Phil Rice 17:27
I think that may be a big strength of this film, Damian. I feel the same way that we've seen, oh goodness, especially in the early days, there were a lot of machinima makers who would make a what is machinima film? Right? Machinimated Studios. Jonathan, I can't remember his last name, ended up going to work for Bioware. I think he made one. Frank Fox made made one as well. It was, it was, it was done quite a lot, but all of those were made by creators, and so the the the emphasis was on how it's made. Like that, when they were defining machinima, it was from the creator's point of view of this is how it's made. So as a result, I think those, those films are those approaches would be more interesting to somebody who is a maker of it. And it seems like this, the audience is more general, maybe for people who just enjoy the phenomenon of it, enjoy seeing it, enjoy discovering it. And so the emphasis isn't there. There's not a whole lot there to talk about, you know, technical how to of, of how it's done. And I think that makes this more suitable, as, like you said, Damien as hey, if somebody asked me, What is it this? This would be a good reference. There are some things that that you know, it's impossible for people who've been involved with it, as long as us, to not notice little things that you know are not quite right, or you know he does, like you said, Ricky meshes together the history of machinima.com as just one continuum, and we who were there, no, that's not the case. That it was distinct thing when he was running it, and then it became something entirely different. And he just kind of those just kind of get rolled together. But I think that's kind of, that's kind of how history works, like it or not. You know that that's what, what we tend to do. There were little bits that maybe weren't, weren't, right? He mentioned that quake one was the first video game to ever allow recording of demos in the game and playback. And that's launched everything. It's not, not entirely true. Doom did it before that. Doom was doing that in like the early 1990s the very first game you can do that, yeah. But the thing is, is quake re implemented that at a time when you. Internet gaming. And the idea of being able to share this stuff more readily across the internet was a thing. So it was about the you know, that thing may have that that capability to record demos was possible in the early 90s, and I recorded some, but you couldn't really share them with anybody, not really. You didn't know how, and so, yeah, Quake came along at the right time with that feature, and then it did explode, like he said. He mentioned that eschaton nightfall was the first Quake two movie to use custom content. I'm not entirely sure that's the case. It was one of the first and it was probably the most impressive use of custom content, maybe that was ever done in the game. The only exception, I would think, is the old clans hardly working, where they re skinned everything to this kind of classic cartoon look. That was an eye Popper, right? And, you know, whereas in eschaton nightfall, there's still some quake two textures in there that you can spot, that you recognize from bases and stuff, but the custom model that he did for the big event at the end of that movie, where the, you know, Cthulhu comes through, or whatever it is that's happening there. Yeah, I never saw anything like that. Again, in Quake two, it was, it was groundbreaking. So I think those things can be forgiven, those little things. And like you said, Ricky, if they're approaching this as a historian, not as an eyewitness, you know, they did a pretty good job, you know? And, yeah, they did not cover everything. But, I mean, Tracy and Ben wrote a book that's how many hundreds of pages that didn't cover absolutely everything. It didn't, certainly more thorough than this. But it did not, you know, you just can't so and we probably all have our own versions of what should be, of course, included as milestones in, you know, me personally, just very selfishly, I was like, Why did you mention the expo? That was like a really big deal, you know, that was like a really big deal, the the Machinima Film Festival, and then us, us kind of, of course, of course, not alive with the expo. And to us at the center of that, that was like, that was the center of the universe. That's

Ricky Grove 22:19
what they're making. Yes,

Phil Rice 22:20
right? The truth is, the reach was what it was. So anyway, I enjoyed it. It felt like an like a nicely produced school project. And I don't mean that at all condescending, that it, maybe it was produced for that, you know, he calls it a video essay. Maybe it, maybe it was made for a class assignment. I can see, you know, a professor like Michael Nietzsche or something, getting this in one of his classes, if he still does that at Georgia. Yeah. And, and it's, it's well made, you know, it, it's, it's not complete. But you, you know, you history can't be you select what you're going to pay attention to, and, of course, try your best to get it right. And I think in those regards, this video succeeds. And it's, it's, it's nicely produced. I think the narration is apt, just like you said, Ricky, I think it's, it fits, you know, it's, yeah, it's a nice video. I really enjoyed it. I never would have found it on my own. I don't think so. I'm really glad you picked it. Ricky, great.

Ricky Grove 23:24
Before you launch, Tracy, I've got I want to apologize to the author. The name of this manifesto that he quotes in the film is by Milton Miltos manetas. It was written in 1997 and it's called manifesto of art, after video games. And the main point is that he says that video games aren't games, but EVR extended versions of reality. That's the point he's trying to make. Okay, Tracy, it's all yours. Great.

Tracy Harwood 24:05
It's a real it's an interesting pick for a whole range of reasons, I think. But I agree, Phil, I think this is a student project, not a school project, but a, you know, maybe university student project. I got the impression this was a kind of 20 year old guy, possibly on a game studies critical, you know, critical theory kind of type course ish, and I kind of kind of come at my review from that kind of perspective, that this is a student commentary. I think it's really interesting that what we've got here is a new generation of student creators who are finding machinima and also from from our point of view, I kind of also find it quite recursive to hear it being said that this is one of the most complex forms of cinema that's been developed. To date. I mean, we've heard that so many times over the years. But what was interesting was, when he was making that comment, he was actually showing Hughes Percy Bish Shelley's adaptation of Ozymandias, which was, you know, my my detailed notes. You know, that was released on the 18th of January, 2000 just a couple of weeks after machinima.com launched. And if you remember, that was made in the LithTech engine, which he had been part of the development team on that it's actually programmed by a guy called James Payne. And in fact, that film was actually intended to be a demo of liftex film producer that you know the software as as a potential for making machinima as well as a creative piece in its own right. Because, of course, Hugh was ever the Pioneer. Now, you know, whilst, whilst I appreciate this guy was sort of picking out machinimas and look and commenting them as machinimas. I think that whole bit about the the pioneering activities that the early, you know, machinima creators were involved with, with was was largely missing in this review, which was a bit of a shame, because I think they're missing a trick, even though they that he's kind of commenting on the complexity of of it as a, as a, as a creative medium, but they're not really clearly going into the great depths that they need to to fully understand what it was all about. He then circles back to the quake era and diary of camper and shows images of, you know, like you said, dot.com from the de Beauvoir's years, which actually didn't begin until late 2004 and the images that were being shown there actually probably were from about 2008 YouTube itself wasn't even launched until 2005 so he's kind of, you know, his commentary and what he was Showing was mixed. Wasn't, you know, he was talking about one thing, but showing something else didn't really gel as well as it might have done, had he have got a more, you know, more more sort of structured approach to what he was trying to show and how he was trying to show it. But actually, I think all of those comments really are quite minor, because, you know, you can, you know, if you really want to sort of find out the background of it, yeah, you can pick up the the book that Ben and I did on the, on the, on the pioneers, or you can go back to Paul's book, Paul Marino's book, that is, which was published in 2004 or even Hugh and Johnny's book, which was published In 2007 and there have been other books on it too, written by Matt Kellen, Matt sporky, absolutely, I couldn't remember what year that was. About 2005 I think it was. It was 2005 was it? Yeah. But any of those early pioneers, you could have kind of gone, gone to and had a look at some of the timeline. But why I think it's interesting is because of the way the student reflects on some of the early comments. So he picks up Roger Ebert's observation, which was made in 2000 that the films themselves will not be as revolutionary as the techniques used to make them, that out of those basements and bedrooms will come, will not come cinematic art, but elaborations on the themes of video games. And, you know, I was thinking about that and and the the point that he was trying to make there, which was that that was an incorrect observation. And you know what, for 90% of the Machinima content that now, you know, you can now find on, well, millions of YouTube channels. I think Ebert's comment actually, was probably pretty spot on. But for 10% of the the other, you know, the other, the other sort of 10% I think this guy, owl is actually spot on, because for that 10% Ebert was was way off in his thinking of quality of the content that that we've seen over the years has just grown and expanded, And it's become more creative as new tools have evolved, not in the not in the way that the early pioneers did it, which was to, you know, if they couldn't make something work, that was inside a game, they would, they would create it themselves. I mean, we don't see that so much these days, in the in the in the way that the early, early folks, people like queue and whatnot, really did. And as we were talking, sort of off screen just before we we started the recording today. You know, quite a lot of the stuff that we see now, which is of such great quality, is not even called machinima anymore. And I'd say most. Of the people that are doing machinima these days probably haven't even heard of the term. So it's really interesting that this guy as a student is picking this up and saying, yeah, there's all this history there. It's, you know, it's a fascinating creative form. It's kind of a portmanteau approach to creating really interesting forms of entertainment, and it's just got better and better over the years. It's growth, of course, is partly because the breadth of the tools continues to grow, which has basically made it a lot easier for people to create stuff, because people have learned how to make create stories as well from the literally 1000s of shorts that they that they look at across all these different streaming platforms, and also because there is now such, I think, incredible diversity in the 3d environments, the games themselves that are used, but also the way that people are actually integrating the films that they enjoy, uh, which inspire them as well. And use right? You, you know, use these things to sort of create ever more interesting things that push the boundaries of what they're really interested in, right, right? You only have to look at the hundreds of works we've reviewed, I think, to date on this channel, to see just how wrong Ebert was was in that observation, but, but but not wholly. I don't think he was wholly wrong, because I think there's a, you know, a large drift of dross, so to speak.

Ricky Grove 31:39
We have to remember, though, that Ebert came from an era in which, when you went to watch a film, you went into a theater, yeah, with an audience. Absolutely you didn't sit down and pull up Netflix and crush a 14 episodes of a brilliant series and watch it on your your laptop screen.

Phil Rice 31:58
Absolutely, honestly, give it given given his background, it's remarkable that he came as far as in his opinion, that he did, you know, like, I think that's part of why him having even remotely positive things to say about the phenomenon was such a shock, because that was not the typical position of of film critics. Let's say No, that's right. Towards the medium it was, it was very negative. And at film festivals they were, they were hostile, openly hostile, to the the very notion of it. So him coming out and having a more balanced view, and, and, and, frankly, a progressive look at it. For for someone who, you know in the 80s was, it was Siskel and Ebert, right? We remember that, right? Yeah, he, he was a unique he's a unique figure. Is he still around? He is away, okay, yeah.

Tracy Harwood 32:54
And I was just gonna say, actually, had he still been alive, I bet he'd have been absolutely fascinated to see how it's evolved over the years, because he was, like, you say, a big advocate for machinima over over many years. I think he died in about 2005 it's quite a long time ago, wasn't it? It's, I think I wrote a bit about it in book. I can't remember exactly when he when he passed,

Phil Rice 33:18
but I know that he was ill and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Tracy Harwood 33:21
Well, like I said, I think what, what you know, what's happening where the student makes another interesting observation is that now machinima has got kind of less of an obvious community focus than it did in those kind of early days. I mean, you know, for all the ways that we criticize machinima.com One thing it did, you know, do was, was raise the profile and be a focus. And it's kind of interesting that, you know, this guy is probably breathe the.com years, really. I mean, he probably grew up looking at it, but possibly he wasn't fully aware of what the backstory to it might, might well have been. So I agree with him, in some senses, that machinima, good machinima, certainly is harder to find than it, than perhaps it might have been in the.com years, although I actually think, I think there wasn't great content on the.com channels. But if we I think if we were on to unpick it even further. Well, like I said, the travel.com was full of largely what I would call total drivel. I'd call it, I go even further. I'd say it's clickbait and advertising for games, where a generation of creators were actually tricked into the process of mass producing content to feed an organization on the scene machine that just basically bled them dry. Believe,

Ricky Grove 34:54
believe me, I'm sympathetic to your point of view, but if we go down that road, we're kind of. Be add another 20 minutes on the session. So, but

Tracy Harwood 35:05
what we're left with, and if you can be bothered to search, is, I think, much more original work now than than even in the.com in the.com years. And the stuff that I think survives on YouTube has the eyes because largely it's taken its audience along with it, right, exactly and there. And I think now there is a lot of new stuff which is much better quality than those.com years. So yeah, I think, yeah, there is a problem with no central landing points. We do talk about distribution as being one of the biggest challenges that creators face. I don't see any solutions to it really, in the in the in the near, in the future, what's the

Ricky Grove 35:55
term that he uses? He uses the term? There's no

Tracy Harwood 36:04
is he saying no central landing points or something?

Ricky Grove 36:06
No Central? Yeah, it wasn't landing point, no infrastructure. That's right to to show the he makes a fallacious dichotomy, which I don't agree with, high art versus simple entertainment I don't think that's how it breaks down. No, I

Tracy Harwood 36:26
don't either. That's what he

Ricky Grove 36:28
says. There's no infrastructure to gear you towards that high stuff. No, but there's a site called it's our our website, and now for something completely machinima, yeah, that will steer you towards that, more quality, more curation. Yeah, curation. That's a perfectly, that's a perfect way. Yes, curated.

Tracy Harwood 36:50
Curated is about, right? And there are, there are others that are curating content. They don't necessarily call it machinima, as we, as we just sort of said, but there are others that are doing that, and it's just, you've got to, you've got to do your groundwork. It's poorly tagged. You know, the the way that you find it is almost exclusively algorithm, rhythmically driven. It's almost exclusively on those channels, and it's all about monetization for the for the various stakeholders. It's a it's a system. Basically, we all know that, but there isn't a lot of other options at this moment in time. Because I don't really think Vimeo is it. I was very intrigued about him quoting Miltos manitas, not really an artist, I'll be honest. So had it ever really connected to the Machinima movement before. In fact, the one that I always connected to it, that never really even mentioned the term was Lev Manovich. It kind of feels, I think, How can I say this? I think it's ever more interesting that that people are picking up various artists and critics to comment on the emergence of, I guess, what they call Machinima is a kind of a conflated practice. I think we'll continue to see people critique machinima in in game studies. But I think what's interesting is that we're seeing it being used more in digital art courses now than we ever have before, and that there are people that are sort of like second or third generation creators that are teaching it and don't necessarily have A true, you know, a true link to the original way that it was created. So it's, it's kind of generationally evolving, and I think that's what this young man is kind of picking up on. I mean, the the other one that I remember some time ago, I interviewed a guy called David blandy, and he was a mixed media artist as well. I think this is one of your picks as well. Ricky, when do you remember the bird flying? Is it? GTA? What was, I think, very interesting with his comments was because he was a, you know, a game player and and an artist, and the way that he'd been introduced to machinima was was through his kind of academic course and whatnot. The thing they don't seem to actually include in the way they critique it make sense of it, is the role of community. We've said it so many times, that community and you know how you devise what, what you're going to do in and work in conjunction with the community is absolutely fundamental to sort of having, you know, having a having a successful channel, and, you know, having having eyes on the work that you do. And it's almost like, you know, the people. People are being trained to be creators without understanding the role of community in this kind of context. It's a real shame. Well, it's a

Ricky Grove 40:09
more traditional view of art. It is meaning. It's the single artist creating the art, whereas I think newer critics who take digital art courses and are looking at it from a more a fresher point of view. I think they tend to include community in it, because they're part of a community anyway, or as a more older one, like this Milton fellow, his essay was done in 1997 which was a completely different world of machinima than it is now, although his ideas are relevant, I'm more interested in seeing what happens with younger critics and younger filmmakers who don't, who don't come from that tradition, but come from simply experience of games and Digital Art and then the ability, which is what machinima does so brilliantly, it allows you to be able to create things out of nothing with no budget.

Tracy Harwood 41:09
Yeah,

41:10
exactly No.

Tracy Harwood 41:11
But what this, I agree, but what this Miltos guy was saying is that, or what he seemed to be suggesting, and this, this young man seems to be sort of making the observation on was that Machinima is an extension of life, because he basically, you know, uses this guy, to sort of say that, you know, games are an extension of of who We are. So everybody is kind of

41:40
play, yeah, yeah.

Tracy Harwood 41:42
Um, well, okay, but I didn't think it was a particularly sophisticated argument in the way that it was positioned. And I, I actually think one of the more sophisticated ways that that position has been put forward was another of your films actually, was Chris Uberman, and the film, the French film that we reviewed a few months back, called Don sancore, where Oberman was actually drawing on the philosophy of himpedocles, and he was making the point about life imitating art and questioning which of the virtual character, you know, what was, was the was the game real, or was the human real? What's real, basically, and I thought that was a much more interesting position, not unlike what's being argued for here, but without a lot of great depth in the thinking of it

Ricky Grove 42:48
well, for an eight minute video, he still, at least he has an approach. He does. He chose that approach in order to give machinima a sense of seriousness that it's not just a game, goofy game thing that people are making, and although you're right, it's not a sophisticated argument, it's still a reasonable argument that can be made that helps give machinima a certain weight that otherwise wouldn't have.

Tracy Harwood 43:16
I completely agree. I'm just giving you benefit of my my thoughts on it. I mean, I guess I'm also quite intrigued by the fact that we, every now and again, we all pick up a video like this, and through the process of the reviews that we see of these students doing these kind of video essays where we're, you know, it's not like going to Wikipedia and seeing how people change the history of machinima, but it's not a it's not an un It's not unlike that in some ways. You know, we're kind of seeing history evolving through the way that generations interpret the work, I mean in terms of the quality of the Machinima film itself. I thought it was a little bit jumpy. I thought the the film selections were really interesting, but it didn't really follow any kind of narrative demonstration of the emergence of machinima or the types of story telling that have evolved. Didn't really support the points that he was making as well as it might have done, I think. But what I got from it was that it's clearly what he what he showed with it was clearly his personal journey of discovery as a, as a, you know, somebody interested in in machinima and you know, it's his point of view and his counterpoint to what he's seen that is particularly relevant in this kind of film, because, as everybody here has said, there is now so much history to this. There's so much content. You can't possibly sit and watch the whole lot in your in your lifetime, if you even attempted to do it, it's just impossible to do it and then to make sense of it. So I think he's done an excellent job, you know, from that kind of perspective, to take a, you know, a position, and present something that puts across his view of how it's evolved. So really interesting to see it. Thanks for sharing it.

Ricky Grove 45:29
I think the one last thing is, I think that the video essay Forum has been neglected in machinima, and I'd like to see more of that, meaning that you have a position, as Tracy points out, on a topic, and then you bring up various proofs and expressions and examples in an interesting format. I think Machinima is such a great form for that, and I'd like to see more.

Phil Rice 45:59
All right. Well, that will wrap up this episode. Wonderful pick. Ricky. Thank you very much. Like you said, it's been a while since we've Well, I can't remember the last time we've seen a video essay on this show, and yeah, made for some very interesting discussion. You listeners, we need your feedback. If you'd like to reach us, you can do so at a comment anywhere you see this podcast posted, or you can drop us an email at talk, at completely machinima.com on behalf of myself, Tracy, Ricky and Damian, we will see you next time.

Ricky Grove 46:31
Thank you very much. Bye, bye, bye.