Phil Rice 00:35
Hello again and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and other related technologies. I'm Phil Rice and I'm joined by my co hosts Ricky Grove, yo, Tracy Harwood and Alou and Damian Valentine. Damian has our pick for this week, which is one from Elite Dangerous or actually, specifically, I think it's from the add on Elite Dangerous Odyssey or maybe it's just titled that way. Damien, tell us about it.

Damien Valentine 01:14
Yeah, so I was thinking about last month's picks where I picked, Elite Dangerous film that was kind of showing off different planets and things. But there was no real story to it. And I got thinking, has anyone made any Elite Dangerous machinima? That is a it's a story rather than just showing off things they found in the game. And I came across this and it's kind of the main characters that this explorer on this spaceship, and he's kind of doing that sort of Captain's Log kind of thing talking about things he's found. He's never seen a thargoid, you know, in the game Thargoids are this race of aliens are very mysterious. And they're very aggressive. And there's kind of lots of inworld law about what they could be people guessing. And then the, the sort of player community also joins in because the game doesn't say much about them, they're very mysterious, has no real way to communicate with them. And they kind of make these three, they've got these really weird looking ships and strange things happened if you get near them, and all this kind of stuff. So the the players have built up their own lore and have their own things that they talk about with it. So this character, he wants to go and see one because he doesn't believe they exist, because they're kind of got this mythological element to them. And so he sets out on this journey, His only companion is the ship's computer. And the entire dialogue throughout the film is him and the computer talking about things. And one point in the middle, the computer seems to be aware that she is in a video game, because she's talking about the procedural world that's in it. And of course, that's how the game is made.

Ricky Grove 02:57
Funny, yeah, I

Damien Valentine 02:58
like that. And it's kind of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy kind of humour. And in the credits actually referenced Douglas Adams as the credit as part of the inspiration. And then he sets off, and then he lands on this planet where the Thargoids are known to exist. And he finds some adverts of them. And then he goes off to another place on the same planet. And he has an actual encounter, which is the kind of encounter with the thargoids you can have with, with them. And in the game, one of the friendlier ones, which shall I say, because they're really aggressive if you catch them in the wrong mood. So that's what I found. And just like, This is episode one, there's a second episode is completely different story, same characters, same pilot and ship, and some other people in it. But there's a second video as well, which I watched and that's also good, but I kind of like this one better, because it's its own self contained adventure. So what do you guys think?

Phil Rice 04:00
Well, I enjoyed this. Yeah, no, I'm gonna go ahead and go. Yeah, I enjoyed the, this the story. The film was a little bit long. But I am wrestling with how much of that is my modern, corrupted attention span, and how much of it is that? It just is inherently a little too long. But it's coherent. It's easy to follow. I found myself focusing a little bit more on production elements than that story. The story was a comfortable one that I didn't have. It didn't really take any effort to follow. And that's a sign of decent storytelling. But some of the production elements that's that were interesting to me was, first of all, it's all AI generated voice. And that's pretty apparent. For a couple of reasons. One, just AI generated voice isn't quite there yet, but also, the voice that he chose for the captain is a very familiar one. Now I can't name it, but I've heard it a million times. It's like one of the standard simulated voices that that are heard. That distracted me just a little bit. I tried to not let it overwhelm my experience of the film. But that that that was on my mind at that. And I don't know, I, I guess I found myself wondering why, why do that, for the captain in particular, for the for the ship's computer, an AI voice makes complete sense, you know, have be the best AI voice you can find, because it sounds like an advanced computer. But the fact that it was for the captain as well, there were points where the AI voice just couldn't pull off the emotional tone that was needed for a line. To his credit. These subtitles are not auto generated that I had subtitles on when I happen to watch it. They're not auto generated subtitles, somebody went through that with a fine tooth comb. And they're perfectly formatted their punctuation and everything is just great. That's a nice attention to detail. And so I guess I would have I would have been intrigued to see the same story told with the with the human voice actor for the male. Now, something that was interesting was the lip sync. Which there there was none. But there also wasn't any point where the face the camera was on the character when he's speaking. And he had his lips don't move. So And yet, there was a lot of spoken dialogue in this movie. That's very interesting to me like that. We've talked in the past about, you know, cutting around the weak, weak areas of your engine. I don't know what the capabilities are in Elite Dangerous, but I imagine that that player controlled lip sync is not one of them, that would be very unusual. So you're either going to have a Sims lip sync, which is not really saying what you're saying, but you hope no one notices, I use that same thing in my Obit film, you know, to that's why I didn't focus too much on the mouths because he's just just, it doesn't line up. He didn't do that. And yet, I never felt like the dialogue was out of place. He was very, I feel like deliberate in his shot choice to just not hover around the front of this guy's face when he's speaking, a wonderful choice there. I think that that that was a potential additional distraction for this film that he that the filmmaker deftly avoided with that choice. So I definitely saw the Douglas Adams influence. Before I even saw it in the credits. The overall feel of the story and the relationship between him and this computer. Yeah, it's like something lifted right out of one of Adam's novels, and one and well done. Like it had that sense. And yet, it didn't feel ripped off from that at all. Which is good. That's a good balance to have when you're kind of paying homage in that way. There was one little line right near the end where the computer says I think there's a restaurant at the end of the Universe, which is of course a direct Douglas Adams reference. And I thought that was nice, you know that. Okay, throw that in. Yeah. But he didn't do that throughout. You know, we didn't have Zaphod Beeblebrox show up with two heads or something. So that's good. So, you know, overall, I found it enjoyable. It's, it's, it's not the strongest film that I've seen in a while, but it was tolerable. And I made it all the way to the end, even though as it was going, I was thinking this is stretching a bit. So what did you guys think?

Tracy Harwood 09:10
Yeah, so again, this, you know, the commander 42 was the big giveaway on but, you know, when I got into this, this started off as kind of like, an interesting explainer of what I was expecting to be a documentary, or a day in the life of this Commander 42. But the first thing that kind of attracted my attention beyond beyond the actual words was that voice. Why do that? So that was kind of going through my head, and I couldn't get that out of my head. As I was listening to this. I started, you know, I was kind of torn between what was being said and how it was being said because it was, it was you know, as you sent clearly an automated voice generator that had been used here. And it was incredibly boringly monotone. And that kind of ran throughout the film. Well, I think it did, because I think towards the end, it did feel a little bit more advanced and more human like, and I don't know whether that was kind of deliberate or not, I suspect it was deliberate. Because after the first few minutes of listening to that guy's voice, you started to hear that female voice. And that had a lot more intonation to it. It, it's, well, it felt much more naturalistic, and yet, that was the computer. And so that's kind of that kind of interplay was the thing that kind of attracted my, you know, that's what kept me going through. And it basically, it just that that female voice just did not sound automated in any way, I don't think it was. And so that confusion was what drove me through it. And then I became, I think, quite interested in the banter between these two actors, because they were basically inversely discussing random everyday things in this small, you know, as the the female voice was saying, it's evidently virtual space exploration in this procedurally generated world, which the male character just didn't respond to. When when, you know, when she was sort of saying that I thought it was really funny. And then there was these really droll lines on, you know, the one where he basically said all that's a dark little bee of a planet. I mean, I thought that was that was just such a dry, droll monotone kind of wit, when they were talking about those thargoid barnacles. And overall, I think I was not sure what to make of that automated voice of the commander. But I concluded it was deliberate. And I was left wondering, then, well, if it had been a human voice, how would that have made it different? How would it have been different? And then that kind of led me to thinking, well, who is this commander? And what is, you know, what is this, really about this kind of had this sort of them? You know, it's sort of set in this sort of strange universe. And, and clearly, this universe has had an impact on him to make him so monotone. That was kind of how I was thinking about it. And then I read the description for the film. And it basically said that the film is a story where, you know, the the there is an attempt to rekindle a passion for exploration by this burned out commander. So I kind of concluded that it was either a very cleverly done acting piece, or a ham fisted choice, and the way that it was executed. But I suspect not the latter, actually. And the way that I kind of thought about it was, you know, the sound design is just too interesting. It's a you know, it's a combination of these tech bleeps, the ship noises, these kinds of strange effects and these voices. And it was that combination of sound design, I thought that really just carried it through for me, because I agree, Phil, it was in places quite slow. And then I was thinking about it, you know, after I'd sort of sat and amazing, I've watched the whole of it. And I'd still got to the end and I'm still thinking about what it was about. And then I suddenly remembered something that I had seen years ago, I think it was as a 1970s really bad Sci Fi series, which I'm sure you all remember, it was called Space 1999 by Oh, yeah. Do you remember that? Boy? Yeah. And I had this kind of really vague feeling that this was what it was reminiscent of, you know, basically, in that series, you know, anybody that touched the scenery, and it just wobbled moved, and the actors was so you know, it was just totally unbelievable in the way that these guys were behaving. And it was kind of riffing off I thought the original Star Trek, mixed up with some kind of Joe 90 or Thunderbirds feel to it without actually achieving any of it really. And from that perspective, when you kind of when I kind of applied that lens to this film I kind of thought that what you saw here was was very deliberate. And from that point of view alone, it's definitely worth sticking with it because I don't think I've ever seen the like, of Space 1999 Or for that matter of red dwarf, which was, you know, equally plastic in the way that it was created, I don't think we'll ever see the like of that sort of thing again. So, overall, I concluded it was a really interesting pick, and definitely worth watching for a whole bunch of reasons. And it's worth getting through the voices side of it, I think. So thank you for that. I enjoyed it. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 15:40
I tend to lean towards a ham fisted choice that you option that you were talking about. If this is the kind of machinima film in which I believe the creator wanted to have fun, and wanted to put some work into it, but not that much work. So that it became tedious. And so they just did the things that were easiest to do. Because they they liked the story themselves, they were pleasing themselves. Whereas have they taken a little extra time to think through some of the choices that they made, it wouldn't have been that much extra work to find an alive actor to play the the captain. Because

Phil Rice 16:26
especially, especially since there's no lip sync concerns, you know, it's it really is just placing the dialogue on his timeline in his ad exactly where it needs to be, he doesn't have to worry about lining up lips or doing any of that. So yeah, that's a great point.

Ricky Grove 16:42
There are any number of sources for voice actors to do this. And the problem with using the artificial voices, and I agree the Indian accented AI was, was great. She she had she had better timing than the original guy. The problem is, is when you have writing that has the little irony in it, or droll wit, or humour, different types of humour, it requires a human to be able to get the timing right on it. Because a artificial actor will just do the same rhythm for every type of line. Now they vary the rhythm. But the varied rhythm is all based on an algorithm. Whereas a live actor would be able to say, Oh, this is a funny bit, I need to say it quickly and dryly a good actor would pick that out. So it would be able to bring out the humour and the wit. By having an artificial voice you kill it, essentially. Because there's nothing worse than a comedian who gets the timing wrong on stage with a humorous quip. Now imagine that's in the case of a of a story, a visual story that you're watching, in which there really isn't a lot of visual to distract you from the dialogue. So you're focused on the dialogue. So it hurts it quite a bit. It and then as you pointed out, Phil the additional the 18 Minute length, made it hard to to sit through. In movies like Darkstar, the John Carpenter, which I think this stands on the shoulder of that sort of absurd, commonplace dialogue where people are talking about what my socks and why did you put my water bottle kind of thing or what else do you notice there's some stars out there if we have we've been moving. That's sort of wit that movie set it up. And this guy has been influenced by by that movie, and probably many others that tried to copy that. But with a little bit of extra effort, he could have made all the difference and making this a watchable film and an unwatchable film. I'm surprised that you were able to get through it you guys because that uncanny valley aspect of the voice was just such a killer. I couldn't take it anymore about halfway through. Even though I know that it had interesting visuals. You write about the sound effects or some interesting sound effects, but there could have been more. There could have been more music in order to emphasise the emotion of a particular scene. Cut the length in half, get a voice actor and you've got a much better film. But I was glad that you chose it because it gave us an opportunity to look at the the film made in Elite Dangerous and to think about using artificial voices. It's a quick and easy choice, I can see why he made it. But I would urge filmmakers to steer away from it. The opportunity to get a live actor who can understand how rhythm works in real speech is invaluable. But that's it. That's what I had to say.

Phil Rice 20:18
If you're not sure, if you're I'll just say this real quick and then hand it over to you, Damian. But what if you're not sure where to find voice actors, because, you know, a lot of people assume and it's, it's not a flawed assumption that good voice actors are going to expect to be compensated. And most of us are not, you know, do not have a budget for that when we're making machinima. It was about a month ago, there's someone in the voice acting community on Twitter, just posted an open call and said, Hey, I'm putting together a list of people who are, who have the skills and the tools to do voice acting, and are willing to work for independent productions for free. And I thought he was gonna get tarred and feathered, because a lot of the voice acting community that is active on Twitter, they're, they're professionals, and they do it for a living, and they're paid for it when he got 130, that he basically just asked if you're interested, post a comment with your demo reel on as a, you know, as a response to this got 130 responses in about a day. That's just one person on Twitter, who just asked Twitter, hey, are there, you know, voice actors out there? And so it is totally possible. Ben Tuttle, a friend of the show, does a lot of work in Unreal Engine and iClone. And he recently did casting for a short film that he's working on. And he had no difficulty finding very good talent, who was willing to just do it, because for love of the craft, and to be a part of something interesting. So there are definitely people out there. And just because you don't know any of them, doesn't mean they're not there and not willing to, to contribute. So yeah, just something to keep in mind.

Damien Valentine 22:18
Yeah, I was gonna say a lot of you commented on the sound effects. And a lot of the sound came from the game itself, Elite Dangerous has an excellent soundscape. And at the end of the film, when the Thargoids show up, and this weird kind of alien ish sounds, that's all from the game. And it no one really knows, understands what those sounds mean, because the game keeps them very mysterious. And those kinds of sounds that they're in this video adds to that element. And the first time I encountered Thargoids in that game is when they just started showing up and they hadn't started being aggressive yet, what would happen is, if you were flying through this, a very small region of space where the Thargoids were known to be, they would drag you out of hyperspace, your ship would shut down. So you could do nothing at all. Like, you can even move the joystick to turn around. And this ship would come at you as a big sort of flower petals thing with tentacles coming out of it. And it would scan you or at least that's what people were assuming it was doing. And it makes these weird sounds. And it was terrifying. Because you don't you can't do anything, you'll ship this space. Yeah. And then it would the sky was stopped, it would fly away. And then as it got quite distant, your ship would start coming back to life, and then the ship would disappear off entire space itself. Weird. Yeah. And then so the next phase of it, sometimes the Thargoid would randomly attack the disabled ship. And when he did, you couldn't do anything because your ship was shut down. And of course, things have progressed since then. But that's that's how the Thargoids was appearing. And one of the things that people were praised was the sound design from the game because it really sold the idea that this is an alien thing that is so different from any of the human ships or settlements or other human elements in the game. And I just wanted to praise the game developers for and of course, this filmmaker was right to use those same sounds in his film, because it's, it makes sense that way.

Ricky Grove 24:31
And the problem however, using only in game sound is you can't mix it. And you need to have sounds that are mixed. It's mixed for the game. It's not mixed for the film. And so you have to make sure that certain sounds are more forward in the aural scape and other sounds are in the back. And since they're in the game, they're not mixed properly. That's all for one year. What I would suggest is that using game sounds, but also find ways of either getting the sound original sounds from the game, and then mixing them or using additional sounds to fix it, or additional music to add presence and vibrance in a 360 degree sphere. Just as a sound editor, I'm sure you felt filled, nodding his head, he knows what I'm talking about. But that that's another thing that makes the difference between just a flat a flat sound versus a more live one where things are ahead of you just how we experienced it in life. Something that's close is going to be louder than something that's further away. So you want to mix it in such a way that it fits your intention for the story that you're telling. Makes sense.

Phil Rice 25:51
As well as, you know, tasteful use of some reverb on Yeah, on the voiceovers, for example, they're all very as far as I could tell pretty dry there. Yeah, give a little bit of reverb it gives a sense of the room that they're standing in. So for the voiceovers that are not his thoughts, which some of them are some of them are Captain's Log type, you know, we're hearing him think when he's in a space in the cockpit or in the hole or outside it's going to sound different. And yeah, but that's, that's it's advanced stuff, but it's also not terribly difficult to learn that, you know, it's pretty basic,

Ricky Grove 26:32
pretty simple,

Phil Rice 26:35
easy to get a good result.

Ricky Grove 26:37
Now and every single audio editor every single video editor will have an effect that is reverb that's adjustable so you can go you can do that. One last

Phil Rice 26:49
thing I'll mention here if this film or the you know the scenery are seeing and this has gotten anybody interested in it as either as a game or as a possible machinima platform, keep an eye out on Steam. They run specials on games from time to time that are really drastic. The one that I'm going to tell you about now is already going to be expired by the time you hear this episode, but they do these regularly. And I expect there will be more specials for Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky because Starfield yeah it's the way to be competitive to get more players to come in. And you know, Starfield right now is the new kid on the block. So it's 70 bucks, right? Right now you could go get Elite Dangerous for $7.50 Wow, you could get Elite Dangerous odyssey for $14. So keep an eye out for that. It's one of those things that if you don't if you if you're not logging into steam regularly you're not seeing this or when you when you open steam and it brings up that panel that you have to flip through of your you know, stuff. Look out for those or follow a game on Steam and we'll notify you when it goes on special. There's some amazing deals I picked up No Man's Sky for like 29 bucks, I think and it's normally about a $60 game. Yeah, I think that special was done because they knew Starfield. And they'll continue to I don't know man, sky people or their planets aren't as big as our planet and it's like, so take advantage of that competition. You can you can nab some really nice deals.

Damien Valentine 28:25
I'll say for the Elite Dangerous that those that's the price you just said that's there gets reduced to that level every big Steam sale. So the Steam winter sale, which obviously coming up soon there'll be a there's an autumn sale last week that's going to come up even sooner, or the Summer Sale, which obviously we just missed at this point. But you know, any big Steam sale that's the price for Elite Dangerous, so they may even reduce it a bit more because it's Starfield next time. Sure. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 28:53
Speaking of which, when you're going to tell us about something you just

Damien Valentine 28:56
got? Yes. It's a bit of breaking news about Starfield. Some of them sent this to me just now as we were recording this a mod that they thought would interest me and what it does is it replaces on one planet all the security agents with stormtroopers from Star Wars

Ricky Grove 29:17
perfect perfect.

Damien Valentine 29:20
I don't know if I'm going to install that myself because I like to start real world as it is. But yeah, appreciate the thought that someone thought is a Star Wars mod already? And it's very witty. Yeah. Stormtrooper into Star feels about two weeks since release without the mod tools. What else can people do? Well, we're gonna see before the mod tools are released, so that's why I wanted to bring up because we've already got stormtroopers in now. So the other Star Wars stuff, whether it be Star Trek stuff and all kinds of other stuff being added very quickly. It's funny

Phil Rice 29:53
you should mention that because I actually caught word of a mod for Starfield this week. It said GM it. But yeah, basically, it's an update to the shaders on the on the posterior region of the main female character in the game to make it look more shapely, but I think your mod is probably more interesting, the stormtroopers thing, but yeah, there's a mod for that. There's a mod for that. And it's improved. Something behind something.

Damien Valentine 30:32
Well, I think it really depends on what your interests are.

Phil Rice 30:36
Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't enough at last week. I wasn't enough that last week, I looked at a Sims four. convention with a lot of love scenes I might add. And now yeah, I'm scoping out mods to. Thanks for joining us. It's been a it's been a pleasure and not at all embarrassing and we look forward to visiting with you next week. Have a great day.

Ricky Grove 31:11
Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.