Damien Valentine 00:35
hello and welcome to another episode of and now for something completely machinima. I'm joined by my co host, Ricky Grove, hey and Tracy Harwood, hello. Phil is absent there this month because he's dealing with the aftermath of the recent hurricane. He is completely fine. He's just got a lot of work to do to help the the clean up where he is. So he present for the next few weeks. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, he is fine. So don't worry about him. He's just incredibly busy at the moment, but we look forward to his return indeed, next month, absolutely. Yeah, right. So we've got, we still got some films to discuss, and this week we're going to be discussing Ricky. So what, what have you chosen for us?

Tracy Harwood 07:47
want me to go next?

Damien Valentine 07:50
You go first.

Tracy Harwood 07:52
Okay, I thought this was a really beautiful 3d animation. And by the way, I think it's been made using Maya. Maya, hang on, I did find out Maya, Renderman, new Kex, Houdini, 3d substance painters, Ed brush and and a few others. So it's proper, traditional. Through the animation, I didn't see unreal as being one of the tools, though,

Damien Valentine 08:22
I was just guessing, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 08:25
I mean, it could well have been, but I don't think it was in this particular case. I mean, what? What an excellent pick. Name is Nicole Montgomery, so I just thought I'd throw that out there as well. So Thanks, Nicole, because she's Nicole, yeah, commenting on our on our video. Thank you really, really appreciate that. Well, what a masterful story this is. It's I, you know, I, I sort of thought about Pixar when I was looking at this, and I thought, in the end, actually, it's not really a Pixar ish like thing for me. And I think that, I think primarily it's because it seemed to combine the sort of, what's the word beneficent type bots with more of a Maleficent type bot?

Damien Valentine 09:15
Oh, we're being quite wordy today.

Tracy Harwood 09:18
Yeah, quite wordy. I just thought, even though I can remember the words, but these are the, you know, the it sort of combines these two things and put puts them in in this environment so that. So you've got three, three bots that are very different, but you'll be familiar with each of their personalities as it kind of unfolds, and I, and as I was watching it, I kind of got a sense of a bit, a bit of sort of Wally, perhaps a bit of a Pixar film, yes, a bit of Prometheus David eight, a bit of azimuth. How, and also a little bit of War of the Worlds. So, you know, some very different kind of alien, like things going on, on there, with these, with these machines. I'd call it a society of robots, in some respects. And as you said, there's this vacuum bot who as he's kind of dusting, uncovers this kind of natural world by, you know, accidentally knocking over the controls for the TV and flicking the TV on to this recording of a nature documentary with a, you know, beautiful scenery and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know this, this bot clearly wants to escape its perennial task of sweeping floors to see this world for itself. And yet, it's clearly kind of battery charged. It's very much in the in the mold of an eye robot, you know, floor cleaner and what have you. You've got another bot that's a Robbie like thing who appears to do the maintenance around the home, but clearly has this sort of love of playing music, particularly one vinyl that it plays over and over again, I would say, evidently, from a machine that it's been instructed to maintain, as it has also the vacuum. So it's got this sort of suite of machines that it kind of looks after, and then this sort of slave master AI thing that's clearly taken its task to to heart and and basically it will not allow the others to deviate one bit from whatever their daily tasks are. So what you've then got between these, these three bot, these three bot, like things, is tension between what they're all supposed to do and and then each have this sort of desire to do, to do something that's sort of slightly outside of whatever it's been set up to do. And this tension as this film unfolds, this tension builds between these things to the point at which they destroy each other simply by doing what they want to do. And then you've this to me, this finishes on a kind of a classic scene where all three bots for all three things are kind of illustrated as being hoist by their own petard, reinforced by that beautiful lens flare, that rainbow lens flare, on a world outside when the doors open and and this world is nothing like the natural world that this vacuum bot has seen portrayed on this television screen. There's his whole purpose for getting out was to see that. And, of course, the world isn't like that anymore. And, and in many ways, what I thought, thought about this was, it's, it's a moral tale for bots, which I thought was, was just incredibly well done. Soundscape, I thought was very well done. I mean, six minutes at that just sort of flew past with this. Yeah, yeah. It didn't take six minutes to watch this. Weirdly, it just, you know, I could watch it several times and and enjoyed it every every single time that I watched it, and I wasn't at all surprised to see that it had won a Best Animation award in 2003 at the rookies, which I think was very well deserved, I think, in some very interesting ways this, this film beautifully reminded me of Peter Rasmussen storytelling with robots in the early 2000s and I'm sure both of you will remember this. He did a couple of really early test shorts before he then made stolen life. And you can see, if you're interested, you can see stolen life on Phil's Vimeo channel, where he's restored the the you know, Peter's work. It's really worth having a look at it, though, because although the difference between stolen life and what you're seeing here is that that that film, stolen life, was voice acted, and in many ways, that voice acting made up for the lack of animation quality, and in this this film, the richness comes not from the voice acting, because there is none, but from the cinematic quality the animation itself. But for me, what I got out of this was the same sense of personality that Peter managed to achieve in that very early example. Of machine machine cinema. It's not machinima, as you say, but it's certainly machine cinema. And these personalities are kind of embedded in these kind of mechatronic beasts. And it's that personality that that articulation of personality in the sense of it, that really made me think of the way Peter had achieved that, because I've not seen anything like that before. Peter's work, each is kind of very different. Has very different jobs. It has a very different persona as well. And again, that's what made me think of Peter's film. Yeah. I mean, I suppose the other thing to mention is this particular piece has been inspired partly by the work of Zaha Hadid. And I think if you know Hadid's architectural designs, you'll see very clearly in the in the vacuum bots, the kind of the curves in the machine. But you'll also see the curves in the in the room design as well, and also the colors, color scheme, the bronzes and the beiges, very characteristic of Zahid, sorry, Hadid's designs. So, yeah, I thought it was, I mean, lots and lots of references in it. I think as well, there were, there were, you know, when I was looking at the comments, so these guys were making about this film. There's a couple of points that they made, which I think is worth reflecting on a little bit, because I was looking at that the maintenance bot, and thinking Robbie the Robot. But actually their reference wasn't to Robbie, but to Boston Dynamics Atlas and one or two other comments that they were sort of making, which really weren't cinematic references at all, but they were design references and engineering references, which I thought was quite intriguing. And I suppose really, you know, we've often sort of said that the kind of techniques that we're seeing, you know, 3d animation techniques that we're seeing, have lots of other potential uses beyond cinema and film, and beyond integrating game and what have you into the creative process. But I think this one's quite interesting, because it's clearly drawing on other cultural references as well architecture, for one, but engineering and, you know, production design for another and I guess, you know, we might see a little bit more of that kind of type of reference going forward, as 3d animation becomes more embedded in creative practice across a whole spectrum of potential applications. So I really like this for a whole range of reasons. Yeah, I mean, I think that's all I probably better say about it. But it was a great pick. Ricky and to Nicole again, thanks for sharing it with us. Really good.

Damien Valentine 18:12
I appreciate that. Please. Anyone who wants to recommend the film, we'd like to look at machinima, but occasionally we'll look at a traditional animation like this, traditional meaning it's rendered. You know, each scene is rendered using a probably a render farm, as opposed to being rendered in real time, which is what Machinima is about. But we'll look at that and thank you again. Nicole, that was so much fun to watch this movie. Damien, what are your thoughts?

Damien Valentine 18:45
Yeah, thank you, Nicole for telling us this, because I really enjoyed it as well. Yeah, you're right. This isn't the kind of a cinema that we normally discuss, but I'm glad that we you know we are now, because I really enjoyed this film, and it's one of those films where the plot is fairly straightforward and it sets out the events unfold the way you expect, but also doesn't explain everything, so you're kind of your imagination is left to try and fill in the gaps, like what happened to the people that built this place? Were those robots always like sentient? Or did they develop that over time? I started thinking about things like that, and then at the end, when the doors open, you see the world outside, thinking, I wonder what's out there, what's around the corner where you can't see and of course, we don't see that, because that's where the film ends. But you know, I quite like films that don't give you all the answers. They've just enough that you can imagine the world outside, what's out of frame and so on. And I thought the animation was stunning. So the room by the tight bots, you know, it's just a circle, basically, but it's still, you could feel its emotions just from the way it moved, even though its actual. Movement was very limited to what it could do. And then the other robot that actually there's more humanoid shape, you can do more with that, because arms and legs and it can move around. And they've also got the snake AI bot. I thought that was a security bot. It was its goal to prevent anyone getting in and out. Yeah, because it's got that snake like appearance, you know, it can be very aggressive, because our perspective of snakes is they're hostile. So you can bring that in across very easily. So I thought this was an excellent piece of work. It's really hard to add more to what you guys already spoken about it, but yeah,

Damien Valentine 20:42
coming at the end of the when you're at the end of the conversation, you should go first then,

Damien Valentine 20:49
well, I will, because my film next. Yeah, okay. But yeah, this is, this is the rigor film. And also I was working on something, and I wasn't quite happy with the way it was looking. So when I watched this, I thought, I This is giving me some ideas on how to improve the quality of my own work. So I went back and adjusted some things, not quite there yet, but you know, I'm happier with because I watched this and was able to learn from it. So that's another reason I like this film. Marvelous

Damien Valentine 21:19
one.

Damien Valentine 21:20
This is an excellent film. I'm

Damien Valentine 21:23
glad there was one moment that I was particularly taken with, and that was when the the sort of home robot, the Robbie figure, if you will, played the vinyl they I got the feeling that it was female. So I'm just going to say she, but she danced the same thing. She danced to it. And I thought the animation in that dancing sequence, which occurs, I think twice, was just so magnificent. It was so beautifully done because you have this rough, square robot that that moves in linear fashion suddenly is moving in curves and is very lyrical and dancing. I just thought that was a magnificent piece of work, you know. And the last thing I wanted to close with this made me think about something you said, Tracy, which was the the time just flew by. It was six minutes, but it didn't feel like it. I think that's a sign, and we, we use it all the time. When we look at films of engagement, I think directors and films do a disservice, or they they're they're not working well if they don't engage you. So the time stops. Time just becomes meaningless. It wasn't 30 seconds into this film that I immediately it could have been 20 minutes and I wouldn't have known the difference, whereas I think other films, they forget that engagement of the audience, and they're so involved in presenting their own visual things or their storytelling things, that they forget that that the audience has to be involved in your your film, whatever it is, whether even if it's an avant garde film or a music video we'll see later This month, there's a music video pick, and we can talk about it then. But that was one of the things that they succeeded masterfully. It's as if all of the technical work, and believe me, CGI animation is as hard and it takes a lot of time. This team was, what, seven to 10 people, I'm sure they worked months on trying to get this thing together, thus no easy fee. So even though all of these technical elements come together, you forget all about them because you're so involved in the world and the story and that I thought was masterful. And I hope these students have great success in their professional careers.

Tracy Harwood 24:00
Yeah, I agree with

Damien Valentine 24:04
that at the time as well. I looked at the runtime before it started, and then it got here, so it can't be that long already. But yeah, yeah. I wish these students all the best as well. I hope to get to see some more of their work before they get snapped up by big companies and we lose track of who they are. Yeah, I wish you all the best. And again, thank you for choosing this, and thank you for the chick for sending it to us, because I think we all say to say we all enjoyed it a great deal. So if you have any more films like this, please send them in, and that goes to anyone else listening as well. Send your comments and feedback to talk at complete mission.com and we will, as you can see, we we read all the comments and responses we get. So yeah, this whole. Episode wouldn't exist without feedback. So that's right, so I think that's it for this episode from me David Valentine and from Ricky and Tracy, and we'll be back next week with another film pick. So take care, bye, bye, bye. See you. Then you.