Phil Rice 00:35
You. Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I am one of your hosts, Phil Rice, and with me is Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove and Damian Valentine. Hey there. It's good to be back with you guys. I was out last month, as everyone knows, and yeah, it's really good to be back. I missed you.

Ricky Grove 01:06
We really miss you too. In fact, there was at one point we all paused in our commentary, which was the place where you would start talking, and we all were going, No, Phil, where are you?

Tracy Harwood 01:18
Yeah, we definitely missed your perspective for sure. Yeah, thank

Phil Rice 01:22
you. Thank you. Okay, so this week, we are going to be looking way back into the past. This is our own little way back machine here, because we have a very old but very memorable machinima piece that Ricky found in the Internet Archive. Ricky, why don't you tell us about it?

Ricky Grove 01:43
Sure will. Now, the archive had a DDS attack for a while, and they had a hard time getting it back up again, but it's up. And their machinima collection, which we had talked extensively a couple episodes about, is probably the best archive of machinima. And I had mentioned that I was going to go through and pull some little candy from that archive. One of the sections of the archive is Warcraft movies. And as I was going through it, I came across a terrific movie now that I think it's terrific. It's called kaneohes. The internet is for porn. And I remember when this thing came out in 2005 November, 2005 and I will It's funny how your mood or your particular way of looking at things affects your judgment. Because when I first watched it, I thought it was trite, and although the music was kind of fun, I thought the whole thing was just tasteless and trite, and so I just threw it away. So when I came across it, while I was looking through the archive, I said, No, I just better watch that again. And my reaction to it is entirely different. Now. This is what 20 years ago now, and I'm a different person than I was. I hope I've grown a little bit, but I don't know why I thought it was trite, because it's not trite at all. It's fun, especially the music. It's a music, I guess you would call it a musical shot inside of World of Warcraft and well, that's the subject. The internet is for porn. There's a young woman who is saying she really loves the internet to do stuff, and then these, uh, sort of rough voiced counter to her saying, No, it's all for porn. It's for porn. Porn, porn. It's a witty and funny short film that, over the 1010, years, from 2005 to 2015 It had almost 10 million views. It was one of the most popular machinima around. And I'll leave it to Tracy to give you all the background rather than belaboring all of that and getting corrections from her, I'll just let her do all of the background information.

04:03
What are you saying?

Ricky Grove 04:04
Well, no, I mean, you, that's what you do, so I'll let you do it. But I found it to be just delightful. It brightened up my day. It's the kind of of machinima that just makes you happy to watch. It's short. If I had any criticism of it, it would be the version on the Machinima archive is pretty low res. There's been a remaster of it by screw loose on YouTube, in which he's up. He's upgraded it to 4k and it looks much better on there. So we'll provide the link for that, and that's what I think you should watch. I'm glad that the Machinima archive has it there, but it's not a very high quality version, and that makes it look much better. My only real problem with the film is that the visual editing and the visual style. Uh, is not as interesting as the actual music and the performances. The animation is somewhat primitive, but I guess that's adds to the charm of it. But the editing seems to be a little jerky. I think it could have been more smoothly edited. But this, again, this is 2005 so it's fairly early in the Machinima cycle. Today, it would probably have better editing, because they're better tools, but that was my only criticism of it. But I just loved it, and I very much urge you to head over to the archive, watch this movie that remastered, which we'll give you the link for, and then check out the archive for the other if you're a big fan of Warcraft movies, they've got a ton. They've got over 100 there. And there's some really good World of Warcraft movies. And I'm not a fan of that particular style, but boy, this one really hit my funny bone. I was I just just loved it. What did you guys think of

Tracy Harwood 06:02
let me go next, because there's some comments that I'm going to make which you can pick up on, and I think it might make a little bit more sense, if you like, if that's all right. Okay, so it's actually edited to a song that was written by Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez from the Broadway musical Avenue Q, and that features a muppet parody of the friends situation comedy based on the everyday lives of these neighbors in a in in New York City as I understand it, the WoW creators exploited the games emoticons to sync horde performances with that particular song. Now I must have seen this, but I frankly, don't really remember it. I think it's brilliantly well edited. As you said,

Ricky Grove 06:47
well with no I said I didn't like the editing well. I

Tracy Harwood 06:52
like the editing. I thought it was, it was bang on the music in terms of the in terms of the music track itself. And as you said, you know, lots and lots of views. It actually sits in the in the all time, top 20 World of Warcraft machinimas on on the Warcraft movies Forum, which, by the way, includes people like Martin Falk, Baron Soosdan mindflay nim and also Olivi, if you remember Olivia well, and as you said, 10s of millions of views of it. Literally, I've picked up channels where there's also millions of views of it. So I'd say it, well, well, far and away, exceeds the 10 million that you mentioned. I bet it's it's as popular as as anything, all over the all over the web, wherever it is, even right up to to today. Now, the film was uploaded to the WoW movies forum by Kaneohe, who obviously also uploaded it to how they got game archive, which is the Internet Archive that you picked it from Ricky. Now, Kaneohe was commented that the video was made by community members on the Argent Dawn role playing server, which I'll put a link to, because that's that service still going strong. There's a lot, lot happening in it. I couldn't actually find anything in that, though, that relates to the original creators with their original handles in the community today, though, and I didn't do, you know, a way back check on it, just to see if they, you know, what point they sort of dropped out. Because, I guess the way this was created was probably a little bit of locking around fun by these guys called Evil hoof and flayed back in those early days of the interweb, when, frankly, it was a bit of a wild west. And I think what this is, is actually a commentary, a reflective commentary, on the state of the art of the technology at the time the you know, in terms of the musical it exploits this kind of asexual and innocent nature of children's entertainment puppets, which challenge, really, the kind of political correctness through its various songs by, you know, using these Muppet like Sesame Street like characters, but giving them adult concerns and desires. So at face value, this Machinima is really very much a parody of society at large, and it's achieved by presenting these World of Warcraft characters, which are themselves, products of the internet, as proxy agents who view and gain pleasure from pornographic material, basically in in commentary to the behavior of the WoW players at the time. I'd like to say things have changed a bit since then, since this was released, perhaps a few things have but I don't, I don't really think that that's actually true. However, the other thing to bear in mind within World of Warcraft is that porn, P, A, W, N, has other connotations. Porn is an add on that could help players assess upgrades for their characters. So it wasn't really so much about sex, but a kind of gameplay corruption with a view to enabling. Players to quickly identify the ranked value of loot and armor that they won as they were playing. So it was a bit of a corruption of the game in that sense. And then there is also another term, P, w n, I think, sometimes pronounced porn, but from what I can see, it might also be own P, O, W, N, and that term was apparently first using quake two days, so 9496 ish in reference to when a player was beaten by the computer or dominated by another player. And among the WoW fans, it's often thought that it came about because of a misspelling, not unlike, really, the way machinima as a term came about in itself, whether you know the I was inserted instead of an E in the middle of it, with the original term being a derivation of perfectly owned or owned, possibly having been typed on a non English computer keyboard, or possibly as a typo, there's a there's a few theories out there. Anyway, it's since become part of common language in World of Warcraft, part of the what they call the elite speak culture, which was a form of language used by the black hat hackers to communicate to each other in those very early versions of classic WoW, and ironically, porn, in that sense, is a term that's still used today in cyber security too, indicating that a computer system has been hacked. So I would say this classic Machinima is still very much a double entendre parody of contemporary internet culture, and it's a great pick. I'm guessing you guys have got comments about that porn stuff, as in, not the P, O, R, N, variety, wow. Yeah, yeah.

Phil Rice 11:50
I do. I do remember when P, W, N, you know that that definition? I remember when that that came into fashion, and it was during the Quick, quick two days. This is pre YouTube, of course, but there was someone who had a show with that word in the title. I can't remember what it was, but, and yeah, that was, that was the definition of it being dominated within the game. That definition of pwn was what, what it was widely understood to be, and it has hung on, and I do see it in kind of modern day. I it connotations, and, yeah, it typically just has, has something to do with with that. I never would have listened to this song, or, you know, watch this video, and thought about that as a double meaning? I don't, I don't know if, if you substitute that notion into the Lyric, I don't know if it makes nearly as much sense as the literal commentary, which I've just always thought was a a widely held understanding of that, let's say adult interests seem to generally lead the way on the internet, and it has been since the very, very early days, right when, when it was one picture being downloaded, you know, A raster, a raster line at a time or

Ricky Grove 13:22
Second Life, making most of its money from their porn part of

Phil Rice 13:25
Right, right, right. So anyway, yeah, it's I didn't have quite as dramatic a different reaction to it as Ricky did, but mine was analogous to that. I didn't really, I didn't find well, because I remember when this film came out, and it was good for a little chuckle, but it never really like this. That wasn't really the era yet where I had, where sharing was a popular thing, I guess not for me, maybe because I was older than the norm then, or whatever, but it's not one that I would have forwarded around like it's not that level of funny to me, but it was cute and and, and I just thought it was just an entertaining way to comment on this kind of dark truth about The Internet that we all kind of know. And, you know, maybe wish it wasn't so, but it is so. And I had, I had a slightly, slightly more appreciation for it, seeing it. Now, I wasn't, I guess I was kind of dismissive of it back then, but I was, I was not particularly impressed with the whole genre, if you can call it, that, the whole esthetic of Warcraft films back then, it never got me. I've never played the game. I've never been interested in playing the game. So and I think that that that matter. Dollars, especially when it was it at the peak of its popularity and its heyday. Films made within the game that you play are always going to have kind of a magical extra level of appeal. So I kind of, I kind of cut myself out of the loop in that regard by just never really getting into Warcraft. But there were films that came about from the platform that did greatly impress me. But interestingly, I think all of those, okay, they would fall into two categories, one of which is films of this type, but with the little bit of added, let's call it. We've been kind of struggling for what's the term for the editing and stuff that Ricky had pointed out, and I'm going to use the term sophistication. I think that this lacks a certain level of sophistication that is maybe more common in popular machinima nowadays because the tools are more readily available, and also, let's face it, the skill set that you know, the baseline skill set of creators of machima today is generally higher, I think, not universally, but you know the and so our expectation is higher as well. But there were innovators like Baron Susan, like Olivia, who still kind of kept to this category of fun, either fun jokey videos or impressive action videos. That to me, that's what I remember about Baron Susan stuff, most of all is kind of a wow factor to a combination of he was very gifted, a very gifted cinematographer, I feel like that. You know how to take footage from Warcraft and then he would, he would enhance it with After Effects and tools like that to really give it an extra Wow quality. No pun intended. So that was one category, and it was really only those top tier levels of sophistication that made me, made me turn my head and look the others all fall in the category of people who transcended, somehow the base look of Warcraft. So I'm thinking, and now I'm not going to remember any of the names, but there was a series of films, several of which that we covered back in the machiniplex days. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 17:32
Jason Troy,

Phil Rice 17:33
Jason Choi's edge of remorse, yeah, is totally unconventional, the way that he made that film with World of Warcraft assets. It hardly used the game itself at all, if I understand it right. It was more of a beautiful, beautifully composited views. And so he was able to have a level of control over the look and the focus pulls and all those things that you just couldn't it was impossible to do in the game that caught my eye. There's another, oh man, I wish I could remember the names of these, but

Tracy Harwood 18:07
falconston Was it? Snackies journal, I

Phil Rice 18:11
would, I would throw that one more in the in the fun, the fun category, not necessarily the transcendent one. But I'm gonna have to come back to you on, on what those other films were and that the filmmakers names, but all of them did, so by it was never just Warcraft footage. There was there was extra work done with compositing and gave it, gave it like this kind of a fantasy fairy tale type of look. There's some really, really, really gorgeous and evocative results. So anyway, I'm kind of wandering here. I don't mean to, but I think this, this one is has survived long enough past where the Warcraft part of it is what's important. Because I think for most people, that's not right now, it comes down to, is the underlying content funny enough for it to kind of be treated as just a meme, essentially, right? And I think it is. I think that the underlying kind of wink and a nod humor of this is, is what makes it palatable today, whereas, you know, any number of films that were really more about World of Warcraft than they were about something outside of it, probably don't hold up nearly as well, but this has something that is relatable and funny, and the voices are wonderfully done. There's very much a Sesame Street slash Muppets feel one of the voices sounds either like Fauci bear or or animal. Yeah,

Phil Rice 19:48
that real gravel. Oh, that's just great. Really works well for this. So didn't

Ricky Grove 19:52
we make fun of the limited gestures you could do? Oh, yeah, yeah, World of Warcraft with the. Arms going out. You look, and

Phil Rice 20:01
if you look out there, you'll find, I'm sure Ben grusi still has the pictures as well. But if you could find photos of Ricky and I in New York at the Mashima Film Festival in our leather jacket because it was cold, and, yeah, we're mocking all these World of Warcraft poses because it was, it was just kind of funny that it that was going on at the same time that the movies was at its height, and the movies also had, you know, people talk about weird having cartoonish animations, but the movies was like, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to describe I don't know what the hell those were. Yeah, I don't think they were mocapped. I think they were manually they were hand animations, and so there's a little bit of weirdness to him. Now, ultimately, that gave a lot of the movies work its charm. People who knew how to just lean into that instead of trying to hide it, yeah, ended up faring better in the movies. Right? What you so it did. It did, yeah. And I think the same is true for World of Warcraft. That where World of Warcraft animations became a problem is if you were trying to do, if you were trying realistic, more realistic, and just hoping we wouldn't notice that you can't point, you can only do this right? Yeah,

Ricky Grove 21:12
yeah, hoping we wouldn't notice out straight, yeah. And that Jason joy and edge of remorse did a marvelous job of working around that limitation. Yeah,

Phil Rice 21:23
I can't remember the name of the tool that he used to extract things and also pose the models, but yeah, the effect is just, it's just brilliant. I mean, it looks, it looks more like a, it holds up super well today, first of all, but it ends up coming across more like a, like, kind of a glossy anime, than it does in video games. Wonderful. It's wonderful. So anyway, I'm glad you pulled this one up. I hadn't thought about it in a long time, and it was good to revisit it. And kind of you know that that was a that was right in the period of my own kind of second chapter of machinima. This is, this was released just a few months before I released male restroom edict. So yeah, it was when I was kind of coming back after a break of several years and getting so excited and inspired by what people were doing and right? So it's, it's very sentimental for me in a weird way. The the internet for porn is sentimental to me, but only because of its context. I think, yes, not its content.

Damien Valentine 22:30
Um, when this film was released, I was going through a rough time, so I did not have the sense of humor to appreciate it. So I do remember watching it and not being particularly impressed by the topic. So once again, now I can appreciate it a lot more. I do think it's funny. And you know, the internet's for porn. It's one of those internet jokes everyone knows, like the Nigerian prince is another one. You know, if you own the internet for any decent amount of time, you're going to be familiar with these certain internet jokes everyone knows about, and this video perfectly makes fun of one of those. That's just why I feel like you said, it lasts. It holds up, because it's that. It's not about walk out. Yeah, it's hard to follow. And if what you guys are saying, but I'm gonna say I thought about was this song was written so, you know, 20 years ago, using or we think about someone could write a song about a game and record it easily now and to split up on that we didn't have really high quality microphones or recording studios or, you know, good equipment or software to do all the sound mixing back then. So the fact this song was written and recorded and put together so well. I think that really holds up as well. It's

Tracy Harwood 23:45
not, it's not, they didn't do that though. It was written for a Broadway musical. It's a recording that they've just put an animation to. Oh, so

Damien Valentine 23:54
they didn't write this? No, no, no, no. It's

Tracy Harwood 23:56
professionally written. It's from the musical Avenue queue.

Phil Rice 23:59
Okay? The song as is, yes, absolutely.

Phil Rice 24:04
Oh, I didn't catch that either.

Tracy Harwood 24:06
Oh, okay, no, it's definitely something I think you didn't say it.

Phil Rice 24:09
I just didn't, I didn't digest that. That's what I thought. Yeah, when

Damien Valentine 24:12
you said that they'd taken the song but changed the lyrics. No, no, I

Phil Rice 24:18
thought this was like a weird owl approach.

Damien Valentine 24:21
Okay, all right, so just completely disregard the last.

Phil Rice 24:26
We'll edit that out. Yeah, I'm

Tracy Harwood 24:28
guessing you haven't seen Avenue Q, well, maybe you should.

Damien Valentine 24:33
I

Tracy Harwood 24:34
haven't seen it either, to be honest, but I know it's, it's full of those sorts of songs and things. It's kind of like an adult version of the Muppets. That's, that's, that's basically it. So it's not, it's really not about the song at all. It's just that they've edited something to that song, which is why I think there's a, there's two different ways you can read

Damien Valentine 24:56
well as a film to say about the film, and it hasn't already been, it's, yeah. Yeah, I better say I enjoyed watching it now I've boosted a lot more than I did back when it's released. It does kind

Phil Rice 25:06
of have that meme quality now, doesn't it? It's aged well in that way. One other thing that I'd like to mention real quick, and I'm sorry if Damon, if you're not done, but there's a there's an interesting theme regarding sophistication that accidentally, I think, runs through three of the four films that we look at this month, and I'll highlight that in those other episodes as well. But it's, it's something that I've not it's, it's a really weird coincidence, because we do not coordinate our picks at all, like I had no idea what Ricky was going to pick, or what what Damien was going to pick, but there is a common thread that runs through these, and I'll get more into that in it'll be a little more evident, I think, in the other cool other picks. Yeah, cool. All right, well, I if anyone has anyone out there listening, if you've got something to comment on, is this your first experience with with this Warcraft, I think we could call it a classic. What do you think does it hold up? Is it? Does it betray how old all of us on the show are getting that we like this? You know, is this one of those, like, the history of dance video that was like second or third video ever on YouTube or something crazy like that, or does it really hold up? Let us know in the comments. So this week we are going to, we're doing kind of a holiday pick this week, and it is Damien's pick. So Damien, why don't you tell us about it? Right?

Damien Valentine 26:35
So I thought it's December, but it's not when we record this. It will be when this goes out. It'd be fun to see what kind of Christmas machine is out there. And there's lots of stuff, very old stuff made with World of Warcraft. And I watched some of that, and there's some good stuff there. And then I found Blizzard also released a Christmas The 12 Days of Christmas song, but they made it Starcraft. They just released the song, and so people have made mission of videos with that, but they weren't really inspiring me, because it wasn't. It's just shots of the units in the game that matched the lyrics to the song. It didn't really grab me. And then there's lots of Sim stuff, which makes sense, but nothing really crappy that either. And then I decided to just Christmas, and then random game names. So I put Red Dead. I found this, so I watched it. I thought this made me laugh. It's very old school, tiny machine with humor. Um, so it put a little bit of nostalgia in that regard. But I just laughed. And it's Christmas. But in a way, that's very wrong. But I think in some ways, you know, you've got to have a good sense to you about Christmas. And you know, this, this, this is, this is by Christmas machinima. And I thought this is the one I'm going to pick and share with you guys. So that's my thought process on choosing it. Um, it's not necessarily the best made film ever. It's just the one that entertained me the most when I was looking for Christmas from cinema. So that's why I chose it.

Tracy Harwood 28:08
Well,

Phil Rice 28:09
yeah, I think I'll go ahead and go next. I think part of the charm of this film and also the thing that makes it fit into a theme that stretches across multiple selections that we've done this month is that very lack of perfection and sophistic strangely and it is, it's it's entertaining to watch, but it's loaded with flaws, like flaws that you know someone looking to craft the perfect short or film would would blanch at. But they're the kind of flaws that you're it is. It's old school where you just either you just didn't care about that, and so the fact that you know the Christmas tree clips through someone's body, or all manner of just little, little defects and stuff that that my inner filmmaker goes, maybe you should have done another take of that or something, but that's not the spirit in which this was made. It wasn't laziness. It was. It's a loose style that kind of flagrantly ignores the rules, the quote, unquote, rules of what you're supposed to do for a short film, right? There's, there's, there's got to be this certain coherence to the story that that you know it needs to kind of fit a mold, and especially a Christmas story. So, you know, it needs to be, needs to be something that someone might accidentally mistake, as is this based on Dickens? No one's thinking that about this, right? It also doesn't follow any comedic formula, either. Like, you know, this isn't the type of thing that would be pretty. Produced, you know, by Saturday Night Live or one of the sketch comedy places, because it doesn't have a formula, and it doesn't have polish and all that. And it's what's it's what's so appealing about it, I think, and interesting about it. And it's something, this is a thing that only machinima can do. You know, machinima Can, can quite successfully imitate other forms of media to varying degrees of success. And you see a lot of people that kind of strive to do that. I often strive to do that in in work that I work on, where I want it to seem like a mock advertisement that you might see on a sketch comedy show. Or I want it to to emulate, you know, with obit. I want it to emulate how a short film might be put together if it was at Sundance or something like that. Like it needs to have that sheen and that, that that, you know, everything's got to be as just right as possible and all that. And this just doesn't seem to give a crap about any of that, and it's what I love about it. And only machinima can do this like you can't really. You couldn't make a film like if, if you factor out the animation part of it, somebody couldn't make a film like this with the quirks it has, with an iPhone and their friends. You can make something silly and fun, for sure, plenty of people do that. But there's something, maybe it's just me, because I'm so rooted in the video game tradition and the Machinima tradition that those little rough edges can actually have a charm. And I think part of it is so when you see those types of flaws in a film and you think, ah, they missed that, or, ah, they didn't know how to fix that, that's too bad. Or, or maybe not even tisk tisking, it maybe just going well that, you know, they're, they're new to this, you know, they'll, they'll get better at that. No, that's not what this is at all. This is a flagrant disregard for the rules. Excuse me, bump the mic there for the rules. And I love it. I love it for that. I think there was a minor element of that spirit in the internet is for porn, which was Ricky's pick for this month, where there's this, there's a sense of that was not, that was not the target that this era was aiming for at all, is Polish and perfection. It was something else. And that's clearly what's going on here. And there's a chaotic element to it that reminds me a little bit of, I don't remember the title of it, but that, that Red Dead Redemption two film that we revealed a couple years ago, where it's like a dream sequence, a nightmare sequence. The wacky, yeah, the wacky Wild West, right? Yeah. There's a little bit of an element of that, this, this kind of freneticness to things, and the voices are all kind of over the top, you know, shouting when they don't need to. And, of course, I believe you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe all the voiceovers in this are actual lines of dialog from the game. Just re contextualized every single line is, I recognized a lot of them, so I think that they, it's, it's almost a remix, in a sense. And then, yeah, the visuals are just weird, and using some different mods and props and stuff like that, that are, you know, that are from the world of red, Dead Redemption. But like, not in place. It's, it's a little bit, it seems self aware about its quirkiness in a weird way, without ever identifying it on the nose, but the film knows what it is, you know. So, yeah, what a unique pick, and what a refreshing one. You know, I'm not cynical, really about the holidays. If you've seen my holiday my one holiday film, you might think that I am that was really just me working through anger about a very specific situation. Many, many years ago. I love the holidays, especially having had kids and stuff. I like this time of year. It's, it's, it's good, but the the the stories that, the the the cliches and the tropes around Christmas every as I get older, it's just like, Man, this is just so tiresome. It's the same, the three wise men, really. You know, it's like, just so something like this that just again, flagrant disregard for the rules. I love it so great. Pick Damian. A lot of fun, short and sweet. I mean, it's just the perfect little morsel. It's clearly junk food and delicious.

Tracy Harwood 34:47
I completely agree. I love this. You know what? It's a year old, pretty much as as this episode goes out, but it's gonna be one of those future holiday classics I do. Leave. And you know what? For me, it was seemingly in the mold a little bit of, also one of my favorite all time films, films, which was the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which could only ever have starred Chevy Chase. But you know what, John Marston is very like Chevy Chase in this, I think it's, it's really, it's, it's definitely in that sort of mad, crazy, kind of fun mold. I loved it. What I think, what I think I particularly liked about it, though, is that it is yet another attempt to show the dysfunctional people in the Red Dead Redemption world through this kind of slice of life portrayal. And you kind of, you sit there and you watching it, and you think, well, what could possibly go wrong? And yet, pretty much everything can. But you know what? I bet it's actually a lot closer to real life experiences around Christmas than many of us would ever like to admit, which I think is what makes it such such a good film. Yeah, the editing is a little wooden, and the performances are sort of overly and badly puppeted, but this is the is exactly the kind of animated stylistic approach that is perfect for the story being told. And who would have thought, for example, that a classic Christmas song, Jingle Bells could be smashed together with Western music. Who would have thought that that one horse open sleigh could be a a wagon and horse carrying a looted tree? I mean, who would have done that and and who would have thought also that the reference to the kind of craziness of the clantons Is it, was it clanton's And the hillbillies roadkill diet would actually really fit this kind of Christmas theme, but it does. I don't know if it's this is true in the US, but certainly here in the UK, I don't know, Damon, this is your experience, but every single Christmas for as long as I can remember, the power drops here in our house, because everyone is cooking their meal at the same time, and dinner seems to take twice the length of time. One, it one, one should expect it to take, because the oven doesn't get anywhere near as hot as it should. Food never cooks. It I don't know why. It just doesn't cook. And that's, that's, I mean, that's just a sort of a truism. And yet, you know, the other side of this is that. And again, who hasn't experienced this, Santa appears to make an appearance in this film, and he's drunk and he's demanding food at the most inappropriate of times. I mean, that is absolutely what happens, isn't it? You get that, you know that that person that drops in your door with stuff which are still having the most mega argument. I mean, that absolutely happens. I think for sure, it's a really great reminder of all things jolly and fun with with families at Christmas time. But I would, I suppose, what I would say is, don't be like the Marstons and kick the dog and kill each other.

Damien Valentine 38:02
I don't steal your Christmas tree.

Tracy Harwood 38:04
No, try not to do that either. That's definitely why I would recommend, not recommend doing that. But I guess what I would say is in great sort of embrace the chaotic imperfections of the holiday season in all its forms and and this is a lovely way to sort of to do that, I think by watching this nice machinima. It's a lovely machine. Thank you. Damien,

Damien Valentine 38:24
Oh, glad you both enjoyed it. Phil, I just wanted to respond to what you say about the imperfections in the film. I was thinking, as you were saying, that if this film did not have the imperfections, it would not work exactly, exactly that bit when he's cutting the tree and the saw is going down rather than the cross. Yeah, that if he'd done it across, it just wouldn't have been funny. But I

Phil Rice 38:44
would go so far as to say that if, if any of the elements of production had polish, it would look out of place and probably ruin the film. Yeah? Normally it's the opposite, right? Normally it's that man. They nailed the visuals. They nailed this, and the sound is just not there. And that's what sticks out in this, in a film like this, it's, it's the lack of polish, is the cohesion. It's really, really counterintuitive, but it's true, absolutely.

Tracy Harwood 39:16
Yeah, it's brilliant.

Phil Rice 39:18
This is definitely one listeners that you should plan on bringing out and showing the family as you're gathered for the holidays this year. It's, it's, it's a holiday classic. Yeah, you can watch this is one. It's a Wonderful Life. And then this will be all set, maybe a little miracle on 34th Street, or something happy

Tracy Harwood 39:39
Christmas one and all. That's right, that's right. Well, let

Phil Rice 39:43
us know what you think in the comments, and if you'd like to drop us an email, it's talk at completely machinima.com my name is,

Ricky Grove 39:50
I wanted to quickly mention that there is a very interesting new 20th anniversary of half life. Do. Two that's been released. They've updated several things. These fixed textures, bug fixes. I actually was pulled away from Elden ring to start playing it again. But the most the coolest thing is that I was able to jump back into Source Filmmaker, and which is just a fantastic tool. The learning curve is a bit high, but it's fascinating. And there's some really fairly recent within this last year tutorials on them, although the original valve tutorials are quite good, but the big thing I wanted to mention was that that source two filmmaker can be accessed, and that's the source two engine. And but the downside of it is, is that half life two you can access the Source Filmmaker for free, but source two, you have to buy the Alex episode, the VR Alex episode to be able to get access to source two. Now, source two has so many more interesting tools to it. It's got a better look. It's got ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, all sorts of great tools, the browsing for models and browsing for sky boxes and everything is just terrific. I'm going to do a little write up on it for our blog, but I'm currently jumping back into that, and it's very exciting. So I just wanted to add that, in case you didn't cover it all in the news,

Tracy Harwood 41:34
thank you. That's great. That's really interesting.

Phil Rice 41:36
So other than that, the source two component you were referring to, Ricky, is everything else, something that, like, if, if I'm a steam subscriber, I've, I've got the whole half life two bundled years ago. So basically having that, if I update it, I'm going to have access to to some of that new

Ricky Grove 41:55
stuff. Is that? Right? Yes, exactly, exactly. Now they have an updated source filled the Original Source Filmmaker, but they have updated some in the Source SDK, which is what allows you to model and create levels inside of half life. But you do have to pay for source two filmmaker, which is a higher, more professional level environment for making movies. I

Phil Rice 42:19
think that's actually a good move that they're that they're doing now, you know that these tools we've kind of gotten spoiled over the years, I think, to where we just expect they're going to be given to us for free with the games, right? But the truth is, they're not free, and they have a different set of demands, I think, for development, than the game does. And it's a different audience, too, and many of those audience would be willing to fork over a little bit to help fund that. So, I know that's a, maybe a weird take, but I think it's a good thing that they're giving, giving users of it, the opportunity to vote with their wallet on it, if you will. You know, I think that's about actually a positive thing,

Ricky Grove 43:00
I think so too.

Phil Rice 43:02
Well, that is it for our episode. I am Phil Rice with me has been Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove and Damian Valentine, and we will see you next time. Bye, everybody. I'll.