Damien Valentine 00:44
Hello and welcome to another episode of now for something completely machinima. I'm Damon Valentine, and I'm joined by Phil rice and Tracy Harwood, hello. Hello. Ricky is absent this week. He is it's January, so he is currently getting ready for Halloween. We look forward to seeing what he does there, but we will be talking about a film pick, and this time, it's mine, and it's called The Little limpet, which is a film made with dangerous now this actually came up I was setting up my blue sky account and following all The same people that I followed on Twitter, and I'm afraid I don't remember the original post, but someone said this is the best Elite Dangerous film I've ever seen. So I immediately, I clicked the link to watch it, and it's very different. It's not what you'd expect from Elite Dangerous film. This is more of a Pixar type film. It's made by someone called commander. Nick Webb 85 now, the commander is a title that every player in the league dangerous has. That's how you recognize other actual other players. So Nick Webb has created this film, and it's about a limpet which in the game with these robotic drones that you can have for your ship, and they've got different purposes, like you can refuel other players, or you can mine or repair on the ships and so on. Now, the purpose of this particular I believe, is mining, and the idea is it's that it gets left behind by the player like this, returns the ship, and the ship jumps away before it can get back. And so it's kind of left stranded in space, and it's got a little animated face that picks it's got a little sad face on it. Now, I believe the input itself was animated in Blender, but the actual background footage is from the game. So they combined the two sets of footage. But you wouldn't know it because they've combined the way they composted it. It looks like it's in the game. Oftentimes you'll see something, yeah, I can see that that's not quite lined up, right? The lighting is off. Or, as a, you know, a light an edge around where they haven't quite removed the background from the the top layer, like you can see in my hand here in this video, this looks perfect, like you. That is all done in one and I will see that there is actually a second episode, which is, I think that's more blender, but it's worth watching as well, but I think I prefer the first one. So what do you guys think? Yeah, well,

Tracy Harwood 03:12
you want me to go first? Phil, sure. I mean, I think it's, this is interesting. It to me is basically a kid's story about this droid, a little bot, which, you know, you say, is called a limpet in the game. I obviously don't play the game, so I don't know very much about the game, but clearly from watching this, you definitely get the sense that it's a story where this droid mines asteroid rocks and then returns them to the mothership, for, I don't know, for analysis or treasure or cargo. You're not really too sure exactly why they go back to the ship. But I think what's intriguing about it is this has this kind of Disney like quality to it, and I should say, made in in Blender, using the the game's assets. And I think the it's, it's both the sound it makes, and also this LED face on this, on this limpet that kind of, well, it looks a bit Wall-E's Eve, like, do you

Phil Rice 04:13
remember that character? Yeah, I thought of Wall-E a lot watching this. Yeah, I

Tracy Harwood 04:18
did. And it's, it's clearly the way that it's used that facial animation on that little lead panel is clearly designed to sort of be its communication tool. And I think what's it's kind of intriguing. It's kind of, it's somehow got this kind of happy go lucky, sort of fun and peaceful spirit to it. And then there's this kind of taint of danger thrown in, although it's not really made all that much of in terms of the actual nature of the threat that this little bot faces during its its time away from the mothership. I do. I think also what adds to this actually, that gives you the sense of this Disney likeness to it. Or Pixar likeness to it is the quality of the scoring, which was by TokoSo and actually, I think it's that soundscape and the music that it's put to is it just really enhances the perceived quality the animation and the communication of that kind of story. And I think, if I'm being really critical, I think it's actually the soundscape, that music, that scoring, that actually carries it through. Let me explain what I mean there. I think it's quite interesting how this creator has managed to build a personality for this drawing by the end of these three minutes that you are watching this, you get really invested in this bot finding its mothership, with emphasis being on the word mother, it's, it's almost like it's a lost calf in a in a David Attenborough or national geo kind of although, why a ship would return? I have no idea. But then you know why things happen in a natural environment too. Isn't always that clear. But after creating that level of investment in our sort of lead character, this, this little bot, I think what's strange is, is the ending and it and it's, it's both a surprise and a bit of a downer. Now, I won't really reveal this as sort of specifics of it. Suffice to say, I'm not sure why you would go to all the bother to develop and illustrate the personality of this little bot in order to tell it its story with it, with the focus on that single limpet, if it was going to be its last journey, which it clearly is. So what I took from this is that it's it's actually an experimental film. It's not, it's not designed to be a story. It's just purely an experiment where the where the creator is attempting to learn how to portray emotions through story and characterization. And I think at that level, the creator has certainly succeeded. I mean, there's the, you know, you really do go on an emotional journey with this is there's a lot of depth to it, but it's also quite simplistically done. You do get a sense, for example, of fulfillment and fun, and also fear and danger, and then determination and relief and a little bit of love, but then also sadness and disappointment, or, you know, or or an appreciation of the real danger that this little droid faces in the end, if you like, and all of that, I think, is brilliantly well crafted, but perhaps what it lacks, in general is an actual story that makes sense. Or maybe that's the point that there just isn't a story in I mean, in the game our limpet, it's just disposable things, or is there more of a point to them? And I think if it's the latter, then this short perhaps needed more of a wider context in relation to the role of a limpet to convey how and why the life of this one limpet was worth that focus and and I'm only saying it to be sort of kind of super critical, because I do think there's something there, there's there's something there, so much so that I actually went and looked at episode two, because I I wanted to see what else he had done with it. And have to say, I actually liked episode two more than this first one, but that's because it really reminded me of those beautifully synchronous swimming scenes from those classic Busby Barkley movies that we used to love as kids, and again, in it, there's no story as such. But somehow that portrayal of those little droids performing this space ballet, it's not an opera here, it's a space ballet just somehow seemed to make a little bit more sense than what we saw in this particular episode. I guess the only thing that disappointed me in that was the fact that the Creator didn't properly credit the music, which was Strauss's Vienna's walls in that in that episode too, which I was a little bit disappointed that he didn't do that, but yeah, those are my general thoughts. I don't know if they kind of make sense, but that's where it led me to on the way I was thinking about it. Yeah. I think it

09:30
makes sense, yeah.

Phil Rice 09:33
So my impression of Part One was almost identical to yours Tracy, before seeing part two in that it's a sense of, alright, there's, there's a loose story here, but yeah, it doesn't really make any sense to me that that the, the only interpretation of the story that I could that was lifting out. Out of it. For me, was a very dark one of almost nihilistic, like you said that this, this thing, is just what? Why did we follow the story of this, this limpet, just to to see it be decommissioned? We're kind of spoiling the hell out of it now. But no, well,

Damien Valentine 10:16
it's only three minutes long. It's not a huge amount to it, right, right?

Phil Rice 10:22
So I was like, really ready to, like, criticize it. I'm still going to criticize it, but it's but the criticism is a little different after having seen Part Two. It's certainly not a story with, with a clear cut narrative, so to speak. But there's a story there. There's something there. My criticism now would be the choice to split it between parts one and part two, where, where the Creator chose to split it. That makes all the difference in the world. Again, spoilers, spoilers. If you don't want spoilers, then pause and go watch it and come back. But you know, for all intents and purposes, the the limpet is essentially presumed dead at the end of episode one, less than a minute into Episode Two, it's clear that's not going to be the long term, uh, outcome, right? Why? So, why stop that? The the death. It's like there's nothing to really carry you into the next chapter. So you know, and how to explain that, did he not have part two planned until part one, you know, maybe performed better than he thought, and so I guess I'll continue this now. I don't know either way. It's still if it was always planned for part one to end in a demise, then why all this, you know? Why was Tom Cook's music so uplifting and so Pixar ish and Disney ish and like a happy, like you said, it felt like a, like a children's tale almost, you know? So, yeah, it's, to me, it's a strange decision to have spliced it between the let's assume that the two episodes were always planned. So why split it there? Split it a little bit after when the light comes back on, on the limpet, and so you're like, oh, okay, he's all right. You know that, to me, would have been more appropriate, even if you weren't going to do part two. So yeah, it's, but yeah, there's, not a whole lot to grasp onto in terms of narrative structure here. It's more of like a narrative feeling, I guess. And yeah, there's some questions that I have that maybe a player of the game wouldn't have in terms of, you know, where do these Where do these limpets fit into the into nature's hierarchy in that world? You know, are, are they just like something that's almost an afterthought, that's and he's chosen to, let's, let's go macro on, on those little forgotten creatures that are part of what makes the world tick. You know, is this, that type of thing? I don't know, maybe so how much that would change what I feel. I don't know. I don't know how to estimate that, but that's kind of a sense that I get of it is that, is that these limpets, assuming they're called that in the game, they're not necessarily something that a lot of attention is called to within the game itself. They're, they're like a side

Damien Valentine 13:19
thing, yeah, they're a piece of equipment you can attach to your ship, so it's like an MMO, but instead of a character, thoughts or whatever, like, gotcha ships a character.

Phil Rice 13:28
So they're not central to the elite, dangerous, no overall,

Damien Valentine 13:34
right? When I played it, so, okay, they're completely optional,

Phil Rice 13:37
yeah? So that's and that's the kind of machinima that that Ricky, in particular, likes, is paying attention to something in the game world that maybe wasn't intended to draw tons of attention. But let's focus in on that and see what story we could pull out of that. He talks about it within the context of games like Red Dead Redemption, right some side NPC that you see in one scene. And let's go tell that guy's story, you know. And those work really well. It's more challenging in this, as, you know, a silent film. And, yeah, all the all the Wally ish things that were naturally going to anyone who's watched those types of films, they're naturally going to impose that and bring that as baggage to this film, you know, so it, I think a lot of the sympathetic nature of the Olympic character in this is inherited from those traditions, more than it's been actually earned in this film. If that makes sense. You know, which is fine, you know, there's nothing wrong with leaning on traditions. So, yeah, I was, I was confused by part one by itself, I was a little bit less confused after part two, but not because the narrative I feel like was given. Any real resolution, but just more of, just a sense of, I just, I was really revulsed by the idea of that limpets narrative being over in the way that chapter one leaves you thinking. It just didn't, it just didn't feel right. It wasn't really, it wasn't like, Oh, you got me really attached to this, and now I'm upset that you killed off the character. It's more of just a sense of that doesn't really make any sense. It's like, I don't know. It's weird, because we want to encourage people to not be slaves to to narrative cliches and such. And yet, if it's not bolted onto something, then it's, it's hard to it's hard to digest, it's hard to contextualize, it's hard to to know what to make of it. Yeah, the compositing. I can't, I can't I think if I, if I think about it from the point of view of a filmmaker, I can, I can, I feel pretty confident. I can intuit where he would have used compositing, but visually, I can't detect it like it's really nicely done.

Damien Valentine 16:15
I think it's more obvious in the second part, okay,

Phil Rice 16:19
but yeah, yeah, that's probably true. I didn't, I wasn't watching the second part with with analytical eyes like that, so you're probably right, yeah. But in the first one, yeah, it's pretty nice. I mean, there was even one point where a shadow came into play on one of the asteroids that it was going to connect with, and I found myself wondering, gee, now is that compositing, and if it was, how would you do that? That's interesting, you know, yeah, so it's, it's nice, it's, uh, it's nicely made. You know, visually, I do like the composer stuff. Tom Cook is his name. He goes by Toko. So I read up a little bit on him, on his website. He's been playing Elite Dangerous for 10 years, and has made like a little side thing of creating music for people who do YouTube stuff with Elite Dangerous. And he's done it for at least a dozen short films like this, and even released and then created some stuff just of his own, that's of an elite, dangerous theme, I guess you would say, and released them as, like little independent albums. So, yeah, I that's a that's a man after my heart, for sure. I like that so, but yeah, it's neat that he's, he's, it's not just someone that was hired out from somewhere. It's, it gets my imagination going up. So how did they How did they encounter each other? How did they find each other? Because he was there doing this, and Nick Webb 85 found out about it. I don't know there's a story there that's probably, probably kind of charming. So I'm wondering if the reason that the classical music that you pointed out was in use in part two, Tracy now Tom Cook is credited as music and additional sound in the description of that video, just like he is in the first one. So if that is a classical piece, and it's out of public domain, if it's in public domain, the actual piece itself, then maybe Tom performed it, in which case, yeah, that

Damien Valentine 18:34
piece of music has a long history with the elite games as well, that they

Tracy Harwood 18:39
Okay, yeah. And

Phil Rice 18:40
it very much evokes, evokes a lot of that

Damien Valentine 18:45
Kubrick 2001 that's why it's in the game, right, right? In one of the older games, it, when you're talking with a space station, it would you have the option of having music play, and it would usually be that piece that would come just like in 2000

Phil Rice 19:01
but it's not this. Is it the same piece as 2001 because I think the the 2001 wasn't it like the blue danube or something? Is the options as

Damien Valentine 19:10
well? Okay, yeah. I think they were inspired by 2001 and then put various famous classical pieces in, yeah.

Phil Rice 19:17
Oh. It works. It works for a background of especially with how they they choreograph this, like ballet scene works really nicely for that. Yeah, so anyway, yeah, I guess I'm left with mixed feelings about it. I feel like a little bit more, a little bit more could have been done narrative wise. That would, to me, would have made it more interesting, like I would have even loved to see. Are you familiar with the children's book called Are You? My mother

19:50
thinks, I know.

Phil Rice 19:52
Okay, this is a, it's, it's of the Dr Seuss variety of book with the illustrations and everything. But it's not a Dr Seuss type. I don't believe it's someone else, but it's this baby bird that gets that falls out of the nest and then goes on this little quest to find its mother. And so it's asking all these different creatures and things that it encounters, are you my mother,

Damien Valentine 20:17
actually? And I think I am from you this by just didn't.

Phil Rice 20:19
Yeah, it's a classic. It's a classic. So I very much struck. I found myself started like visualizing of, oh, you could do something like that with with this, where the limpid is the Lost baby bird and the mothership is the mother, of course. So, yeah, it's, I guess that's a that's a sign when, when, when the narrative is maybe not, not quite as compelling as it could be, is that your mind starts fabricating other possibilities for it, you know. So anyway, it's one, one thing in particular that I'll give it a definite hats off for is it definitely defies the expectations of what one would expect from an elite, dangerous film. And maybe that's what that commenter meant, Damian, when they said, This is the best ever. Is really what the essence of what they're saying there is, this is not like anything you'd ever expect from that. And in that sense, that's correct, that is, and I like that. I like, I like the idea of playing with it in that way. So, yeah, good pick. Yeah, I'm

Damien Valentine 21:30
gonna check out. I gotta check out that music composer because I didn't check the description, which I should have done. I do like the idea that games can inspire creativity, not just in machinima, but other forms as well, like fan art, and, in this case, music. Yeah,

Phil Rice 21:44
he's got, he's got a whole tab. He's got tabs across the top of the website, right? And one of the tabs is elite, dangerous, and it's just all about his history with the game and, and, and then examples of music that he's done, and the albums are down at the bottom. It's pretty sharp, and his picture is on the homepage. He's not, he looks like a musician. Okay, not what you'd expect him to look like. Yeah, he looks cool. Man. He looks really cool. So

Damien Valentine 22:12
well, you know, I'm listening to after we finish recording today.

Phil Rice 22:16
Yeah, for you listeners, if you don't want to dig into the description, it's Tom cook sound.co.uk, that's his website. Well,

Damien Valentine 22:27
I think that's everything we've got to say about this film for our listeners. If you have a little bit about elite, dangerous or the little Olympics, or if you know, if you're involved with the project and you want to give us some feedback and tell us how we're right or wrong. Please send us an email at talk at completed mission com. You can check out our blog at completely missionary.com and we'll be back next week with another film. Take care and goodbye.

22:54
Bye, bye. You.