Ricky Grove 00:44
Hey everybody, this is a now for something completely machinima podcast, and we review all sorts of interesting machinima and real time video related technologies and news as well. My name is Ricky grove. I'm your host this time. We're here with my friend Tracy Harwood, Phil rice, hey there and Damian Valentine, hello. We've got four interesting and varied machinima and quasi machinima coming up for you this month. And if you have anything comments you'd like to make, you can contact us at talk at completely machinima.com we do read them in between doing drugs and having sex, but we do read them. So we're our emphasis on the other things there and while we're partying at machinima headquarters, but we do read them. So please send your your comments and ideas in your thoughts and your harangues as well. We do appreciate your criticizing each and every one of us, especially Phil, but we won't get into that now. We're going to talk about a machinima that I picked. And as you may know, if you've been following us, I've vowed, well, about six months ago, to spend a lot of time on archive.org which has a big machinima collection in it. And I've been selecting a machinima from that collection, and I haven't, I don't have a systematic method for doing it. I just go through, find interesting films and watch them. And as I was going through one list, I came across a film called The days after by Andre Pesch, who suddenly occurred to me and says, I remember making a movie with Andre Pesch. And then as I started watching it, I realized, Christ, this is the movie that I made with him. So full disclosure, I am the sound designer in it, and I'm also do the lead voice in it, along with the excellent Ingrid moon. And then as about halfway through it, I realized, for Christ's sake, Phil did the music for this. So this is an entirely nepotistic choice, but I think that I can make the case for it being a great video despite the nepotism. So anyway, Andre Pesch, I remember Andre Pesch doing several innovative videos, machinima. Now we're talking about during sort of the height of the of the machi my golden era. I'm sure Tracy will fill in all the dates and times and places and weather and all of that. But I remember being so impressed with his his filmmaking style that I believe I if I remember correctly, I contacted him, which was something that I did a lot in those days. If I found somebody that I was really interested in and you could do it, it was really easy to do it. So I contacted him, and I said, I want to work with you. And he said he's got this script called the days after science fiction piece. So he sent it to me, and I just loved that. I thought it was truly innovative, and he shot it in Grand Theft Auto. Which one was it? Phil? I think it's San Andreas. San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto, San, but completely unlike any visual metaphors that you can imagine, the characters are somewhat blocky, but that was the state of the 3d model creation in those times. So we worked together, and I contacted Ingrid moon to be because it's about the story is essentially, very simple. It takes place in a post Holocaust world in which people have gone into tribes. That's sort of a trope of science fiction. And one of the tribes are people that have gone to the very top of super skyscrapers. And this is the story of a guy who's gone to the top of a super skyscraper, and he's become very sort of philosophical in his view of himself, and also the he finds the light, the wind, the sky, and everything is interesting, and he's visited by a younger woman who comes. And they become close, and they make the most extraordinary choice to solve the hopeless situation that they're in, which I won't spoil for you, but it's the kind of thing that you just never see in a mainstream movie. So to make a long story short, we worked on it together. I did several versions of the script, and I wanted the voice. I didn't want to do that whisper thing that so many actors do with it. Go into this. You know, you see actors do that, and it's just such a phony. Audiences buy it, but it's just such a phony thing for me. But I did record my I had a little closet studio in those days when I was living at the another address, and I got up very early in the morning, like at dawn, to do the recordings. So my voice would have that lower pitch and also have that cracky sound to it. It would crack and and you just get very interesting quality to my voice, which is normally a tenor voice, as you can tell from listening to this. So I sent him several of them. He loved it, and he started putting it together. And by the way, Ingrid and I rehearsed several times at my place, and it was such a treat working with her. She's not a particularly skilled actress from her background because she hasn't done a lot of acting, but she responded really well to coaching. So we really came together on some interesting stuff, and I was really happy with how it turned out. And I just adore doing the sound effects for it, because it was just so interesting a project. Now at this point, I can't remember, Phil, whether I contacted you about doing the music for it. Do you remember?

Phil Rice 07:05
Yeah, so I can't remember the you didn't contact me to do the music, and neither did Andre, but it was you that reached out to me, and I don't remember if it was just that you were excited about the project and wanted me to see it, or if you had a we you and I used to consult each other quite a bit in those days on sound stuff, on how to do this, and does this turn out right, and things like that. So it may have been that. It may have been, hey, I want a second opinion on the sound mix, on this. And I was just swooned by the film, and I actually brought up, and it was probably initially through you, but then to Andre as well. I said, you know, this, the writing and this, and the execution is, this is, this is something that would actually have a chance in, like a festival setting. It has that feel, I said, but the problem is, you've got copyrighted music, and that's gonna that's gonna give you problems for this film down the road. It may not right now, but this was before YouTube. It kind of figured out how to handle that stuff, right. So right, not only for distribution on YouTube, but if you wanted to enter it into any festivals. I already knew from experience that, Hey, you can't do that and just use, you know, music off your favorite CD or something. So I just mentioned it to him. I says, Look, that's that's gonna be an issue as and I volunteered to score it for him. And basically just says, I think I could come up with something. I'm hearing something here that's great, that fits very well with with Ricky's narration, with the sound. And I think I could put something to this that would really do it justice, and you'd have no copyright worries whatsoever. Would you let me try that and see if you like it? And he did, so that's how I got involved. Yeah, yeah. Look,

Ricky Grove 08:53
music is just fantastic on it. I think we went through one or two iterations of it. I remember giving you some notes, you really

Phil Rice 09:01
kind of evolved, and that we there was kind of some negotiation on, hey, let's get it, let's pull it back here. Because obviously, if there was full volume score through the whole film, none of your sound work would have mattered, right? So, right? We worked that out through negotiation, which I think is how it's best done. You know, yeah, I think it's a back and forth. And, hey, let's pull this back here, and this up here. And yeah, things like that, yeah.

Ricky Grove 09:23
So it and then when we finally finished it and the film came out, it was well received by the public. I think it won an award. Tracy will give us all of that background, but I just thoroughly enjoyed working on this film, and then having put it aside for so many years and coming back to it, I was even more impressed when I watched it again. Yeah, it holds up very well. It just is such a fascinating and interesting film with a Gosh, it's hard to talk about the ending without. Giving it away, so I won't, but I can tell you this, it is one of the most original and anti commercial endings you could ever imagine for an animated film. So that's my report on the film and why I selected it because a I thought I could give some interesting background in information on and Phil could contribute, but also because I thought it was representative of the kind of work that wasn't generally being done. If you if you compare this to something like red versus blue, which is nakedly commercial despite its benefits, this was the kind of thing that wouldn't succeed in a commercial environment. And I admired that, and other people were making works like this in machinima, prime period. And I just wanted to show you one of the films that was very special to me.

Phil Rice 10:54
Yeah, I'm glad you did, because I one of my not fears, but just something that I try to, hopefully help us all as a community, guard against is forgetting works like this. You know, there's such such a volume of of material and movies and, frankly, noise on the internet and stuff, and this is a gem, it really is. And we've talked about several times on this show how writing can make or break a piece. And I think that this is a great example of that, that you can look at this. And if you get, if you look at it on a surface level, you get caught up in, Oh, gee. The animation's so primitive back then, and the figures so blocky, it's like not make any difference. Just listen and it's just wonderfully written. And your performance, Ricky, was just inspired. And honestly, I wouldn't have come up with what I did come up with is probably my favorite piece of film scoring that I've ever done for anyone ever. But it wouldn't have been there without that writing and what he did do with the visuals, that fog and the ending, that I found very disturbing, and still do, even though I can, I can see there that there's a beauty in it, but I, I was rocked by the ending. I think that's probably the intended effect in some way, yes, so yes, but yeah, the score just happened. Like it was just there. It was really just me dictating it. It just came out. It was, it was right off the page, if you will, of the film that you guys had already been constructing. So it was, it was relatively effortless, like, I don't know how I would go about analytically approaching, hey, I'm going to score something like that again. I don't know that I could, you know, it really, just literally was, I just had to get, get down what I was hearing. And I love that, you know, fascinating

Ricky Grove 13:00
how when your focus is on something other than what it is with the actual work, the actual stories and people in place that you're talking about, you tend to have something that isn't very deep. It tends to be somewhat on the surface, and that works out fine people are crazy about that kind of thing in popular circles, but somehow the people who make it aren't as excited or happy about the work as those who have this connection that somehow the story and the place and the Time and the colors and the sounds inspire a group of people to come together, to collaborate in a way that they wouldn't if they're all working off of a crib sheet, you know, a laid out story form that's that is, you know, constructed in order to sell. Yeah, and I think that's what happened here.

Phil Rice 14:01
It's wonderful, the the the atmosphere that this film evokes, and some of the, well, some of the basis of the plot. It's like you watch this, and it's hard, it's hard to believe that this was done in a in 15 or more years before COVID, because the the reason that they're up on the skyscrapers is that there's been a plague, you know, that it's and, and that's not a new idea. And it wasn't new then, you know, but this was just a wonderful take on it. And, yeah, it's, it's kind of hard to believe that this whole notion of the the tribes who who occupy the roofs of buildings that that's not like some Philip K Dick short story no one's ever found or something. You know, it's got that kind of oddity and weirdness that yet is rooted in real, rooted in a plausible, believable world situation. You know, that the world has fallen apart and. And when I first saw it, it, it evoked, for me, the same feeling that I got the first time that I watched. There was a slew of movies in in the late 60s and early 70s that were dealing with this. Everything falls apart. Notion, oh, Omega Man with Charlton Heston, the original, yeah, to a lesser degree. Soylent Green, you know, movies from that, that period where it's just the world is, there's recognizable elements, but it's, it's strange and decayed and, and, and it doesn't look like it's going to end well for the world, right? That there's some kind of someone's hit the reset button on, on the planet, and this, this is that, like, condensed into this just beautiful little morsel, you know, yeah, just, it's, it's, so, yeah, it's, it's wonderful, and that would be true of this story and the voiceover, if even without any of the visuals and even without any of the music that that that's so it goes all the way deep to like it's the origin, the the idea, and the the brevity of the dialog, the efficiency of the dialog or the narration, forgive me, yes, yeah. And so you can, you can really slap almost anything on that, and it's going to be, it's still going to be great. But the fact that he was able to pull out of San Andreas something that looks like that, that I have no idea how he achieved some of that, like that, that particular type of fog, and the way he did the camera, even the opening titles, it just, this is a film that was made by someone who loved what they were doing, and it really, really comes through. So yeah, this one needs to not be forgotten. This movie. This movie. This movie's part of the machine and Plex collection, by the way, which is way back in the day, if a couple years after this film came out, Ricky and I and Ingrid. And I don't remember who else was involved over time, but basically Jason Choi was originally part of it, that's right. And we basically it was kind of an archival project to, hey, let's something in us new that we need to snare this stuff and keep it somewhere safe and preserve it like, almost like a time capsule, because the YouTube is blowing up and not knocking red versus blue, but that was the more common and more popular content, and it's Like all that noise is going to drown out art like this. So I'm really glad we did that. And even though the site isn't still running, we've still got the collection of films. It's up, and as long as I'm around, I'm going to keep it up somewhere. And this is one of those films. If you're interested in more work from this, let's call it a golden age of artistic machinima, that collection is a great place to start, for sure. Yep, yep.

Damien Valentine 18:04
The I remember when this film was released and Ricky, I think both you and Ingrid contact me say you really need to watch this. But I think I'd already seen it at that point, because I'd seen it on the ah, yeah, but it was having so blown away by the story and the very bleak world that it portrays. I'm not going to spoil the ending either. It definitely hits harder after having lived through a pandemic than it did. Right? Watched it. Yeah, Ricky, some of your characters thoughts about, I mean, how did they name this virus I remember in the early days of COVID, I mean very similar thoughts. Who named it COVID 19 and the more technical names for it that were being thrown around at the same time. I thought, well, I don't know who designs all this stuff. So those kind of things very relatable to what's when I was watching this again. It's definitely not an easy film to watch, but that's the point. And I enjoyed watching it again. I It was such a good film. And, Phil, you said something about the thing, blocky and everything, but the way to look at it now is it's a stylized style of animation. It's not photo realistic. And when you try and do photo realistic machinima, it ages badly, because photo realism progresses so quickly. If you're going for that cartoony look, it doesn't matter so much, because that will persist for longer. Yeah.

Phil Rice 19:38
Isn't that funny how that works? That Andre made this film look this way because, like Ricky said, that was, you know, that was pretty close to as good as you could get. You know, it wasn't maybe the best that was available at the time, but it was a standard for sure. But nowadays, if someone were to make a film that has. Um, for lack of a better phrase, a limited palette, on purpose, it would be admired for that, right? So it is interesting that that if, if your focus is on the the tech you're you're kind of missing something important there. Yeah, that's, that's so true,

Damien Valentine 20:16
yeah. And I, something I've been thinking about over the course of making this show is when we look at some of these older machinima films, they still hold up if they've gone for the cartoony look, because, well, it's just like a stylized cartoon. It doesn't have to be realistic. But Ricky, I'm glad you didn't choose this film early on when we making this show, when we were still living to the end of the pandemic, because I don't think we could have watched it comfortably. Would

Phil Rice 20:44
have been even harder. Yeah, yeah.

Damien Valentine 20:47
But yeah, and I think enough time has passed now that you can watch it and it's still, it's still a very powerful film without making you feel like I don't want to be watching this at all. So yeah, this is an excellent film to bring back. So thank you.

Tracy Harwood 21:04
Well, I've never seen this before. I didn't know, so I came at this completely fresh, and I don't know how I missed it. I'm sure, or at least ways, if I had seen it. It hadn't stuck. So, you know, my thoughts are kind of fresh and very, very similar to what you've all been saying, Actually, which probably no surprise. I mean, my first immediate thought was how prescient it is, What a terrifying and yet strangely euphoric take of what happens in the days after a pandemic has wiped humankind out, leaving, yes, only a few survivors and and I, I like the reflection, actually, that this then evoked in me, because we've lived through that. So obviously. And I've got two different takes on it, and I'll share both. I think, obviously there's a literal, you know, T40X virus take, which I think is a really interesting perspective and timely, because, of course, we, we, you know, we have nothing now, if not a warning. Well, warning after warning, frankly, of what happens during and after pandemics. I mean COVID being the most shocking of all. But before that, there was AIDS, which caused similar shocks to society during the I want to say 80s and 90s and certainly, certainly late 80s, early 90s, and then SARS in certain parts of the world. Also, you know, great shock from that. And more recently, we've had Ebola and Mpox, and now we're currently going through the h5n1 bird flu, making its jump between species again. So you know, these kind of pandemics are absolutely horrific, and they, you know, I think few things though, have done to humanity, what COVID did on a global scale. And I think really, what, what, what the living memory from for most will be that lived through. That will be the enforced lockdowns. That'll be the abiding thing that folks remember. And I think what's so interestingly told in this that It foretells that situation, although evidently, these weren't necessarily mandates and and choices made by the characters in the in the film, or didn't seem to be so what's compelling, I think, is the in this particular short is the is the the fear of loneliness, the evidence of isolation, on what happens when you do even accidentally come into contact with other people, and how between you, you can manifest these kind of constructed responses in your kind of unique perspective of whatever it is you're experiencing, and then question whether or not it ever really happened at All, because you've lost your grip on reality and all the things that are around you and and I, I suspect, having you know we've because that, I mean that, to me, was exactly what played out on the social platforms during all the lockdowns, folks continually losing that sense of reality. I mean, even now, people that, people that I know, talk about lost years. There's three years where they just don't have the memory of them at all. Yeah, and what you've captured in this short is what those Well, that's, I mean, it's i. It's so contemporary in what we experienced. It's the perfect portrayal of it, and yet so many years before, before it actually happened. But I also think there's another perspective, and that's perhaps maybe a unique to you perspective, Ricky and maybe not literal, and it's possibly not even what you were thinking when you made the choice here, but you could also reflect on this in relation to pretty much any life altering event. And I wonder if this selection isn't influenced because of what's been happening la in LA recently, those awful fires, devastating the environment, changing it from everything that you recognize and having to be prepared to leave somewhere you are familiar with to some somewhere else. Well, kind of almost, I

Ricky Grove 25:49
suppose I didn't think of that. Yeah, that's interesting. Well,

Tracy Harwood 25:52
that's, that was another thing that kind of crossed my mind. And then I thought, actually, what this could be is pretty much anything that's life changing then, then. I mean, you know, a virus is one thing. But of course, it's not the only kind of disaster that has this kind of impact, these natural disasters, war, all of these things can kind of create this kind of disorientation. And you say that in this, in the in your narration, you say something like war, crime, patriotism, you can name those things, but you can never fix them. And I thought that was such a powerful Yeah, that's just a delicious life. It's a cracking line, isn't it? You could just think about that in any any context that is playing out for us right now and then. Then I was thinking about, you know, there's, you know, you're not normally known for your sentimentality, Ricky. And I was thinking, well, the names of these characters, it's actually a little bit of sentiment, sentimentality there with, you know, reference to to Bogart and Ingrid, I'm guessing Casablanca ish. First

Ricky Grove 27:05
thing, I thought, yeah. Well,

Tracy Harwood 27:08
yeah, exactly. And then again, the the LA reference and the fires and what have you. And I was thinking, well, GTA San Andreas. What else would it be in? Yeah. So I think it's very timely to be discussing a film like this, even though it's nothing to do with today, but something that you've created, I want

Ricky Grove 27:28
to remind you, at the end of Casablanca, they walk out into the fog they

Tracy Harwood 27:33
do indeed at the end,

Ricky Grove 27:37
and in a way, They parallel that in right short film. Days after,

Tracy Harwood 27:42
well, I was going to say, in terms of the editing and the esthetic style, the fog, the black and black and white or grayed out, whatever the filter was, what color it was, I mean, and the way that the characters are presented is really interesting. I really, actually, you know, the way the characters are blackened out. It's like this virus has made people, shadows or ghosts themselves, fascinating, and when they and when the the two characters interact. I don't know if you picked up on this as well, but they became more colored. It was like they had then facial features, which I think was a really interesting way to convey this, what you know, what this horrific virus has done to them, and how, you know, bringing people together creates a different color to the to the scene.

Ricky Grove 28:41
In a sense, they recapture their humanity a bit

Tracy Harwood 28:45
indeed, and just by that little use of color at that point, real, real craft has gone into that. I think that's brilliantly done. I think the music design was really interesting as well, because the the the atmospherics, the atmospheric nation, or it was, was was really well done. I mean, it conveyed, it really conveyed the sense of fear, and at times, almost this kind of winning over this virus. And was kind of a conquering vibe to it, and and a euphoria. And I found, I don't know if you heard this, the this sound of gulls. I had sounds of

Ricky Grove 28:45
goals. Oh, I put that in. Did you? That

Tracy Harwood 28:49
was Ricky. I thought that was strangely comforting, if not at odds with what you actually see on the screen. Because it kind of feels like there's a, you know, a sense of survival over the odds.

Ricky Grove 29:41
Well, I wanted it to be, I wanted to be so ambiguous that it might possibly be interpreted as coming from his mind, oh, his memory, as opposed to being real. Goals that high.

Tracy Harwood 29:54
Okay. Well, I think for me, what it conveyed was, was hopefulness. Yes, primarily through the through the connection of the characters, but those gulls also conveyed a little something there as well. I think, yeah, I, when I was looking at the background of this, it was evident there had been an original release of it, and I didn't know because, because I saw him comment on, or some comments on, the fact that you'd seen a pre release of this and that it had been taken down because of copyrighted music. I wondered what the original music was

Phil Rice 30:37
for. I can't remember. It wasn't. It wasn't I recognized, but yeah, it was more rock.

Ricky Grove 30:41
Was a sort of Euro rock. Was it a little space rock to it, but it had a kind of more rhythmic, more driving rhythm to the whole thing, and actually worked quite well. Yeah,

Phil Rice 30:55
I was gonna say it was not a bad fit at all.

Tracy Harwood 31:00
So euphoria was the intention, then, by the sounds of it, sort of because I, because I don't know whether to reveal this bit or not, but, but to me, That ending was euphoric, but not in the way that I was expecting it to be. And certainly, you know, certainly you know you, I guess you kind of well without it's difficult

Ricky Grove 31:25
to actually really comment down. It's hard to talk about it without giving it away. It's ambiguous.

Tracy Harwood 31:28
Shall we say, let's, let's, let's put it. That's a good word. I like, I like the ambiguity of it because I like, I like the the the bit where you're not sure whether it's the virus that has made a decision or the people.

Ricky Grove 31:44
Let's do this. Let's folks who are listening to this. If you don't want to know what the ending is, then stop right here and then come back and listen to it after you've watched the film. We really need to talk about the ending specifically. So this is going to be a spoil. I think we've given enough warning. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 32:14
go ahead. Tracy, well, I was going to say, I mean, the fact that these guys just sort of, you know, connect and then decide to end it. I just really didn't see that coming. I don't know why, because ended

Ricky Grove 32:29
by jumping off of the high rise skyscraper together, yeah, at the same time.

Tracy Harwood 32:35
Or do they? Is that, you know? And then then I was thinking, well, they obviously decided to do that. And then I was thinking, actually, you know that because of the way they seem to be saying they were embodying the virus, maybe the virus made, I don't know that that ambiguity about the ending was just

Phil Rice 32:50
as the ambiguities. Is the ambiguity simply because we didn't actually see them fall.

Ricky Grove 32:56
Well, he doesn't have the reverse shot. He has them running towards the camera, but it doesn't have the reverse shot of them over the edge,

Phil Rice 33:03
because, to me, it's heavily implied that they do, but you're right, they don't actually, you know, there's no Hans Gruber from Die Hard falling, you know, yeah, 100 stories. There's no scene like that to confirm it. So I guess, I guess one could say that you could hope against hope, that that they didn't. But then my thought is, all right, so where are they getting their food? This is what. This is probably why. It's not a Philip K Dick story, right? You know, because there's certain things. It's like, how are they eating? Yeah, no plant life. There's no animals up there. But you know, it's, it's one of those things where it, it doesn't matter for this, because it's not the point. This isn't a survival epic. It's right. It's more of someone coming to terms with with a situation. I think,

Ricky Grove 33:52
well, it's ironic, because you have these two people who have experienced an absolute disaster, a world disaster, and they're in despair, and they've lost their sense of being connectedness and being human. And then they find it, and there's a romantic element to it as well, and their decision after that connection is to stop their lives. Yeah, that's just there's audiences. If you played this to a mainstream TV audience, or if it was done as a film, they'd get up and rage at the screen.

Tracy Harwood 34:34
But you know what I liked?

Phil Rice 34:35
One other thing I want to add to that, before we move too far away from from that, is the way that I've the way that I came to understand it was, you know, what is, for many people, one of the biggest fears, and that would be dying alone. Living alone is one thing, and that's rough and isolation. Is is really hard on a person you know, on any person, even a psychopath. Eventually, you know, isolation will get to them. But for most people, living alone is hard, but dying alone is terrifying. So in a way, I felt like that, that these two were in despair, possibly from for a number of reasons, but possibly also because I'm gonna die alone, and now I don't have to, I can go into whatever that is and not be alone. And that's the way to do it, you know, yeah, but it's it is weird, and it would be very controversial to to most audiences, I think because it's it's only a hop, skip and a jump away from that line of thinking to some kind of justification of murder suicide, right? And that's not what the film's trying to do at all. This is, this is more of this. Outcome is pen is pending and inevitable, and it's a choice of, how are we going to face it? We're going to choose our own. We're going to choose it. That's right, yeah. And this, it's, it's weird to say that that's romantic, but that, technically, is what it is. Yeah, it is Louise,

Tracy Harwood 36:17
isn't it? Oh, absolutely, yeah. So

Damien Valentine 36:20
when I watched it, and I don't want to make light of COVID when I say this, because obviously that was horrific time. Millions of people have didn't survive it, but I found myself wondering if COVID had been worse to the point it was similar to this film, would I have made the same choice as these two characters? And I don't know the answer to that.

Ricky Grove 36:42
Well, you won't, because until you're confronted with the situation, because otherwise, you'll have to imagine it. Yeah, and our imagination is not a substitute for actual reality.

Damien Valentine 36:53
That's true, but it did just get me thinking about that. Would I do that? And yeah, you're right. Ricky, I wouldn't know until the time comes. And thankfully, COVID wasn't as bad as the virus in this particular video.

Ricky Grove 36:56
Well, that's one reason why science fiction and filmmakers and storytellers love those life changing, world changing moments, because it puts people in a situation where they have to make choices that are unavoidable, and they have to make it from their true selves, not because there's some trying to impress someone else, or whether they're trying to follow some sort of social habit or a social trope. They're making them because that's what they want. Yeah,

Phil Rice 37:40
I heard a lecture by a clinical psychologist once he had very interesting take on this notion that, basically, the reason we have thoughts are so our thoughts, our ideas, can die, so we don't have to, you know, and I feel like to some degree that's that's part of science fiction's conceit. Is what is, let's look at this unthinkable and horrific and you know, situation, because it's safe to do so, we can do so and not die, yes, because the only, the only other way to experience it, like you were saying to Damien, is to be there. Well, that sucks. You know, there's no happy ending on this story right there. We don't know happy ending so well,

Tracy Harwood 38:27
yeah, unless you look at it in the sense that what's real anyway, yeah. And how do we know?

Ricky Grove 38:37
Well, I think I fall from a super high high rise building, and your impact on the concrete the low would be considered a real thing,

Tracy Harwood 38:48
but you wouldn't know anything about that.

Ricky Grove 38:51
I would right up until the moment of impact, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 38:56
but you certainly would be conveying it. That's

Damien Valentine 38:58
actually just got me wondering, What if Ingrid isn't really there? Oh,

Phil Rice 39:05
no, that's cool. Yeah, I take it she is. But it's an interesting thought. It's a very interesting thought, especially with what we discussed, discussed about what isolation does to someone. Yeah, that's

Ricky Grove 39:16
right, and I think that's a tribute to the excellent and art of this short film that we have so many things that we can imagine and think about, and it gives so many different impressions by this use of clever use of ambiguity in the story,

Tracy Harwood 39:32
absolutely. Well, of course,

Phil Rice 39:34
do we know what Andrew Andre went on to do? No, I've looked I've had a tough time keeping up with him over the years?

Tracy Harwood 39:41
Yeah, no, I've looked him up. I cannot find anything. I wondered if you did. But what I did want to say before I close my bit, is that this one the German bit Film Festival, Best machinima in 2006 and that same year later, on that same year, it was nominated. In the best machinima film category for the National Museum of Photography film and television's BAF Awards, which I'm guessing is US based, not sure, or maybe UK based, either way, it was incredibly successful and a real testimony to the to the quality of the work that you all did on it. I could find nothing about Andre so I don't know

Ricky Grove 40:28
what he was, a slippery fellow. And I'd like to give you a little piece of information that we might be able to close on, and that is, I was so moved by the world that Andre Pesch created, but I showed it to my partner, Lisa, who's a professional writer, and she liked it enough. And I said, Can you imagine a sequel to this? And she went away, and about a week later, she came back with a script for a sequel to this. Now her take now you, I know you look on your faces. Sequel, the two leads die at the end. Well, her idea was that the two main characters of this story were misinformed, and they made assumptions about the plague, and the plague wasn't nearly as bad as they thought it was, and that there that in the time they were on the top of the high rise, there had been major improvements in people's lives, and the virus had been essentially conquered. So she says, why not a story of young punk kids who are still enjoying the chaos down below but don't have to worry about the virus anymore. So the scene opens with these four kids led by this wild ass woman, who are trying to break into places to get stuff. And then out of the blue, these two clumps occur near them, and those are the two people from the previous story. And they go over, and they're like, going, Holy shit, look at this. Oh man. What are they? And then the girl said they jumped. Well, what do you mean? They jump, they jump because they're so fucking stupid. And then the story goes on from there.

Tracy Harwood 42:27
Wow, did that ever get made? Well,

Ricky Grove 42:30
here's the thing. I was really excited about this story. It had a lot of potential. It was a bit different in style from the original, right, but incorporated it in very original and unique ways. And Lisa's a very good writer, so the dialog was very tight. So I send it to Andre, and it took him forever to reply, and he says, Well, yeah, maybe, you know, so being a dumb ass like I am, I just assumed that he was interested, but he didn't like the idea of turning over the writing control of the story. So I kept after him, and kept after him, and I even came up with some examples and and character designs and stuff like that, trying to get him on board. And he eventually just faded away.

Phil Rice 43:21
So this was a while ago. Oh yeah, this

Ricky Grove 43:24
was the year way back

Tracy Harwood 43:27
when six, seven, then yeah, and

Ricky Grove 43:31
wow, a couple years later, I tried to contact him again about it, no response. So I thought you guys might find that interesting. That is interesting.

Damien Valentine 43:40
Yeah, that's definitely a very unique way to make a sequel, and I like it, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 43:47
what a shame. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 43:49
I think Andre could have done something with this, but personally, I think he just liked the idea of exploring this one story, and he didn't want to go further and story, but who knows

Phil Rice 44:02
what else was going on in his life? Yeah, exactly, career and all that. And I'm not even certain what age he was when he made this so who knows, but I sure have missed his voice, even if it wasn't a sequel to this film. I sure would have loved to have seen him make something else. But yeah, he seems to have been satisfied by this experience and just

Tracy Harwood 44:21
don Yeah, yeah. I mean, I did look his channel up, and there's nothing that's been on it for sort of 18 years kind of thing, right? No, I

Ricky Grove 44:31
think, I think he did what many others did, was they moved away from machinima to other things,

Tracy Harwood 44:37
yeah, but at least he got to tell one good story, absolutely,

Phil Rice 44:40
yeah, if you're gonna make one and only one, this is it hard to do worse than this, yeah, pretty phenomenal. Great that you

Tracy Harwood 44:49
are all in it. I think it's fantastic. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 44:51
recognize my voice at the beginning. Well, you know, you

Tracy Harwood 44:55
got a great accent going. I did recognize your voice. Of course I did. But, but. And you'd you sounded very in character,

Ricky Grove 45:06
yeah, I sort of made him a middle, middle Western kind of guy with harder ours, yeah, like an everyday kind of Joe, like, if this happened in St Louis or Detroit.

Phil Rice 45:18
I think my favorite thing about this whole thing is that you you found this movie and had to watch it to realize that you had helped make it delightful. We have been at this a long time for that to happen. That is awesome. Well, I'm glad you found this film, Ricky,

Ricky Grove 45:45
it's just

Phil Rice 45:50
wow. This is really good. I wonder who made

Ricky Grove 45:55
me everybody. I'm glad you liked your choice. I certainly glad that we were able to share with everybody listening. Well, that's our show today. Unless you guys have any final thoughts you don't want to add. Okay, great. Now, if you know anything about Andre Pecsh, if you know about his life or any of the other films, if you've done some research, if you collaborated with him, please contact us at talk at completely machinima.com We'd like tomorrow to know more, or if you're just interested in what we have to say and you have a comment, send it to us. We do read them. I'm got my tongue in my cheek, but we do read them and we take them seriously. So thank you guys for another interesting show, and appreciate your comments and your thoughts. We'll see you again next time goodbye,

46:41
bye, bye, bye, bye.