Phil Rice 00:40
You. Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. I'm here with my name is Phil rice. I'm here with my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damian Valentine. Hello. Ricky is not here. He is stranded at the top of a baobab tree in Madagascar. Dang it. That was supposed to be smooth. Ricky has has decided to take about a month off, and so, thereby issuing a challenge to us, to me, to come up with. He's convinced that I can't come up with enough interesting reasons, fictional reasons, to explain his absence. Let me just say Ricky challenge accepted, sir, challenge accepted. So stay tuned for the next couple episodes on that. So in this week's episode, we're talking about one of the Machinima films that have been picked for this month. This month is or this week is my pick, and the film is called Battle of Badr 624, AD, rise of Islam. And it's by a YouTube channel that calls itself Bellum Ed historia. I hope I pronounced that right. So this was, this film is very interesting to me, because it struck me as it reminded me of it's been a long time since I've had cable. I cut the cord quite a few years ago, but the History Channel was always one of my favorites because of the documentaries that they would do on there. And we've seen different filmmakers over the years do documentary style storytelling. I'm not going to be able to remember any of their names, but one of them, I know, was an I clone, and was set during either the Greek or Roman Empire. Very, very well done something that impressed a lot of us. And this is in that vein. This is basically, and all the videos on this channel are of the same basic type. It's, it's basically a portrayal of a battle from history, and with just narration commentary. It's got the animations of the representing the battle. It's got sound effects, and it's very nicely rendered. I'm not 100% sure I'm checking now, but I believe that this is using a video game. Tracy will be able to, Tracy, you're going to be my chat GPT on that to extract that information. But here's the description of the video. The battle. Battle of Badr, also referred to as the day of the criterion in the Quran and by Muslims, was fought on March 13, 624, CE, near the present day city of Badr al bedida province in Saudi Arabia. This is basically a iconic battle from from Islamic history. It's kind of considered one of the key moments in is that movement going to survive or not kind of thing. It's, it's, everything's on the line. They've been driven out of their home territory, and basically now this, this other, this opposition army is coming to convince that they're going to finish them off. They've got them on the run. They've got them down. So it's a, it's a, it's a very intriguing underdog story. I love these types of battle stories from history, even though recognizing that many of them may just be the stuff of legend, but they happen so frequently that you got to think, okay, at least sometimes this was true. I mean, all the way back in even in the Old Testament, in the Bible, there's stories where, you know, the Israelites have a few 100 and they're against a few 1000, and somehow they prevail. And all throughout history, there's, there's stories of things. Like this, even to some degree, there's, there's, there's some battle stories in the American Revolution where, you know, Washington and his men are pinned down and they're freezing to death in the winter, and somehow they managed to to prevail in a battle against vastly superior forces. I mean, the the British army at the time, was the single biggest military power in the world, like bar none at the time, and somehow they prevailed in this battle. I like those stories. They're interesting. It taps into that, that underdog type of vein, and what? Again, whether or not there's fantastic elements to it, or whether or not it's historically true maybe isn't so relevant. It's just this is the way that these stories tend to get told, you know, and very often it's attributed to, you know, some divine intervention or a higher power that caused it to go that way. Because how else do we account for that? You know, typically battles go by the numbers. If you've got them outnumbered, unless there's some strange event related to terrain or weather or something, you're going to prevail, right? And so this is an instance where it went the other way, and I find it very interesting. And then also, just, it's a really nicely rendered battle scene that looks like, looks very much like something like you would have seen in the old days on the History Channel. You know, it's it. They actually used text similar to this in some of their documentaries. Because obviously, to restage big battle scenes like this with actors would just be, you know, cost prohibitive. Jackson for that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, even with, even with, with Peter Jackson in Lord of the Rings, they used a simulator for the big, you know, assault on minister, for example, yeah, and that was, how long ago is that movie now, 25

Damien Valentine 07:02
Yeah, you're thinking about how old those movies are. Yeah,

Phil Rice 07:06
they were early, 2000s I believe. So, yeah, so about 25 year old tech, and it looked quite good, by the way. And now this is someone with a video game, basically, with some mods. And, you know, it's, it's very respectable quality, you know, are there little glitches like machinima has? Yeah, maybe that's part of why this. This video intrigued me in particular because it there's something about those little imperfections in in genuine, you know, game based machinima. That's part of the charm for me anyway, because I'm not expecting it to be some, you know, tit for tat, sword fight, sword swipe for sword, swipe, perfect execution. But as a representational model of what the narrator is talking about, works really well. His other videos are great too. This one just caught my eye for some reason, and it's, you know, we don't really cover films of this genre. And certainly, I don't know that this particular subject matter, anything related to to Islam, has ever, just, has ever really crossed our desk on the show. So I thought, well, let's, let's give it a look. So anyway, that's that's my take on it. What did you guys

Damien Valentine 08:22
think there's definitely a very interesting choice. It's unusual to have a sort of documentary like this on our show. So it's made with a game called Total War Attila. Total War Games are, there's a series of them, and they cover different areas of history, and they're strategy games where you can pick up one of the factions of the time and you're supposed to conquer the region of wherever it's set. And they're known for being, I don't know if they 100% historically accurate, but they try and be as historically accurate as they can, while still making it a fun game. And what I'm really famous for are these battle sequences. You get the strategic layer where you move the bits around the map. But this is what people really play it for, with these battle moments where you get to control the huge armies. I remember when the first one was released, it was sent in sort of feudal Japan, and no one had ever made a game like that before, so it really stood out. So yeah, Tiller is, I don't know where till there is in the series. It's not a series I follow that closely, but this is heavily modded as well. There's a whole list of mods in the video description. But what this reminded me of, as soon as I recognized the game. There was a TV show here in the UK called time commanders, and I think Tracy probably knows as well. And the idea was they were using a specially modified version of total war, and they'd have a team of contestants in front of this huge screen. Yeah, and they would have to recreate a historical battle. And every week could be a different battle, they would play through, wow, but so cool, yeah, it was quite a long, long time ago, so they didn't use it. Didn't look as good as this, because the, this is a much more recent game, but, you know, watching this, and like the historical aspect of it, they had in the show, they had historians saying, Well, this is the battle and this, they'd outline the factions involved in the battle, and they talk about what really happened. And they would talk about, they would compare what the players were doing and saying, Well, how is this the same or or different from what really happened in the battle? And sometimes the results of the game would be different, vastly different from what really happened. So that fun show to watch, and this is remind me of that. And I thought this is really well done. There are obviously limitations with the game, but they the creation of this video is kind of worked around it, like there's a moment where they talk, moment, where they're talking about how three people from each side moved away from the armies and had a sort of 3v three sword fight. But you can't show it because the game's not capable of that. So it moves to a map and you just see little icons and you can see the armies behind.

Phil Rice 11:19
So I thought that was really tastefully done too. Yeah, so I thought that

Damien Valentine 11:23
was a clever way to get around the limitations the game. I don't think you can get down to individual units like that. Is you have your army, but it's not it's like a clump of soldiers. They move together as one. You can't just say, I want this one to move forward and attack by himself. He doesn't work that way. But yeah, I thought this is really well done. It's not a battle I know too much about. But then I look at the channel, and I thought, there's a lot of other battles here. This could be an interesting thing to watch if you're interested in historical battles and seeing how they played out and learning more about them, but Phil, I think you're right, that about the the numbers is always, it's always the underdog that wins, but then it's not going to make an exciting story, which we say, well, I had 10,000 men, and I crushed the 50 defending one tiny, little village. No one wants to hear that story. They want to make it sound like they're the ones that so sure. It's hard to know which ones are exaggerating, which ones really happened, because obviously whoever won is going to tell the story in their favor. But

Phil Rice 12:33
hey, you figure some of the details are probably documented somewhere, Army sizes or whatever they're they're kind of triangulated upon by historians. But there's always going to be a little bit of, I think there's an advantage to telling the story like that that we didn't win this by. Might we want it for some other reason. And, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, and you got to figure in history for every battle that's anywhere near like this, where the side that had less resources prevailed, there's probably hundreds that don't even become footnotes in history, where just smaller armies are just completely wiped out by big ones, you know, and they're not even important enough to even be remembered. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting. I'm curious. In the in the sequence you're talking about, where they they were describing the the one, the one v1, or 3v 3v battles, they show these icons with these faces on there. It's hard for me to imagine that there are any records whatsoever of what the faces of you know the people from 624, looked like in Saudi Arabia. So do you think the pictures are AI generated? They kind of have that you don't think they are?

Tracy Harwood 13:56
No, I would imagine they are. Well, looking at the sources that have been used here, it's, it's Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica paintings

Damien Valentine 14:11
to represent, all right, they might also be hero characters in the game. Oh, yeah, they're not. They don't just operate by themselves. They still have a huge army around them. But they might be a little icon that they could have extracted to use from these videos, or maybe not even in battles, but they're still part of the, you know, the strategic layer. And you say, Oh, I'm going to put this leader in charge of this army, so they get all bonus when they go and attack, but they're not actually a visible unit,

Phil Rice 14:36
right? It's interesting too, that, like when they show that lineup of the three versus three icons, they show the faces of the opponents. But in in Islam, it's very, very widely held belief that you know, for anybody that is of iconic status, it's not a good idea to show the. Face to represent them via an image that that's considered basically a it's a danger of an idolatry, so to speak. So for the three figures on the on the side of the Muslim army, they're all just represented by Arabic lettering, which I assume represents their name. So, yeah, I don't know, I there's, there's, there's a discussion to be had that we probably won't have on here about, you know, the ins and outs of all that. But I, I respect the fact that the filmmaker, who I have no reason to think is is of a particular uh background, ethnically or religiously, that he made the choice to portray this story in a way that wouldn't be offensive to the people who would be offended by that. That I think that's a nice choice. You know, there are other ways to handle that. And, you know,

Damien Valentine 16:04
it's very respectful about, you know, the two cultures that are fighting in this, I imagine that if you look at some of the other videos, the filmmaker is going to display similar kind of sensitivity to whatever conflicts. In fact, yeah,

Phil Rice 16:17
the ones that I've seen, there's, there's definitely a neutrality present in the narration. This is a guy just telling a story of how it happened, not not preaching a sermon of any kind, which I did, again, appreciate. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 16:33
so I go through, I mean, my comments are really very similar to what you've already said, actually, but I'll go through them and see what you think. There's a couple of other things I think I might have picked up on. I mean, from what I could read about this, certainly the battle for the survival of Islam, which is what this is about, was a, you know, it's a very significant story in history. Of course, the the army that we're talking about here was considerably smaller, as I understand it, just 313 lightly armed fighters than the Koresh tribe of Mecca, which comprised, as I understand it, 1000 warriors equipped with Cavalry and armor. So for sure, the the advantage was not with the with the Muslim tribe at all. And as you said, the, you know, the military achievements is really quite remarkable. As a consequence, I think of the terrain and also control of water, which seemed to be two of the things that were picked up specifically in the way that this was was told. And I kind of really like the way that all those details that would have been captured in historical accounts have been used in in the way that this story was, was told as well. You know, looking at the channels, you've both said the channel is dedicated entirely to reenacting battles, clearly recounted in texts, or, I would suggest, other artistic media forms. So I think what you are seeing here is a, you know, the film itself, the machinimas are produced here. I think what they are doing is providing an opportunity to debate the scenarios and also to think about what the processes and maneuvers were as they were taking place in in a, in a in a sort of a battle in in in play, if you like, way, rather than, you know, people pushing markers around a board or reenacting it and an actual battle field, which is virtually impossible to do these days. I guess what's interesting here is the accuracy that the Creator has tried to represent through the enactment. Like I said, I don't think there would ever be a scenario where this could ever be attempted to be reenacted in person, to test, say, the ground conditions of where it where it took place. So I I'm guessing that the only way that you can do this kind of thing is through using these kinds of game technologies, which I think is a particularly interesting dimension to what we're seeing here. I guess, therefore, what I tried to do when I was reviewing or looking at this, I was I was thinking, well, what's the creative practice that's gone into making this? And as Damian says, from what I can understand of it, it's been made using these total war game series, which was developed by Creative Assembly. The series itself uses this concept of. Of total war, both as a thematic foundation for the gameplay and as a mechanic for the gameplay. And it, and it's, it's a turn based strategy that's used for things like Empire management, as I understand it, and these kind of real time tactics that are used for the battles, and that offers players this sort of chance to wage more on a massive scale across what they describe as history that I think thematically, it also represents things like resource mobilization using campaign maps, which you know you've also commented on through which these players can also manage everything from economies to armies to diplomacy to trade and infrastructure, and also this kind of tactical map through which they can kind of just, you know, command the troops and, you know, engage in kind of detailed combat. There's also things in it, like civilian impact, which I think is particularly interesting. I've never actually, you know, well, I'll rephrase that. We have come across games this, in this kind of series, if you like, civilian impact is another thing they talk about public order systems which simulate things like war fatigue and rebellion and unrest and and then ideology and different types of warfare and what have you. And and, as you sort of said it, it includes this, this, this version called Shogun. It also includes in its series Warhammer, which I'd forgotten, because that's a really complicated game that we've talked about in the past. And then, as you said, Attila is another one, and there's various others as well, which are really quite interesting. I was curious given, given, you know what, we don't know so much about Warhammer, I was kind of curious then about where this narration has come from. Because it, to me, it's really very well done. As you said, it's kind of like the History Channel that we used to get, my assumption when I was listening to it was that must be part of one of the battles in the game, and perhaps it's been extracted, or, you know, reenacted within it, within the game, and just sort of edited into a machinima short. However, whilst there's not a fully voiced narrative for every battle in the games, there are any, there are sort of introductions for some of these kind of historical battles which kind of give background information on these kind of famous conflicts, and they explain what your factions role is, and what the goals are, and what have you. But this is not going to be one of those introductions, and that's because, as far as I can tell, early Islamic history, set in the seventh century, Arabia, is not part of the game world. And that said, as I understand it, the mechanics are relatively straightforward to adapt using representations of things like asymmetrical warfare, these terrain locations such as the choke point that was mentioned, and also things like high ground and controlling water access. All of these things can be simulated. So too can things like the leadership and belief systems work through which characters can be or their roles can be portrayed. Plus, what you've got here is modern communities. And what's very apparent is that modern communities have played a very large part in creating things like an Islamic conversion mod. I believe that those are based on titles like Rome or medieval two, which I think when you look at the list of mods used here in the description, I think although it's been used in the Attila game, they're probably mods that are drawn from another one of the earlier games, the maybe Rome or medieval two series, all of that you can't be very sure about, though, because there's not very much on the channel about how this stuff's been created, or what has, you know, what's been used, which I think is, I think that's a pity, because it makes it more of a mystery. And, yeah, it's difficult then to sort of critique it and comment on it, and then have a view of the creative process, which I think would be particularly valuable when. You're looking at a type of work like this. I couldn't also find out very much about who is behind the channel bellamet Historia or war and history, or who narrated the film. It's not very clear whether this is an individual or a team of folks, or whether, in fact, AI has been used in the narration process. If I had to guess, I'd say it's one person who's evidently, you know, supporting himself through channel memberships, probably merchandise sales and ad revenue from the reach of what actually is a very popular channel. And from what I can see, much of the material sourced in this particular work has come from Wikipedia and and as I said earlier, Encyclopedia Britannica, which I'd suggest, puts this into a slightly older person's field of reference. And I'd guess, if I have to sort of mention a certain age you know, to own a set of the encyclopedia, you're probably looking at somebody, maybe in their 70s now, producing something like this. I could be wrong, but I'm getting, I'm guessing, yeah, so I think, I think the only other thing I would say is that this channel is just so popular with the kind of work that it's done this it's got over 125 million views of its content.

Tracy Harwood 26:29
But given the sources that it's used, and given that much of the views that the channel has has generated are from things like Lord of the Rings battle scenes, I would suggest that you want to be careful about the accuracy of the content that you're actually seeing, if indeed you want to look at this as a History Channel replacement. Because I would, I would bet that you know, since those works were published, and we all know how weak Wikipedia is these days. I think, you know, there'd be better sources that you could use, much like, you know, the content that we looked at for the from the Roman point of view, that guy was a historian. The, you know, the work that he was drawing on wasn't Wikipedia, it was scholarly texts. He was a, you know, a proper researcher interested in historical accounts and facts. And what have you drawn from research and museum and gallery content? And I would suggest you got to go into it at that level of detail if you're going to do something with any kind of accuracy. Maybe the mods are, I don't know. Maybe, maybe I'm not giving the mods enough credit for the accuracy, and say the way characters are portrayed and what have you. But I would, I would certainly be a little cautious about that. And then the only other thing I would say is, for those that are interested in the in the series of shorts that have been created by this guy on this particular topic, the rise of Islam. There is a whole playlist of historical battles which are, you know, equally well treated as as this one is. But, yeah, it's a fascinating thing to have a chance to talk about. Didn't realize it was as popular in terms of, you know, battle reenactments and showcasing those on YouTube as this clearly, evidently, shows. So, yeah, it's really interesting to talk about it. Thank you.

Phil Rice 28:35
You know, however many years ago it's been now, when I it basically the Wiley I think I can't remember the name of the publisher, but they approached me to and wanted me to write a machinima for dummies book. And my son had just been born, and I just didn't feel like I could commit to it, so I referred her to Hugh said, there's nobody better to do this. And so well they ended up. He ended up pairing up with Johnny, yeah, to handle the writing of that. And then they had the publisher hire me as a technical editor, which basically means that they would write the book, and then I would go through and test stuff and make sure that what they were saying, that the instructions all worked. And I remember thinking when it came to a certain point in the book, because they devoted a series of chapters into creating a machinima with a total war game. And I remember thinking they were crazy, because, like, who this is not what people think about, you know, of course, and I'm the quake guy, so I'm thinking, you know that there's so many other choices. Why this? Seeing this, it's like. So this is what they had in mind, clearly, is and, and he was, was a big fan of, yeah, a big student of battle reenactment and role playing on that scale and things like that. So yeah, I'm sure that this type of usage is exactly what he was envisioning. And wanted more people to to consider and use. So it was neat all these many years later to I know that people have been doing this for, you know, on other channels, but to see it done really well, and to see it gaining so many eyes is is, you know, makes me a little bit the very valid concerns you bring up about accuracy of certain information, what not being at best, questionable, right? You know that we don't really know, except for the paltry sources that he cited, which are, you know, not scholarly, particularly So, but that that, notwithstanding the fact that there's this much interest in in history, is encouraging to me about the planet, you know, so but yeah, that's what I thought of that. I think that's part of what attracted me to this film as a pick, was remembering back then how wrong I was about about their selection of total war, and really they were ahead of their time. So anyway, thanks for your comments on this. I'm, I'm, I think it was a

Tracy Harwood 31:30
smaller side. Phil, you know, the book was launched at the first European machinima festival, seven.

Phil Rice 31:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense, because I can't. I took a break from machinima starting at about the year 2000 and was away for about five years. And when I came back, all gung ho to continue making stuff in Quake two like an idiot. You know, the whole world had moved on, except for Leo, Leo Lucy and Bay was like, Oh, you back. We both, we both, fortunately, had smarter ideas about how to proceed. So I ended up getting into the Sims, and that's when male roster etiquette started to evolve. And that it was around that time period and my son had just been born, and so I was, was juggling a lot, and even back then, still couldn't figure out how to make my love, to want to make stuff with machinima fit into my life. It was, it was tough. I stuck to it for a few years, but just couldn't sustain it, and it's not like now. So yeah, having them grow up and get out of the house will do that to you. Apparently,

Tracy Harwood 32:48
absolutely, the thing I was gonna say, the only thing I would add to this is, if you're going to make films like this, you must be more forthcoming with your approach to doing it, and the tools that you've used, and the game engine, engine that you've used, because the these are things that we really, you know, people want to see. How have you done it?

Phil Rice 33:12
Do you think there's a wide audience for that, or is that just us? You know, we look at it from this is our niche. It's what we what we think about. But does general audience really want to know that info? Well, I would. I'm not saying it was skepticism. I'm genuinely curious.

Tracy Harwood 33:26
I would have said, if he's using game assets, then he should at least be giving credit to the game. And he's not. He's unless he's unless he's created it in something like blender or, you know, I don't know, Premiere Pro or something he might, he might have. It might not be a machinima at all. It might just be something else

Damien Valentine 33:49
issues in the game. I suspect it

Tracy Harwood 33:52
is the game, I'm certain too, but he's not

Damien Valentine 33:55
very brief mention in description. So I

Tracy Harwood 33:58
looked up, right?

Damien Valentine 34:01
Yeah, it's, uh, the mod scourge of the desert, DESERT re, skin overhaul. And it took me to the Steam Workshop page for that mod. And it's, says it's for a total water tiller, right? And, yeah,

Phil Rice 34:15
but he never actually mentions the game in the description, does he? That's, that's why, when I went to look at it's like, I'm not really sure what game this is. I did. I didn't do a simple Google search

Damien Valentine 34:26
a list of mods, but not the actual game. So I just googled the first mods. And that could

Phil Rice 34:31
just be an omission by like, accident, like, it's not, it's not an intent. It could be that it's not an intentional omission. Yeah, sometimes when you get wrapped up in in the world surrounding a game you you make some assumptions about what your audience knows, but he's clearly appealing to an audience that's much, much bigger than than the game players of the Total War series. I mean, 120, 5 million views. Good Lord, yeah. So yeah. I yeah, it would be nicer for that to be a little bit more clear cut.

Tracy Harwood 35:03
But he's also, you know, when you look at the merchandise and what have you, he's drawing on assets from the games. I'd say he's on slightly tricky ground there. Maybe,

Phil Rice 35:17
maybe, yeah, that's interesting. I didn't even look at the the merch page until just now,

Tracy Harwood 35:23
but I would just encourage more openness on this sort of thing. Definitely. I

Damien Valentine 35:29
once made a video. It's for a friend's role play website. Every year, make some videos the anniversary, and we decided to do a big epics battle, and I made it with movie storm. And this would have been so

Phil Rice 35:46
much I'm sort of, I'm so sorry to hear that I pulled it off. It looks great. That must have been, that must have been quite challenging. Yeah, you could say that,

Damien Valentine 35:58
especially since there were no sword fighting animations. Anyway,

Phil Rice 36:05
all right. Well, thanks for joining us. If you have any feedback for us, feel free to leave it as a comment on this video, or wherever it is you're listening to this, or you can reach us by email talk at completely machinima.com Tracy informs me that we've only got about 900,000 unread emails, but we'll be sorting through those this week, and we would no we do tend to receive your feedback. We're not entirely sure how, because there really is a lot of unread email, and yet, we are getting your feedback when you send it, so feel free to send it in talk@completelymichima.com I'm Phil rice, and on behalf of my co hosts, Damian Valentine, Tracy Harwood and Ricky from Madagascar, we'll see you next time bye. You.