Ricky Grove 1:00
welcome to another episode of And now for something completely machinima on that dramatic tone, I'd like to introduce my Fellow contributors. Tracy Harwood, hello. Phil rice, yellow and Sir Damian Valentine was recently ignited by the Queen I'm Ricky Grove, a nasty old fellow living in Los Angeles, desperately trying to get attention. Today's episode is a pick that I made that I'm very excited to share with you. It's called you're so sick. It's from the Machinima archive, and it's by Baron Susan, s, O, O, S, D, E N. And the reason why I chose this film is for two reasons. One is, I think it's an excellent example of the Machinima music video. Also, it's a multi game machinima, which is a separate genre in itself. But also, I wanted to introduce Baron Susan to people who may have forgotten him. He I'm gonna let Tracy do all the background material on Susan and the film. But I think if you watch the film, you'll see that it is not only well edited, but it's very creative in its use of World of Warcraft, machinima. That's the community that he worked in, and he really, really made he he really made an impact on that community and was an inspiring to many other filmmakers. There are 12 films inside of archive.org machinima section that were made by Baron Susan. I could have chose any one of them for this, but I like, you're so sick, because I thought it was a really interesting and entertaining film, perhaps a bit too long, if I had to criticize it a bit, but it's just a almost faultless film of its time that makes use of all of the techniques the World Of Warcraft filmmakers use in a very creative way. So I'm very interested to see what all of you have to think of this film, and any thoughts you have about Baron Susan as a machinima filmmaker,

Tracy Harwood 3:33
you want me to start with a bit of the backstory of it is that, would that? Would that work for

Ricky Grove 3:38
you? Sure we can all go get some coffee while you're giving us the lecture. Awesome.

Tracy Harwood 3:46
All right. Well, okay, so the version on the Internet Archive actually was uploaded by Henry Lowood, who's the Stanford librarian and was key part of the how they got game project. So it's uploaded about a month after it was uploaded to the internet. Generally, it's quite interesting, actually, because Henry's written quite a bit about Baron's work over the years, with a very particular archivist lens to his comments on it, which I'm not really going to go into too much detail on actually, on Baron's own channel on YouTube, it was claimed that this is actually his fourth music machinima, which shows level 70 elite Turin chieftain, otherwise known as l 70, etc, which are a World of Warcraft, metal style band with a guest vocalist. This is a female blood elf that he created performing, I'm so sick, which is the T virus remix by fly leaf versus the Legion of doom. And for those interested in the backstory about El. Eat tour and chief and the band, I found a really interesting fan wiki which has some interesting dates about their appearances, and a video about the band, which you might want to take a look at as well. I put the links on the show notes for that, but for our purposes today, I think it's sufficient to know that actually that was just a fictional band in the world of warcraft universe. Now I also found a music video of the originating band fly leaf playing I'm so sick, which I will also share with you, because I think it's quite interesting. I did a sort of, you know, a side by side play through of both Baron's version of it and the original version of it. And I think there's some interesting comparisons to be made. So I say the lead vocalist for fly leaf was somebody called Lacey Sturm, and the band, band's name, actually, Rick, you like this was a reference to the the blank page of the front or back of a book symbolizing potential for new beginnings. I'm so sick, was actually first released in October 2005 in their debut album, which also had this kind of music video, which is the one that hit all the mainstream television networks at the time, now, etc, music and lyrics are primarily world Warcraft themed elite tour and chieftain. It's basically a recurring character. And this band in the game, who often appear in at in game, concerts and et C itself is a is is made up of fictional band members, but also Blizzard employees who contribute to the band's music. They're probably best known for their songs like power of the Horde, which is featured on the Warcraft three, The Frozen Throne expansion, and have also played at Blizzcon events in previous years, alongside real world bands like Metallica, but not for many years as I understand it, as far as I'm aware, they have never played songs by fly leaf at any of the events or in the game itself. So this is entirely a creation of Baron Susan in its day. Interestingly, the song I'm so sick was used on the 2007 movie soundtrack for Resident Evil extinction. And in terms of Baron's use of it, well, it's, it's, it's basically a fan fiction creation. It was, it was released late autumn of 2007 I think end of September. 2007 Henry uploaded it to the Internet Archive at the end of October. And you can clearly see that actually it demonstrates Baron's enthusiasm, not just for the game of which he was a big a big player, a big fan, but also for metal type music itself, well being Finnish as obviously a, you know, a big tradition of metal type music in communities over there. Of course, there is, as I understand it, Baron actually first picked this up as a song from the Resident Evil movie soundtrack, and was especially drawn to the challenge of representing the female lead singer in the song. And I think this is where you got to look at the original music video, because I think what he's done here with this video has been heavily inspired by the band's original video release with what appears to be very similar esthetic silhouettes a band members singing and cavorting on stage with a this kind of particular type of gray filter. Well, in the case of the real band, I think it's just lighting effects that weren't particularly well recorded. But of course, the whole, the whole sort of esthetic kind of gives this sort of sense of death and mortality. I think clearly, Baron's also been very inspired by the world band and how they're represented, represented in the game too. So, as I understand it, he was, you know, he picked up a particular recording, a machinima, I believe that inspired him to want to get involved with it, with the game in the first place. So, yeah, so this is, this is one of those works that really shows off his use of World of Warcraft in a really quite pioneering way, both in terms of, I mean, Phil can talk to this a lot more than I can, both in terms of his video capture and the editing the model and map exports that he used, and also the animation and. Editing and the and the use of multiple game platforms. There weren't too many folks doing multiple game platforms in in those days. And what you've got here is him using Unreal Tournament 2004 he's using half life two as well as World of Warcraft as backgrounds for the characters, which were World of Warcraft. And I think like all good machinimaters, he used mods from other well known creators, which included folks like dope fish, as well as assets from BioShock, characters from BioShock, which you can see periodically littered through the video. What I what I especially liked about the selection Ricky, is how the content and the creative process really position this at a period in time. It really could only have ever been released in about autumn, 2007 I think, which, you know, given all the elements that come together with this, you know, the the originating band, the etc, work the way Baron was influenced by other phenomena around the game at the time, and other games at the time, really, You know, it's a clear sort of, it's a clear, you know, yeah, well, it's almost carbon dating the film. I think, I think I can say that, and that really is probably the only reference that I might make to how Henry describes it too, because he uses this particular film as an example of how games can be positioned at a point in time from an from the point of archival practice, right? But I think it's, it's so clearly an example of it. It just fits that sort of narrative really well. I think Bioshock, for example, released in August 2007 and then the other thing that he's used course, are some posters, one being the edge of remorse, which you can just about see in the background about 20 seconds into the opening seconds of the film. And the other is to do with Ergo proxy. I don't know if you saw any of those. Oh my god, yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't, I didn't really know what I was looking for on that

Ricky Grove 12:23
particular proxy. Is one of the greatest anime series ever made,

Tracy Harwood 12:28
yeah, do you know when it was released? I don't autumn 2006 There you go. So all of that sort of is, all of that comprises, you know, the carbon dating sort of aspect, which I think is, yeah, it really positions it in a period of time, marvelous. But it's one of the few that uses this kind of real cultural mash up. I don't really remember too many doing this. Actually, Baron remade the elf in the WoW model viewer with what he describes as rock credibility in mind, because he's clearly trying to emulate lacy Stern's persona. On his blog, he described the biggest challenge as being to sync the action with the music, and actually, apparently ended up playing animations backwards, which he says worked a lot better in some of the cases than, you know, just doing a sort of a traditional, you know, capture and run through and amazing thinking, yeah, all of which I didn't actually know when we first, when I first saw it, really, I suppose that brings me to the editing of The video, which is, I think, absolutely superb. It really shows how good an eye he had for timing. The visuals really show off stunning scenery with the most impressive aspect, I think at this period of time would have been that blur that he used for the background, that sort of graduated effect to indicate foreground, background, stuff that hadn't really been done that much as I understand it. And then he used filters and colourising effects as well. And also his eye for composition and movement, I think, is really impressive in this. Suffice to say, as you've already said, Ricky, he was a really well known, wow creator. In fact, he started making machinima in 2006 having been inspired by that black wing lair movie by afgm. I think on his YouTube channel is called Devlin, which I can share a link to as well. As far as I understand it, he went on to become the machinima.com Community Manager for Wow content in March 2008 and I, as I sort of tracked what he what he was working on, I could only really track machinima that he produced. Up until about 2012 1120, 1120. 12, he released well over 100 films, which you can still see on his channel. And he's also released a number of his unfinished projects, which is rare. Quite a lot of machinima creators never, never did that. They just sort of sat on them, and then the, you know, the computers died, and that was that. But he's not done that. He's actually just stuck them on his channel and they're there. And maybe one day, I guess he might, he thinks he might pick them up at some point, a number of those won awards, and a number of his machinimas won awards. But I can't actually find any mention of this particular film, having won any awards, it was a nominee for the 2008 bit Film Festival, which ironically, was won by Olivia whom, as we know, is another fantastic wow machinima creator, and somebody with whom Baron collaborate, collaborated periodically, I think, in fact, when I was looking at entries to competitions and whatnot, some of Baron's films were, I believe, barred from annual World of Warcraft contest because they had been submitted on a private server, which, at the time, Blizzard would not accept, notwithstanding, that actually a lot of machinima creators also made content on private servers, because, of course, you needed to use all those mods. And, you know, it was a it was a multiplayer thing, but they just disallowed all of that. So that's basically why I don't think the work got the, you know, the well, it got a lot of community recognition, of course, but it didn't get the sort of kudos that went with it, because he just wasn't permitted to enter it in places where he would choose to do that. Since then, however, since 2012 there hasn't yet, as far as I can see, he hasn't really created all that much. I can't really find out what, what, what point he dropped out of the machinima.com community as as the WoW manager, or what happened really? Um, that said I did find another channel he's been using more recently under the name of flak cannon, in which he's been experimenting with different music genres. He's clearly a very talented multimedia creator, I would say, although, personally, I don't think the music is quite in the same category of quality as the Machinima was. So if you're listening Baron, I'd love to see you pick up the Machinima again, although I guess that probably puts you in the same category as most of us, well into our 50s, perhaps, but it's a really great pick. Ricky, I'm really glad that you shared this one. I really enjoyed reviewing it. Thank you,

Ricky Grove 17:53
great. Thank you for all that background.

Phil Rice 17:56
Yeah, back in the time when this was made, when Baron was at his Well, it's funny, because he was at his peak and not too long after his debut, at the same time, very quickly, he's one of these creators that people in, in the know, In the creator community, there was, like a reference when his, like, you would talk about, oh yeah, these guys made this, and these guys made that, and, oh, Baron suston, yeah. Like, it was like a holiness attributed to him. He was just the respect was just immense, and for good reason. I mean, I always felt like he that in that classic machine, those classic Mashima days, there was a there was a very, very small number of creators that you felt like had brought either professional experience or that kind of magic, natural talent that normally only comes with professional experience to where they they were able to achieve this polish and this, this, this exquisiteness to what they made that was just so exceptional. I don't want to puff up Zachariah Scott if he happens to listen to the show, but I always put him in the same category. Zach had just this magic touch and and what he would make just was it was just exquisite, you know, and Baron was right there in that same category. I remember he introduced me to this song through this video. So I remember this vividly for another reason, and that is about three years later, my wife and I had been watching a series of movies there were, there was kind of a trend in movies at the time of having females who kick ass as the main lead. Beads, right? So you had Charlize Theron in in what was that atomic blonde, or something like that, right? All that series of movies where it's just like, All right, we're going to have women completely destroying people, like, just, they're going to be the 80s action hero, yeah, but, but it's going to be this woman that kicks butt. We've been watching enough of those that I thought maybe she's ready for fly leaf. No, she wasn't. Oh, I played the song for and, you know, it's that primal. I've never heard a female vocalist achieve that, that type of just this primal scream on the chorus of that. And, yeah, my wife, you know, just kind of looked at me like, What? What are we listening to? What is this? So I always kind of chuckle about it as that, right? All right. So there's a limit, yeah, so that to the women kicking ass that my wife can take, and that's it, is flight. But I loved this song. I bought the album because I saw his video wasn't nearly as impressed with the rest of the album. This is definitely the highlight of that album. That's the way it used to be purchasing music. When you bought albums, right? Is there'd be one strong signal single, and you'd buy the album, and then the rest of us, like, I guess they never really went there again. That's a case of that. This is a case of that. There's countless bands who did that, right? Yeah. But what's funny, Tracy, is I had never actually seen what lacy looked like, oh, until five minutes ago, while you were talking and you mentioned that the video. So on my other screen here, I pulled up the video. That's the first time I've ever seen her. Only ever known her as the vocalist, as the sound. And I don't know why that is, like, Why did I never even go look it up? I just didn't care. And I almost it's one of those where I like, felt like, if I saw what she looks like, it's probably going to ruin what I've imagined. Kind of like, sometimes you don't want to see the movie for a book you love, right? Because I don't want to continue picturing Frodo Baggins as that particular actor. You know what I've got here is better, yeah, and that was basically my response. I mean, she's, she's, she's a nice looking gal, and she's got a lot of style and all that, but it's just like, now I know what she looks like. It kind of ruined it. Kind of ruined it not because she's not a nice looking person. It's just I had this vision of just like this Viking warlord woman. Yeah. Anyway, so the song brings up a lot for me, but mainly it was Baron was already he was already known at the time, for people who were following this and paying attention to it, he's already known, and this was, I don't know if it was widely considered to be his best work to date when it was released, but it was up there. It was like another example of, sometimes forehead, yeah, sometimes over the course of the decades now that I've been involved with this, there have been seminal moments where I'll see a work done by someone else, and just go, why am I even trying to do this? You know what I'm saying? It's so good that it makes like it has to be. What if you entered the pros when Michael Jordan was playing basketball, right? And then you see him do what he did, and you just go, why am I even trying? Like, it's so good. And I say that tongue in cheek, because at the same time, it pushed me to man, I really want to, I don't know if I'll ever get there, but man, I it shows me how, how much, you know, how much work I have ahead of me and and how much better I could be maybe, you know, if I really worked at it, yeah, I'm still not there. He again. He has that magic that if it didn't come from decades of VFX experience, then he's just magically amazing, like he the editing is just, it's unbelievable and and all the work that has to go into this might only be appreciable by someone who's made machinima like it is unbelievable. The amount of work to time those animations with how little control you have over them in World of Warcraft, the amount of compositing that's in this you don't even know, like you can't even see it. It's only when you read the description and you realize what he layered in there, that whole depth of field thing, you notice Tracy, the blur. The games didn't do that. They didn't do that at all. Like they didn't even do it badly. They weren't even trying to do depth of field in games because it was so bad. So that's all compositing that he did that I'm I never noticed that the edge of remorse poster cameo in there. But I mean, Jason totally showed mastery of those same skills the. Positing the forced depth of field and using it for dramatic purposes. This is a level even above that, because there's so much motion going on, there's so much movement, there's so many cuts, and they all make sense. You know, you can have a spastic edit, and okay, it has a little wow factor, but it kind of annoys you. And this, it's like there's a cohesion to it that, honestly, I don't even know how to, I don't even know how to analyze properly. It's so good, it's so you know, there's, there's deliberate choices that are made here and but also there's just this sense of, there is this underlying intuition about what looks good together and what sequence works well that you could probably never teach someone else how to do that. It's a it's someone has that feel or they don't, you know, it's just amazing. So, yeah, I can't throw enough praise at it. It was a video that inspired me that really I put him on a pedestal. You know, When? When? Because he was really showing without any bad attitude or arrogance, like he's one of those where he was at this higher tier making stuff really better than 99% of everyone else making it, and yet, he's helping the community. He's involved, he's accessible, he's got friends and you know, so I never met him, I never interacted with him online. But you know, when you ask people who were around then about his reputation, they don't just talk about just like olive they don't talk about just that. He was a good filmmaker, but also he wasn't full of himself. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 26:50
it's funny how really great talent often results in a really great

Speaker 2 26:55
ego, absolutely who who

Ricky Grove 26:59
looks down upon other people making movies because they're so good, and it's a I didn't know this about him, but it's very pleasing to see that he was also a giver. Yeah, in the community,

Phil Rice 27:14
yeah. I mean, you don't, you don't have ego. You're not dominated by your ego and take on a position of community manager anywhere, yeah, because that is a slog. That is, that is not an easy job. That's, that's a charitable thing to do, even if you're being paid for it. It's, it's so that says, to me, that says a lot, just that. But also, people who knew him, who spoke of him, even though they, some of them probably only ever met him online. You know, very few people met each other in person back then. But it's always this warmth of that he was, he was a member of the community, you know, in everything that that meant. And that's just great, because that's hard. You can't make stuff this good without some ego. You just can't. So he had ego. He just didn't let it rule him. And I love that. I love that that balance is really, really hard to strike. You know, when you see someone who makes stuff this good and you find out that they were an egomaniac, you almost don't blame them, right? You almost go, Well, yeah, but look, you know, if you found out, if you found out, Jordan had an ego, would you be surprised? No, you might be a little disappointed, but you wouldn't be surprised, you know. So I just, yeah, I I admire the the filmmaker, and I certainly admire the work and, and he gave me a nice little funny memory with with my wife when I play her this song too. So wonderful.

Damien Valentine 28:45
So Phil is it's funny. You said you looked up the video, the actual music video in the band. I did exactly the same thing when Tracy was talking. So obviously she is not really a night elf for anyone who might be disappointed by that. And the other members of the band are not World of Warcraft characters, which is probably a good thing for living in the real world. Yeah, I do remember, though, going back to the actual this actual mission overview, I remember watching it for the first time. I don't think I'd seen a music video made with World of Warcraft at that point. So this is the first one I saw. But of course, it's all downhill from there, because nothing

Ricky Grove 29:30
else it's like saying the first painting I ever saw was a Vermeer or, yeah, there's

Damien Valentine 29:36
nothing else compared. So there's no point, even though it's not like that. It's not quite that bad. But you know what I mean anyway. So I remember being really blown away that World of Warcraft was used in this web because what I'd seen of World of Warcraft machinima was stuff that was meant to be in the world the game takes place in. I did not expect it to be this kind of metal music bands, but. And it just caught me by surprise, yeah, just from being so different. And of course, it's so well made, and I'm not going to repeat everything it's already been said, but I remember being very impressed by how it looked and how it's put together, and watching it again for this show. Still am just as impressed now as I am back then. And obviously, Baron Susan had a little tenant, and it's a shame that he's kind of disappeared from the Machinima, from machinima making. And

Ricky Grove 30:32
because I think, Well, that seems to be the cycle, though, a lot of people disappear, or they move on to the professional circuit, because they have to make money. The the make a living, you know, factor, yeah, many machinimas was came. I'm sure Susan had a had another job where he was making a living to pay his rent or whatever it was. So I can understand that moving on plus machinima, the capital M, machinima.com was a kind of, I don't know, explosion, implosion, for the Machinima community. We've talked ad nauseum about that topic, but I think that stopped a lot of people, and they moved on to other things, plus culture moved on to other things too, you know? So I can understand that.

Damien Valentine 31:30
I'm trying to remember when I know I remember watching it before, trying to remember, did we get this in the Machinima Expo back in the day?

Speaker 3 31:38
I don't think so. I don't think he ever entered, okay, and it must have been, we would

Phil Rice 31:43
have welcomed it, that's for sure. Oh, yeah,

Damien Valentine 31:47
it must have been at the Machinima screenings at Dragon Con then, because this is the kind of video that would have been chosen for it. Yeah, yeah, I do remember, yeah. I'm pretty sure it was there, because I remember being around other people that really enjoyed it as well. And I couldn't remember, is you guys as part of the team or just being in that room watching? But yeah, as well. We'll see if then. So as it should be,

Tracy Harwood 32:13
I think they used to meet up at quake con. Okay, not not so much Dragon Con, the creators. I mean, I think

Damien Valentine 32:21
I never went quick. So Dragon Con there was a machinima screening, which was put together by Tina, who she, I don't think she made machinima herself, but she she enjoyed watching machinima. And so every year at Dragon Con, she would put together a playlist, and she'd have a room set up, and she'd just, yeah, several hours worth of machinima. She

Phil Rice 32:42
spent a lot of time on that, because she would go and actually reach out to the creators. I don't think she ever put anything in there that wasn't something that the creator had said, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

Damien Valentine 32:51
But I don't think many creators actually went to the screenings, right? I did. She reached out and asked for one of my videos, okay? And I looked into it, I thought, could get a last minute flight. It's not that expensive. Hotels still available, not that expensive. There's now. That's why I stopped going. But, you know, I did it, and I had a great time. It's nice to meet Tina and to see these other films. And there was another guy. He was, like, 16, I can't remember his name was, and he'd also come from the UK, because his his family had doing, had gone to Disneyland in Florida, I think when Tina reached out to him to include one of his videos, and so they extended their trip by a week so they could go to Atlanta. Nice. Yeah, that was nice. So I went a couple of times after that, but I didn't really see any other machinima creators, although they didn't come to the screening, but Ken white and monk and Biggs track, they came one year I had dinner with them. That was nice. Oh, wow, that's great, yeah, but I don't think they actually came to the screening. I told them where it was, but I think they were a bit overwhelmed by just how huge this thing was, and they couldn't, probably couldn't even find the room it was in, because it's, it's in five hotels, and that they're all sort of next to each other at once down the road, which is where she usually was, right? If you don't know where you're going, you're not going to find it anyway. I digress. We're not here here to talk about Dragon Con. We should be talking about this, this mission of a film. But, yeah, it's really good to see it again, and it brought back a lot of memories of,

Tracy Harwood 34:36
I think fly leaf should ditch their video and adopt this. Do you know if they've actually seen it? I don't know. I would have thought somebody, somewhere through the through the intervening years, would have shared it with them. I would have thought, given how popular this as a video, was.

Damien Valentine 35:00
Yes, I hope so, and I hope they really enjoyed it. I can understand that if they weren't so keen on their music being used without permission. But this was done so well, I think I'd hoped that they were, you know, honored that it was done well.

Tracy Harwood 35:17
We'll tag them when we put this out. Good, yeah, because they should remember, if they haven't.

Ricky Grove 35:26
Well, that's our show for you today. Baron Susan, you're so sick, we'll have a link to it so you can watch it and enjoy it. And thank you all for your comments and your insights and your research and background Tracy and fill your comments, and you too. Damian, I enjoyed it, and I'm glad to pick it. I'd also like to mention before we close, that I think that the archive, archive.org, machinima collection that I've been choosing from, I think it's not being as actively curated as it was in the beginning, because as I go through the 1000 some odd machinima, I'm finding a lot of, frankly, a lot of crap, and I don't think it would pass muster if it were being actively curated. But that's fine. Being a repository for Machinima is just fine with me, and there is some curation to it. Henry Lowood has done a fine job, and they're great movies like yours, great short films like you're so sick. So archive.org the Machinima collection, will have a link to that in our show notes. If you have comments, email talk at completely machinima.com we welcome your comments. Baron Susan, if you're listening, please contact us. We'd love to interview you and talk to you about your career and share your films with many new audience viewers. All right, well, that's it. Thanks for watching. We'll be back next week with an interesting pick from Damien. All right, we'll see you now. Bye, bye, bye, bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai