Phil Rice 01:00
and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies. My name is Phil rice. I'm here with my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine, hello. Ricky is not with us right now. He is on hold with customer service, but he'll be back with us in a future episode. So this week, we're going to be talking about Damien's film pick for the month. And this is going to come as a shock to our audience, but this film is Star Wars related, so Damien, why don't you tell us about it?

Damien Valentine 01:39
Right? So normally, I have a very long, elaborate story about how I came across a film this time. It just came from our feed, and the title alone just made me laugh. It's by AFK. And we've discussed some of their films before, some of their Star Wars stuff, and I guess, talky orcs or something along those lines. The other series they do, we've been admiring their work for quite some time. But, yeah, this is the title grabbed me. So I gotta watch this. I mean, I watched all this stuff anyway, but you know, it's right that they are the worst jobs in Star Wars. And the first one is the guy in A New Hope in the Rebel base on the tower. You see him, he's got the spear. He can't really get down or do anything. He's just there, and he's got a device. He weighs ships as they're coming into land. And, you know, it's right, what is that job like? Why is he there? Surely, I think he's got sensors on the ground that can scan these approaching ships. And his spear is not going to do much against him. You throw it and it bounces off, or he misses because they're moving so fast. But the one that really made me shadow was the jabber is masseuse. Imagine that as a job. Yeah, I kind of anyway. So the whole film made me laugh. I thought, you know, I'm going to pick this one. I haven't picked a Star Wars film for quite some time, and it just really entertained me. And I thought I well, I hoped it would entertain you, and I hoped it would entertain the audience listening to our show as well. So what do you guys think

Phil Rice 03:14
I love this I love this pick. I love this style of humor. This is, this is it kind of fits into a category of classic sketch comedy humor of the type that you would see as kind of like a featurette on a show in the US here Saturday Night Live. You know, that type of sketch, and it's just a it's a very effective kind of humor, and one that I love, yeah, the choices were great. The opening with the, you know, the guy on the tower on Yavin, it's funny because that guy is shown in a new hope that that that same guy, or someone in that same position, is also shown in Rogue One, I believe, which I recently after, after we worked our way through both the seasons of andor. Then, of course, we compulsively went on to watch Rogue One again after that. And yeah, when that came up, that scene came up of the guy, my wife asked, What's he doing. And the the the responsibility, if you're not aware, the responsibility of a Star Wars fan, is to come up with an answer for that. You that's, that's a cardinal rule. I don't know if you're aware of this, Tracy, but it's a cardinal rule. You do not admit that you don't know, you must come up with something plausible. And so I tried to do that, and I failed miserably. I could not I just fumbled over myself. Well, he's, he's kind of like, he, he's probably just a, he's like, customs with the this, he's, he's got the little barcode skin, I don't he, uh. I just fumbled all over the place. I couldn't explain it, and we both just ended up laughing and and then I told her, I reminded her, I says, Don't worry, he's in, he's in Star Wars, A New Hope as well. So next time we watch that, you get to see him again, and you still won't know what he does, but it's, it's important, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I love this. And as someone who's a, you know, an enormous fan of the franchise and grew up on this, of course, there wasn't a single instance of job there that I didn't recognize and didn't, at least have the thought in the back of my head at some point, watch the movies of what's going on there. I just don't know if I I don't know when I'm in a when I'm in the Star Wars mindset and watching Star Wars, I don't think I'm necessarily looking for those things, but as soon as they presented them, I was like, oh, yeah, you know. So yeah, yeah. Really well executed. I think one of the things that jumped out to me about this that I found particularly impressive, because I've done a little bit of studying of, you know, how YouTubers that are trying to generate income through other streams, because YouTube itself, unless you're really in that, you know, super high tier, it's, not a particularly to just rely on the ad revenue from YouTube. It's not a huge source of income. And you know, YouTubers who are making a lot of money, they're typically not making most of it from YouTube ad revenue. It's sponsorships and things like that. And so there's lots of different ways that people do that. They will actually insert some kind of an ad in the middle of their stream, their own ad, or they'll stop what they're doing, maybe it's a talky video. They'll stop what they're doing, and they'll say, and that brings us to the sponsor of today's video, and then they'll do a little splurge on that, and then return to the video, or whatever. And there's all kinds of different techniques, because every once, because everyone's trying to figure out which of these actually work best, you know, and one of the more proven to be successful types of ad is one that is fully embedded in the content. That does not take you out of things necessarily. It actually feels immersed in the video, and that tends to mean viewers tune out less. Some people are just going to tune out when they detect it's an ad, and that's fine. You'll never going to get them, but they did that in here. The tail end of this video is a sponsorship blurb that is completely integrated. It's actually the characters, these Stormtrooper characters, that are presenting it in character. I thought that was really clever. And, you know, I know that there's various opinions on advertising in general, and I'm not a huge fan of advertising from the having to watch it perspective, but you know, if you're going to do it, this is, this is an effective way to do it, you know, to where, and especially it was daring to put it at the end of the video, because statistically, fewer people make it to the end of the video than than watch the first minute or two, right? So saving it to the end was, was I felt like respectful to the audience. You know, it's I'm not going to make you wait for the content until you hear my pitch. I'm going to give you the content first, and hope you stick around for this extra bit where I make my money. That's daring. It means you're going to make less money, most likely, but it's the most respectful way to treat your audience if you're going to have to do an ad, right? So I just, I just, my hat's off to them. That's, that's a that's a bold way to do it, that's respectful. And as as a maybe I'm a little more attuned to that as a content creator myself, that I I don't begrudge a YouTuber, you know, trying to pay their bills. You know, I don't begrudge it at all if they need, if they need to do that, you know, as their income, which some, some YouTubers don't need to do that, so they never have to worry about it, but if they do, yeah, I don't mind it. And I liked this, and stuck around for the ad simply because I had enjoyed the previous content so much. So at least for me, it worked. I mean, I'm not going to buy what they're selling, but still, it's only because I don't need it. But I thought that was, I thought that was a pretty neat approach to that. So yeah, I love this video. It's, It's my style of humor. I think each segment is perfectly timed. They don't run too long. They're short enough to where you want more. They roll one into the other very smoothly. It's just a really well made video. So I appreciate the pick Damian.

Damien Valentine 09:54
That's good the the ads that they did at the end. I like that as well, because it's but the way it's presented, like you said. They're in character. It feels like you're getting an extra bit of the episode

Phil Rice 10:03
rather than Yeah, it feels like another skit, doesn't it? Yeah, they've been doing it for a while now, but

Damien Valentine 10:07
it's always at the end, and it's always in character with those two stormtroopers. But I always stick and watch it because they're presenting the same kind of humor that the rest of the skit has, even if it's completely unrelated to the story they just presented, it's still worth watching because it's fun. Yeah, I have no particular need to buy this stuff, but I still watched it.

Phil Rice 10:26
And let me tell you this What, from my research and from talking to creators, what I do know is that the people who love that the most are the advertisers. Like if they if, if you're looking for sponsorship deals, or you're you've got an audience level where that's something that you want to go for. I would really recommend that you let them know or demonstrate for them that you're capable of this, of of truly embedded content, because they know better than anybody. Those work the best. And so if, if they know you're capable of that, that is what they're going to want you to do. So

Tracy Harwood 11:04
Tracy, what's the 25 bucks off? I'm asking, what's the 25 bucks?

Speaker 2 11:12
Coding? 25% Yeah, it was coding lessons. Is

Tracy Harwood 11:16
that what? It was okay, I just asked, because most of the ads I see on these channels, I just can't remember what the stuff's for. I can't remember what it's about. If it's in the story, I either remember the story or I remember that it's an advert. And I think there's a fine line with some of that. Maybe

Phil Rice 11:38
I agree it probably would have stuck with you more if it was in a category of if you were the intended audience, like if you category of product that was of interest to you. And in this case, it's not, it's a different audience. And they've probably done some research, or the the advertiser has has done some research to determine who the demographics are, largely of these. So, and this is, it's a product suited to a pretty specific group of people, yeah, but I thought it was well executed, absolutely.

Damien Valentine 12:12
The first time I saw them through an ad like this. It was for a company that sells lightsabers, not an official Star Wars product, but that's basically what it was. And so they showed the same storm troopers on their virtual set, and they had a buck with the lightsaber in it. All naturally done. But you know, what they're selling is what the what they're advertising is what they was the website would sell. And I thought that was really on team,

Phil Rice 12:37
absolutely. That's, that's a no brainer, demographics rise, right? Some segment of Star Wars fans are definitely interested in that. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 12:47
Well, okay, so where do I start with this? Right? The title's a good place, created in Unreal 5.6 and then released earlier this year. So that's pretty much where I began with this. AFK. Does that mean Away From

Phil Rice 13:07
Keyboard traditionally? But I don't know if that's what it means for theirs, but

Tracy Harwood 13:11
neither do I, but I'm wondering if there's a thing there, because now this is a, you know, it's obviously a web series. And, yeah, I know we've reviewed this before, but I did do a little bit more of a deep dive this time around, AFK, basically described as a gaming fantasy web series that follows the misadventures of a group of gamers who mysteriously wake up in the bodies of their MMO characters, gender swap, They say confused and out of their element, but they must work together to survive in a hostile new world. And it was created by a guy called Peter Haynes, who is actually a New Zealand based filmmaker. Now the seeds of AFK actually originated from what Haynes has described as a mercifully brief period of time where he was addicted to World of Warcraft, in which he said he found it interesting that people would spend hours online honing their archery, blacksmithing, leather working and other traditional skills. But if you ask them to do anything in related to any of those skills for real, they probably wouldn't have a clue. So the concept for the game came from the general feeling of being immersed in this kind of love hate relationship with an online game. He's been involved with film and video production for over 20 years. He describes AFK as one of the most ambitious projects he's ever tackled. In fact, he was a recipient of an epic, mega grant with which he made an animated film called Cheng beng, which was released in 2022 and he also has got a. Tutorials on the real illusion site, which I'll share with you, because I'm sure you'd be interested in it. And on top of that, he's married to somebody called Huiling al who is herself an award winning New Zealand TV producer, director and actor, who has also worked on the AFK AFK web series with Haynes, and also on his other productions as well. Now with that little bit of insight, it kind of made me feel like, okay, so we are. We know exactly, then what the chops are that he's bringing to this, and essentially how he's using the AFK web series to sort of develop and hone his skills with a new tool set. Hence me emphasizing the bit about, oh, it's created in Unreal 5.6 because it's basically a test of unreal, of meta humans, of I clone. And you know, he's clearly experimenting with these kind of different tools in creating a really interesting episode, I actually found he'd released some really great how to type tutorials on another channel called AFK Academy, which I don't know if you come across, which I'll put a link into the show notes, because they show how he's used those tools to generate each of these characters. Now, this particular short, I think it's I think it's brilliant, although it's slightly different in its articulation to some of the other shorts that we've taken a look at. There's definitely a kind of, what shall I say, a sort of southern hemisphere humor embedded in it, which I think, once you know you're talking about an Australian stroke, New Zealander kind of, you kind of go, you know, where that's going to with that. And I think that comes through with this beautifully well as well. I think what's also interesting is that it's all it's it as a as a short it's actually a riff off another channels overview and and that other channel does basically what I'd call nitpicks of Star Wars law, or things like life according to Star Wars. And that channel is called generation tech. And I'm guessing Damien you know that channel pretty well as well. And this short is actually a kind of response as a sort of a talking headset cameos for these kind of under some characters. And as you said, we reviewed, was it last year or the year before? I can't remember. Now, one of my favorite comedy machinimas, the talky orcs, um, which if you haven't seen, I would recommend you, you go and have a look at it, because it's brilliant. Um, there's a real sense of humor that comes through this in the characters that he's picked here to focus on. I mean, the you know, you you guys, focused on the What's this character doing in Star Wars? Well, I basically thought, you know, it's nothing to do with Star Wars. He's picked up this spear, and he's being asked to use it as a TV aerial, not it's nothing to do with checking the speed of shit. It's just, you know, he's standing in a bucket of water, elevated up a pole like a beacon where he's being asked to sort of move this stick a bit in order to get a better signal for a TV

Damien Valentine 18:52
like that. Actually, the bucket of water, he's just standing there, wasting water completely, not phasing him at all. It's

Tracy Harwood 18:59
crazy, isn't it? I mean, it's really, I mean, it's brilliant. And you know, the thing that's quite funny is it doesn't need to close the actual gag. It doesn't need to have a lightning strike. It the rod does it because you just know that it's a possibility. And you know, he's doing it in a thunderstorm. What could possibly go wrong. So that's that one, the the other one that I thought was, I mean, the job is Jabba the Hutts, masseurs. I mean, hell's that all about. But evidently, it was just before the character was blown up, which is kind of interesting, because that is also then picked up in that last shopping channel bit. But in between that you've also got these laser beam spotters, these sort of Dirk and hatch characters, which I don't know is that. Is that a reference to Battlestar Galactica? Yeah.

Damien Valentine 19:59
Is it? Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict.

Tracy Harwood 20:02
Mm, okay, so there's a lot of, I kind of interesting in jokes in there. But the bit about the TV shopping channel, the, you know, the hosts for the coding course, you know, yeah, coding. But did I hear Him say jabber script? I'm sure I heard him say that I missed that one. I have to watch it again. Just so funny. I mean, they're just, yeah, I mean, there's a real there's a huge amount of puns in this, a lot of Star Wars in jokes. And I really enjoyed all of that, although I'm not into it in the same way that either of you guys are, but, I mean, that's just, it was just so well done. It's really well edited together as pretty much everything that we've seen AFK do has been you can see, however, that I that it is a tech experiment. And you can see that in certain places like the, you know, the way the characters, Dirk and hatch, kind of talk to each other, you can see that there's, there's a sort of rubbery lip thing going on, which is clearly, you know, an attempt to focus on the on the lip sync as a specific area of interest in that particular part of that animation, I think. And similarly, the, you know, in terms of character development, with some of the, I would suggest, very original modeling that you would see in that

Damien Valentine 21:33
that makes sense, because a lot of their characters wear helmets in their other videos, they don't get a lot of chance to to do facial animation.

Tracy Harwood 21:41
Yeah, exactly. So I, yeah, I was really intrigued by, you know, where he's going with that, and because the more I dug into who he was and how he was working and how he was developing, I mean, it's another example of somebody that didn't have an awful lot of animation experience, you know, getting hold of a tool set and giving it a go, of which the AFK web series is just a wonderful example of a successful project, I think. But he's not without other projects, and they also are not without success stories behind them as well. And some of them are real life films I also found quite interesting in the comments, bearing in mind, this was only released a month ago, there is actually a lot of references to many recent AI vlogs for storm troopers being referred to. And I was intrigued by that, because you know you and I, again, as we commented in the last film that we looked at, Project Zomboid film, you know, Ricky and Phil had not collaborated at all in picking the horror movies that they selected. And you and I also have not collaborated on the picks that we've made this month, and I have picked an AI vlog for storm troopers film. So I was kind of intrigued to see there's a bit of a backlash in the comments being made on this film about those kinds of storm trooper shorts, which are also, you know, getting hundreds of 1000s of views on the channels in just the same period of time this has been released, whereas this is, you know, clearly a lot of effort in terms of the way that it's been created, the generative stuff is a different animal altogether. And I think we'll save that discussion for the next episode when we talk about the AI stuff that I've picked out. But it's just such an interesting pick. And, you know, it's really quite interesting to sort of go through what Haynes has been doing and how he's been doing it, because I have not appreciated any of that before we we got to this episode. So thank you for sharing it. Really great guy enjoyed it, definitely.

Phil Rice 24:08
I'll close with a little bit of trivia. The the guy on the tower, on Yavin with the pole. Do you met you remember the project from the mid 2000s Star Wars, uncut, yeah, which I think you did. You did at least one scene in that I know I did. There's a couple of our listeners that I know participated in that as well. This was my scene. Oh, from A New Hope. My scene was the guy tracking the Falcon as it flew in with his little UPC price code scanner. And then the next shot was the Falcon flying in towards, I can't remember the order of things now, but yeah, I ended up building all the. A greenery on Yavin, out of photos of from the supermarket produce section, all greens, and the planets were like, one was an orange with the sticker still on it, and the other was a blue, the other was a blueberry. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, that's, that was my scene. So, yeah, this, this, this guy has been long in my, in my thoughts of what's, what's he up to? So, yeah, I never dreamed he was submerged and and tracking, yeah, looking,

Tracy Harwood 25:39
looking for TV signals, right?

Damien Valentine 25:41
It makes you wonder, in the New Hope, everybody, when we see it, when it's not raining, if the water's still in there with him?

Tracy Harwood 25:51
Yeah, well, there's an alternative explanation. Wasn't there as well?

25:55
Yeah, there was.

Phil Rice 25:59
Well, that's our pick. That's our pick for this week. Yeah, there are a lot of comments on this one where people were expressing how grateful they are that AFK is is doing things the the traditional animation way in the face of a lot of AI related content. Do you have an opinion on that audience. If so, let us know in the comments, or drop us an email at talk at completely machinima.com we don't read all of our email on the air, but we do read all of it, and sometimes we do comment on it or mention it here. So yeah, let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you. My name is Phil, and on behalf of my co hosts, Damien and Tracy, we wish you a great day, and we'll see you next time. Live long and prosper you.