Phil Rice 01:00
Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related technologies like Tron. Indeed, I'm one of your co hosts, Phil rice, and I'm here with Damien Valentine, Ricky Grove and Tracy

Ricky Grove 01:18
Harwood, hello. Hey, folks, hello.

Phil Rice 01:21
So this week we're talking about a film pick that was suggested to to us by Biggs trek, who's been a big supporter of the show, and we like his work too. Thank you, big and yeah, and he mentioned that I don't remember, in reaction to which episode it was this recommendation came in. But I think we were talking about, it might have been one of those discussions of, well, it's a shame we don't see more good, you know, more narrative stuff out of iClone. And we've had that discussion 1000 times about Unreal Engine, talking about the the plethora of of, you know, tech demo type stuff. And boy, sure would love to see some rich stories. Whenever we do find a nugget of good story, it's like, it's like a big celebration around the completely machinima offices here, quote, unquote. Well, it seems true for iClone to some degree, that there's a seems like there's an awful lot of people using it, but it's rare that one that something made with iClone makes it over here and so Biggs trek referred us to this series that this of the creator's name is Aurora trek, and they have been making machinima With iClone for, well, for quite some time and to a surprising quality standard. And as far as I know, none of us had ever even heard of them. So I thought I'd submit one, the first chapter of this series that that Biggs recommended to us. It's called Quest of a key a fantasy adventure series, and we're just looking at a chapter one. So how I would describe this, I guess, is it's kind of set in, like a Dungeons and dragony type of, you know, fantasy universe, maybe like a little bit of a taste of the vibe of Lord of the Rings, that type of thing, your typical fantasy adventure, and with a What's the term diminutive? Is that the right word? Female protagonist? Sure. And yeah, short, yeah, and yeah. I just, I found it. This is not the kind of story fair that maybe really lights me up. However, the production quality is is pretty terrific. There's there's some nice voice acting going on. The quality varies between some of the performances, but some of them are very strong, and the animation is really nice in terms of, I don't know if it was mocapped or or not. It looks like it probably was, because it seems so custom to the situation. And it's very smooth. It's, it's hard to find, like a flaw, the typical stuff that less experienced iClone machine numbers, mistakes they might make with, you know, obvious clipping of this, that or the other, and maybe the clothes don't align right, or things like that, and this person has worked through all of that and and come out with something that's fairly polished. I did find myself wondering, there's kind of a there's a sharpness to the image that seems to be lacking, and I'm not sure if that, if it's because it's lit entirely in iClone, he doesn't really say much about the production process and the description, and maybe, maybe someone in the audience would would be able to lighten this, or maybe one of you know, but it. As soon as I watched it, I thought, I wonder what this would look like if they ran it through Omniverse or rendered Unreal Engine or something, because this is one where there's so much complexity to the scenes, and the lights are, are used properly, but there's, there's just kind of like a fogginess over the whole image. And I say that because I tend to hit my head against that quite a bit. Working in iClone myself, and have to figure out ways to de emphasize that so but overall, the look of it's very nice. The music is really excellent. The sound is pretty good. There's areas where we talk sometimes about for sound and even for the vocal performances, to really get you immersive, there has to be a sense of the space that they're in, which is typically done by adding some reverb or something like that. There's a there's a there's a key scene where the lead character goes into kind of a cavernous space and the reverb is there. And that's when I realized, oh yeah, that's the first time I've really heard a room so far. But she was in other places, indoor, that that it came off very dry, and that's just a lack of you just need, you don't need much. You put too much, and it sounds awful. It sounds like they're talking in a barrel. So that that would be a criticism on the sound side, the quality of the sound effects, the timing and everything is is, I mean, it's just, it all feels like it fits. There's one point where she bangs a pan to get a whole room's attention. You hear it before you see it. Just nicely done. Nice shot selection, good direction. Again, the story is not, it's not something that I'm terribly excited about, but I really admire the craft going on here, and I'm curious what you guys

Ricky Grove 06:45
think same thing, stereo sound effects occasionally were off placement of things. Basically it's the mastering of the sound that was needed to have more work on it. One Pass by somebody who was really good at that would have fixed all of those things, and none of those mistakes were enough to pull you out of the story. So yeah, these are nitpicks by two guys that love to master sound. The rendering was good. I didn't get that diffuse thing that you did, but I did think that the faces in particular needed to have a little more texture. Everything was smooth, almost clay like which is a giveaway that it's a 3d image. Some of the animations, I recognize some of the animations from an animation library. So I don't think there was any motion capture there. There might have been some, but I think most of it was either done post to pose or was taken from a library that they bought through iCloud. That's one great thing about iCloud, and real illusion is they have their own marketplace, so you could buy stuff there. Does get pretty expensive, so you have to be careful. There's some very beautiful shots in it. The story was simply told. It was well executed. It was a very enjoyable show.

08:18
It didn't

Ricky Grove 08:21
it didn't reach the kind of mastery that we saw last week with among fables and men. This is a more traditional kind of story, but for what it is, I enjoyed it very much. I came away with a smile on my face, and I thought, well, I'd like to know what happens next.

Phil Rice 08:45
Was good before, before, before. Whoever goes next goes next. Ricky, I'm curious, based on our discussion last week about realism as a style. So this, this leans more in the direction of realism, but it's not really purely realism. I guess, would this fall into that category,

Ricky Grove 09:04
realism, realism, fantasy, world in

Phil Rice 09:07
which maybe a stylized realism or

Ricky Grove 09:09
something, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a particular look to it. A colors might be a little different than what you would see in actual life. This scale of certain things might be different than if it was real. You know, it's definitely a style, realistic style, but, but there's a there's a kind of softness to the realism. There's not this hard thing like, but that would be in the writing too. I mean, if she got pissed off, and suddenly there was a fight in the bar. You might say that was more realistic. So there's a little softness to it, but it definitely is a realistic style. But gotcha done in their own way, a bit, a little bit of an anime style to it, although much slower than anime. I.

Damien Valentine 10:00
So I can talk about some of the icon and stuff in the credits for the video. They do talk about doing motion capture, and they've both got the same last name. I don't know if their brother or sister, husband or wife, or anything like that. That's something I suspect Tracy will have dug up. So there was motion capture involved with this film. I don't know how much of it, if it was all of it, or if it's just some of it, so I can't speak to that. There's a little bit about the characters design, and they were found. The characters came from dazd and imported it into icon. I think there's a comment somewhere. Someone was asking about it on video, and they're saying that they get their characters from Daz because it adds more to the characters and just using character creator, and I think that's one of the reasons why it eliminates the clipping, because it's just not there. Whereas, if you that's one of the downsides of using religious character creator, you you basically have a naked character, and you put the clothes on top of them, but sometimes the skin underneath can come through the clothes and things like that. And even when you try and adjust the texture, like the transparency, you start to try and figure out where it's coming through. And that can be a bit of a pain, sticky process, and sometimes it you can still miss a bit. And you you've got the video out, oh, I missed that bit there where there's a little bit of skin showing just it's so easy to do because sometimes can be tiny, or if the clothes match the skin color fairly closely, you can miss it, unless you're looking really closely. It's an easy

Ricky Grove 11:40
mistake that doesn't happen with Daz. I don't

Damien Valentine 11:43
think so, because the clothes are part of the character model as well. So they're not the top of the naked body. They're part of the body as well. So it's, it's done differently. I've never used as a source or anything like that. I was kind of watching this. I think maybe that's a place to look at. On the other I do still like having the full control of the where the characters look with character creator, which I don't know how much control does, does? I know it's people create models and share them and you can buy them, but I don't know the process of actually creating characters with it. I was very pleased to see another iClone story driven thing, given that's something that I do myself, and I often think I wish other people were using this tool, because I want to see what other people see when they see my work. I want to have that experience seeing what other people create. And this was a really good example of it. And I was very impressed by the actual character animations. Feel like I need to practice my motion capture skills a bit, because this is a lot smoother than what I do. So, yeah, I need, I kind of need to step up my game there the characters, like the look of the faces at the Mickey, you mentioned that they were smooth and kind of clay like I think that's because they don't have the very realistic skin options that are available to character creator. I think might be a Daz thing. And that's the look they wanted to go to, because once it even pulls the character, you can probably adjust the textures if you wanted to. But this is the look they're going for. And I'm pretty sure, last thing I say, I'm pretty sure, at some point, seeing the credits or in the comments, they mentioned that they started this with icon seven, and icon eight was released during the process, so at some point they switched between the two, as they're making it. So I don't know if all the footage has re rendered again in iclona, or if they just used what they had already and then added eight on top of it and edited together. It didn't really specify. It's just something that happened. I kind of got the impression it caught them by surprise, because realization do tend to announce something, and it's released very quickly afterwards. So yeah, yeah, but yeah. I really enjoyed this film, and the series is still ongoing, and I believe chapter, chapter five was released four months ago, and I need to catch up and watch them. I don't know if that's the end of the story, because obviously I haven't watched it yet, but I'll be good to watch more.

Tracy Harwood 14:19
Yeah, I've got a few comments. I'll go through everything, and then maybe we can pick up some on some of the points that I want to make, because they're not they're a little bit different than the points that you guys have made. Basically, this one is basically sort of positioned as kind of a medieval fantasy series set in the world of magic, mystery monsters and mechanisms. And as you said, it's right up to episode five, but none of that, none of the magic mystery monsters mechanisms, are really revealed in any of these five episodes just yet. Of the mechanism, you could say has been so it's it's badged as an animated story with original characters, original settings, original music score, and it's apparently in the description, also builds upon the Star Trek Aurora. Star Trek, kind of universe with the same kind of sense of silliness and spectacle from that kind of Aurora series. So it's building on a on a repertoire and an esthetic approach that has been well trodden for this kind of creator. And obviously, as you said, it's also dipping its toe into the into the Lord of the Rings universe, and also the Dungeons and Dragons type feel, as well as kind of, you know, talking about kind of heroes and these fantastic quests. Now you've also, you've talked about it being machinima using these kind of tools. I clone cinema, 4d does and what have you, rather than a specific game. And I actually think had they had the Creator used a game, they'd have ended up with something a little stronger than what they've got now. And I'll tell you for why. As I go through all my comments, I think what we're seeing here, though, isn't I mean, with this particular one, so I mean Aurora trek, the episodes are a lot longer with this, the episodes are really short. But I actually think what we're looking at here is a long form animation style. This guy, Tim Vining, is the creator Aurora Trek has got websites and channels for both quest and Aurora trek, and from those sites, you can clearly see how much detail and effort has gone into creating the works. I think quest to the key actually has been a concept with a really long lead time. The trailer for it was released in 2017 so I'm not at all surprised to hear you say that actually, iClone has been updated. I don't know when seven came out, he probably started on six at some point. So, yeah, he's been going a long time with it. And I think when you look at the trailer, the first part of the the chapter that we looked at at chapter one, which was released in 23 I think six years later, actually includes the same footage without any kind of changes to it that I could discern whatsoever. So, yeah, I think parts that have been been sort of on a, on a on a slate for a long time. Clearly, what this guy has is a really well developed skill set in CG storytelling. His character animation is one thing, but I also think the camera movement, the scene composition, the lighting, the rendering, which are all clearly, you know, quite crucial for bringing the story to life. I think are all pretty well done in this. I mean, I think the editing is really well well done. I think the sound design. I mean, I watched the, you know, the points at which they were tapping and movement, and the sound is Bob on with all the, you know, all the, all the movement that's going on in the scene in which, in places, there's a lot going on. So all of that is incredibly well done in the series, though, there's, there's multiple characters, which I think also highlights the pacing and plot progression and the voice acting and orchestration and storytelling and script structure, all of which I think are worth noting too. Chapter Three is, sorry, chapter one is, is basically the introduction to the central character, and it really just introduces her kind of tenacious personality. She's evidently lacking a little in confidence for what you might call a sort of a traditional adventuress. All of that comes over really well, but I felt initially it was just a little slow for a shorter episodic animation by about a third of the way into that story. The first episode is 11 minutes long by about a third in that kind of middle third, I think, is when it started to pick up and to, you know, be, become, become more of a short type animation. That's where the storytelling chops, I think, begins to shine a little through, through what we're seeing the character and animation editing, as I said, is really quite outstanding. And. Movement and the progression of the story, I think is interesting. And again, I think the sound design score is what helps to drive it, because there are a lot of scenes in that first episode, and it made me wonder why a game hadn't been selected for this, because that would have enabled a faster paced emphasis on the original characters, whereas, of course, what you've got, and what's evident here is that the scenes have taken a lot of effort to build. And in comparison to characters, I think a really rather bland and feel just a little bit off the shelf, I think you've you've alluded to that in some of the comments that you've made. Now, the characters, I think, are clearly drawing very heavily on Lord of the Rings, The Gnome or dwarf like focal character, and then the elf. And there's also a Strider, like character, briefly introduced with some kind of mystical or kind of Cursed ghosts, very much, I think in the in the mold of the men in the mountain, it begins to make a growingly complex plot. But it I kind of wondered where that was all going, and it made me want to watch chapter two. In actual fact, I, in the end, watched all five chapters. So the plot in chapter two is really quite accelerated by comparison to what you've got in chapter one. It's it's quite different, though it's entirely focused on narrative and there's a lot of detail and reveal, basically, of the backstory to this sort of central character and this mechanical device that's that's driving the story. But in chapter two, it's the voice acting that takes central stage, because I feel the animation is quite a bit weaker in that particular episode. And it's the voice acting of the main character that I assume has been done by I would guess Jeanette vining is Tim's wife. Could be wrong. Here she's credited with doing the MO cap, some of the MO cap stuff as well. So I would say wife rather than sister. I don't know. Could be wrong, but clearly, evidently, part of the animation production team, not really very well credited in the promotion of it. Having said all of that, I think interestingly, the elf character is voiced by somebody called Aaron sin, who's actually an Emmy Award winning voice actor. He's also a producer and a writer in film, TV and game, and he's got a whole bunch of credits behind his names, which then made me look at who are the actors in this and they're they're all, every one of them are professionally trained voice actors, and the music too is actually, you know, it's, it's an indie game designer who's also a composer and has got quite a lot of experience in music production and mixed engineering. So it's by no means, really an amateur like production. It's very well, you know, the production quality of it and and all of the effort that's gone into that, and especially the effort that's gone into badging it as original, I think, is possibly where some of the mistakes have been made, if I can call them mistakes, perhaps, perhaps that's too strong a term, but I feel that that emphasis on That level of production quality has come at the expense of focusing on actual plot and story itself. And my thoughts are really that there's quite a lot of mismatch between the stories pacing and its complexity and general positioning. So chapter two has got a lot more detail into it. It's kind of hard to know what the focus should be on, because there is so much detail, and I don't know really what you meant to retain to take into the rest of the story.

Tracy Harwood 24:14
I concluded that actually what you've got there is for no other way of describing it, padding. Basically, it's rather padding it out. So rather than plot development, it's character padding. And that's ultimately true in each of the other four episodes, which are all introducing different characters solely focused on the introduction and the development of the the social dynamics between the characters, but essentially just introducing another character. There are no links between any of the episodes beyond the main character and the concept of this quest, but there's no reveal at all of the adventure itself. Off, which kind of might captivate you and tease you into what the challenges might be that await these kind of characters. And by the end of five, you actually, at the very end of five, you do actually begin the quest with a little bit of sailing, almost Argonaut style, but really curiously, instead of sort of starting out through a Breaking Dawn and, you know, off on this amazing adventure, all you kind of get of it is the sort of end of day glow. And it's the same glow, you know, right the way through the sort of, you know, boarding the ship, getting on it, and, you know, just sort of sailing off. There's no sort of sense of time passing, which is, I think, a little bit of a mistake, because instead of being the start of the adventure, it feels like the end of it, which I think is a shame. But the other problem that I also had with that is, is, is basically that, having introduced these characters, All with different roles, one of the characters that was introduced was as the the trek leader, a trek lead. And there we are sailing off, which just didn't make any sense. Moreover, this character just didn't seem to have any input into the decision making process. So I think plot here is lacking throughout. So a lot of emphasis on character, lot of emphasis on originality, a lot of emphasis on building out the village that they're all in, but just doesn't go anywhere for me. Kind of made me thought, why present a story in this way? Why do it so that you've you've kind of spent so much time developing the characters and and so little time presenting the quest in as in the title and in the script and the description. Why do that from beginning to end, when what you're trying to do is show shorts and do it in an episodic way? And I think that's where I drew the conclusion that the real reason that they've done it, he's done it is basically because the intention is to stitch these episodes together just simply to produce long form animation, rather than to tell short stories by episodes. And I'm not sure therefore, the strategy that has been adopted with this is actually going to work particularly well as a as a series, I think the pacing and the this kind of single narrative arc beginning to end is tricky because the story takes so long to get going. I think with shorts, maybe a better strategy is to have more action and then sort of reflect back, maybe to the connections to different aspects of the characters as as they develop, but in a way that kind of alludes to a plot. And we saw that done particularly well, I think, by daminsky in the mission series, complex story, lots of different aspects to it, but it kept you engaged with what's, what's the plot, and we've got none of that in here. I think that the current strategy is going to actually be a bit of a challenge for this create ultimately. And I'd say that I think really it's, I don't know, putting my thing it is quite a challenge, but I'd say when you know, when you're building something that you want to sort of sell as a standalone, as episodic, that that to sort of do it in this way where you're kind of loosely extending law from other popular content is is probably going to be quite hard to do. I don't know. It's not getting the audience that Aurora trek generated, for sure, and evidently, it's not really rooted in the popular sort of cultural references that this creator's already sort of tipped into. And I think, I think the reason for that is, it's because it just doesn't lead so easily to the adventure. I've no clue, really what the adventure is going to be. You can imagine, you know, there's references to some sort of, you know, treasure at the end of whatever it might be. But what was, what the nature of the adventure is, don't know. I therefore, then led me to think about, well, who is this for? And I think the creator is given. Well, I think they. Need to give, I think they need to give it some more thought. To be honest, it's, I think it's, it's kind of got a vibe of Team thematic content, not unlike a bit of an episode of Scooby Doo for example, but it kind of lacks action. And I wonder how long the current emphasis on these kind of social dynamics between characters and these kind of vague references to this higher order and promised treasure is actually going to keep viewers interested. I think the length of time between episodes basically means it's not really likely to hold attention for too long, especially if the story depends heavily on the characterizations and the level of detail that has gone into creating those characterizations. I mean, if by the time you get to the adventure, you're going to have to sit and re watch the first five episodes because you can't remember all that detail, I think that's going to be a bit of a problem and a bit of a stopper on this progressing. But whether and when it progresses, I think remains to be seen, at least until the whole thing is released, and then I think the decision needs to be made as to whether the to cut this into a feature length, or keep it salamied into into these episodes, because I think at that point, it probably doesn't matter, but it certainly does until then, because I think finding a way to accelerate the stories into short, cohesive adventures, is going to be tricky when so much time has been spent on developing these characters, unless, of course, the aim is ultimately that these little episodes become back stories to main episodes. There's not a lot of evidence of that at the moment, though, my suspicion actually is that quest is taking second fiddle, in any event, to Aurora trek, and we may then, therefore never really see how the adventures emerge from it, which I think would be a great pity, because I think this guy's got a lot of chops, and There's more to come here. I'm certain of it. I think that's why I would say the original animation decision may ultimately have been the biggest mistake on this one, because if they'd if he'd have gone instead for an established game world and used it to find it kind of underpin an original story, which he clearly has some aspects of. I think that would have solved a couple of core problems, building a world from scratch for one thing, and also positioning the work for an audience, or several audiences for another, although, of course, it would still create, you know, many other challenges, no doubt, but it might have helped them get to the point of a story a bit quicker. And I think there's one more thing I'd just like to say, bear with me. I especially liked the way that this creator does the development work for this when I started doing a bit of the background, you know, looking into it, he's, he's very evidently active in all the creator community for on real illusion, on Daz and various others. And, you know, he's, he's discussing with other creators how he's developing the work, the use of the tools and so on. And I think it's one of the key things, as I've commented on many times before, that makes the Machinima community stand apart from other creator communities. So you know, I think he's done an excellent job in engaging the creator community, if not thinking through exactly where his audience sits for this particular piece of work. So there you go. Quite a few comments. I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are.

Phil Rice 33:46
Yeah, you know, I mean the numbers. We don't really focus on the numbers here much. We may marvel sometimes at the number of views that one of our films has gotten, but if you look at the numbers across the span of those five episodes? Yeah, the audience appears to agree. I mean, the first episode, of course, got a decent chunk of views, nowhere near what any of the aurora stuff got, but, you know, it very respectable number. And then it for the next two episodes, it drops to 20% of that. But the chapters two and three have less than 1000 views each, and then four and five, it dips by another 50% so, and it could be Tracy that that's kind of indicative of what, what you've mentioned, that there's nothing in there to, there's no hooks. The story doesn't have any hooks to give you a sense of direction. And people do whether they know how to analyze it, like someone, you know, like you does they feel that, you know, it's an intuitive thing that, well, this just isn't getting me, you know. So that's that's interesting. It's also interesting to me that. The notion that, you know, we've got somebody who's, you know, creating in 3d software, I clone, etc, and and here were the suggestion that they should consider game. And it's just, it's kind of funny to me, because it seems like everybody that's been involved in machinima at some point, was using it as, gee, one day, I'll do this in in real software. Yeah, right, yeah, but, but it does make me wonder, like, I don't think, I think it's pretty common for someone to get their start in game based machinima and then kind of use that as a they learn certain things about filmmaking, whatnot, and then they desire more freedom in how they can control the environment, and that's what pushes them in the direction of iClone or things like that, right, right? And so we've always assumed that that's a that's a progression that we can at least relate to, because we've seen it. How many times, right? And myself included, Damien, too. You know, we both got started with games and then moved on to that. I don't know of anyone who's moved the other direction, really, like someone who has mastered, if we can use that word, the the iClone type of character animation and character creation and all these elements. Wouldn't it be an interesting challenge for that person to step into the very restricted mod based fight against the game engine, World of game based machinima, right? It would not be a small task. I'm not sure. I'm not sure the skills he learned, learning this translate as well the other direction, as they do coming from game machinima. There's so much he would have to that would feel like compromises. There would be compromises that he would have to make to, let's say, try to make this in one of the, one of the Elder Scrolls, you know, or some game like, okay, you can, you can tell your story in Elder Scrolls. All your sets will be built, by the way. You can't really control the characters. Do any lip sync, you can't. Yeah, how you want you can't. Mo cap, you can't. I mean, so is it really, would it? Would it be a net gain in time, the fact that he didn't have to build the sets? Or maybe he's just kind of

Tracy Harwood 37:37
not really talking about the time, that's right. Okay,

Ricky Grove 37:41
I was gonna say that Tracy is not talking about the actual technical switch. She's talking about connecting it to a story that's already set in a game world, okay, as opposed to creating your own so more and failing it existing audience kind of engage it. Have an engagement using a game based world. Isn't that what you were saying, Tracy,

Tracy Harwood 38:06
it is. But I'm also talking about, you know, because the plot isn't there. Practice creating the plot. And, you know, forget about the emphasis on building out the originality of the the world, and start focusing on telling a, you know, telling a story with, with, with, you know, if you if an adventure story is what you want to tell, then tell an adventure story. We're not seeing an adventure story here. We're seeing character stories, character developments.

Phil Rice 38:38
Yeah, yeah, no. And that makes me wonder his it seems like that the the emphasis that he put his time on for so long prior to this was a Star Trek fan production where he did have that existing universe to lean on. And maybe it's not, I haven't watched Aurora, so I don't know if it actually references genuine characters from Roddenberry Star Trek or not, but at least the universe is there. So there's certain things you don't have to explain and you know what types of characters are common. So even if it's not the exact, pointy eared character from Star Trek, it's someone that looks just like that, so like, oh, that's one of the Vogons. Or, you know, so I get it, yeah, that in this, it doesn't seem to be pulling from anything except, arguably the broad Tolkien world DND, which, that's the order of those things, by the way, is Tolkien, and then DND built on that, and then so he's leaning on that. But the thing is, is DND isn't a story world, not really like, what's the story of Dungeons and Dragons? Well, there's no such thing really. There's lots of stories. But the whole notion of it was you create the story. It's a structure. Either you're going to go to Tolkien, you're going to go to Middle Earth, there's a story world going on, or you're going to go on this abstracted layer, which is DND, and then it does answer some questions. You can have a dragon appear, and nobody's going to be shocked, but you could have magic spells and all that stuff, but or orcs, but there's no story to lean on in Star Trek. There's even if you don't focus on one particular series, within the Star Trek world, there is a broader overarching story that is encapsulated in the intro phrase you know about going to brave new worlds, you know, where no one has gone before, that type of thing, right? So that's, that's, that's a story to latch on to, if nothing else. So, yeah, this is, it does present an extra challenge to and it makes you wonder, is there? Is there? This isn't a criticism, it's me just speculating out loud. Is there a natural myopia as a story writer that you maybe don't even realize what you're missing because you've just been writing in this way, kind of leaning on that? I don't want to call it a crutch, but I don't mean it in a demeaning way, but just you've got that basis that you've been building on, and now you yank that away and just tell story the way that you do. But there's stuff missing, you know, and it's, it's, you're not exactly sure how to proceed. I'm not criticizing it at all, or I'm more relating to it as that would be that's really hard as a writer to make that change just like that. So, yeah, it's really, really interesting points. Tracy, I appreciate your analysis,

Ricky Grove 41:53
very deep analysis of it,

Speaker 2 41:56
you know, I don't really still enjoy it. I still enjoyed the, you know, well,

Tracy Harwood 42:01
as I can say, it's not to decry the craft that's gone into it, because it's brilliant. But I think if story what is what you're about, then tell a story, and it's, it's not there at the moment, in the in the way that it's badged. And I wonder why, and I think the, I think the quest for originality has probably let him down a little bit. In this regard,

Phil Rice 42:25
I'm graphic those things. Go ahead,

Damien Valentine 42:27
Damien, I'm going to add my thoughts to this, having also worked on a fan production in an established world. That's right, there's Star Wars, SC empire. Those videos get a lot more views than anything else I do for the simple two words, Star Wars. And I'm sure that with aura Trek, The Star Trek, sure, those two words will attract a lot more attention than the original project, yeah. And I kind of get the feeling that they'll seem very proud of this pan series they've made. And, you know, they've got, they've made quite a few videos, and there's still some test videos being posted, and they're still working on it. But there comes a point when you're working in someone else's world, when you think this is fun, but I want to play my own world. Yeah, and so that's what I think this is, maybe they haven't figured out everything that needs to exist in their world, and that's what they're doing. And yeah, because I got started with a Buffy fan series, and I did some Star Wars fan films. He's in the Star Wars games, and when I finished that story, yeah, this taught me a lot, but I want to do my own thing now. And there are a lot of flaws in that world I created. I look back at I think I know I could do better if I did it now, and I've been playing around with some ideas for creating a new world with the experience I've got now. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do any Star Wars stuff, but I think the same here with Aurora trek, they got started with this fan film, but that itch to create their own thing, and they're still filling it out. They haven't figured out all the game rules, so they are relying on Dungeons and Dragons and Lord the rings for inspiration, because they haven't filled it out. But I imagine that's something that they're working on to get to

Ricky Grove 44:13
the thing is, is that good? Good criticism? And it's what we practice here comes in details. You can say, Oh, I didn't like that, or I didn't like this, but Tracy's somewhat long criticism, sorry, was a very detailed one. She she had obviously thought about this very carefully. So if you're the filmmaker, if you're somebody trying to understand how to be critical about it, you use details. And all of the details she said made were spot on. As soon as she said it, I said, Yes, that's right, I saw that, but my watching of it, of the first episode, was not the same as Tracy. She's watching of it because she set it up with the whole series. And that's one thing that I like about our four person format. In criticism. We're all going to look at these things differently and with different deaths. And so I appreciate your comments, your long comments, Tracy, but they really made me think,

Phil Rice 45:24
good. Me too, me too.

Tracy Harwood 45:27
I didn't start out, I have to say to want to watch all five. It's just that the first episode, just, I didn't get enough out of it, from, from, you know, it's too slow starting and then, and then it got going. And I thought, where is it going, Yeah. And it's kind of just sort of, you know, and then the episodes, it's like a

Phil Rice 45:49
thread on the sweater, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it got your curiosity, but maybe not for the the reason that I then got creator of the story might have hoped, right,

45:58
I want to see where this is going, right? That's right.

Damien Valentine 46:02
But yeah. Chronicles humanity is my original thing. And that first series, I was to figure out it is really slow to watch because I was trying to introduce the characters in this world. They're doing too much of that at once before getting to the actual story, which I suspect they're doing. So when it kept the second season, I thought, I can't do that again. I need to get straight to the story and get things going so better.

Tracy Harwood 46:26
How did you then cut the character bit the character development, though? What did you do with the characters?

Damien Valentine 46:33
Oh, instead of introducing them and setting them up and showing you know how they interact with each other, I just got on with the story and let the story and how they respond to what's happening develop the indication

Ricky Grove 46:45
of their character. Yeah, it's what they do that reveals their character.

Damien Valentine 46:50
Yeah, instead of telling the audience, just let the characters show the audience by doing things, and that drives the story forward.

Phil Rice 46:58
Yeah, some of the novels do that and and are engaging and gripping reads from the beginning for that very reason that they they don't do a bunch of exhibition at the beginning, or it's just you learn about the character because you're writing along with them, essentially, yeah, I

Ricky Grove 47:15
tend to like novels that do that, as opposed to those that have longer interior revelations of the characters psyches, you know, right? Yeah, I get really tired of that. So some writers do that really well, and it's interesting, but for the most part, you reveal the character in the actions that they do. So, for

Damien Valentine 47:39
example, with chronic humanity, season two. First episode, one of the main characters was arrested and put in prison at the end of season one. She the first episode is her escape. Someone comes and rescues her, and they escapes. And the next few episodes are her being hunted down by the villains of the story. And so she goes to her mum, because that's the only person she knows that could help her. And so you get that character introduced. But instead of explaining who her mother is, you kind of get the feel from the way the house looks they live in. It's a big house. It's nicely decorated. So you know that she's quite a wealthy person, and she's got power and influence. And she sent she basically says, I can't come with you, but here's a ship you can fly away and escape in it, and you've got this whole chase sequence going on, and it really drives the story forward. But you get a feel for those characters and how they interact, like you could tell the mother cares for a daughter, just by the way that she says, Get in this ship and go. You don't need to say, I'm your mother and I love you and I have a 10 Minute

Ricky Grove 48:43
an action oriented story makes the viewer or the reader think what's going to happen next? What's going to happen next? Whereas a character focused story like, say, a romance genre, it's all about, well, what is she thinking? How does she look? What is she? How does she feel about that other character? And yet, you never, may never, leave that room. You know, it's all about she said this, and he said

Phil Rice 49:17
that, go ahead. It's important. It's important it's important to note too, that, like I think that the type of motion or action matters, because it's not like nothing happened in these episodes. Stuff was happening. There was nobody just sitting around. It was some stuff was happening. But what caught Tracy's attention was nothing that seemed to form a cohesive attachment to a larger story, right? So it's, it's, it's the story needs to keep moving. It's not just about keeping them in action. It's, does the story get moved forward by the action? And so far, that's that's not something that the. These, these chapters are maybe just aren't, aren't, aren't quite doing yet, you know? So that's, that's, that's, yeah, that's great. That's really good stuff. Audience, what did you think of this film? And if you watched all five episodes, we'd love to hear about that too. Drop us a comment wherever you watch or listen to this, or send us an email talk at completely machinima.com my name is Phil rice, and on behalf of my co hosts, Ricky Grove, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine,

Ricky Grove 50:28
well, there's just one more thing I wanted to say. Oh no, okay, okay, sweet. Beat this horse down. Okay. Bye bye,

Phil Rice 50:40
see you next time bye, bye. You.