Phil Rice 01:00
Hello and welcome to And now for something completely machinima, the podcast about machinima, virtual production and related stuff. My name is Phil rice, and I'm here with my co hosts, Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine.

Damien Valentine 01:15
Hello.

Phil Rice 01:16
Ricky is off this week. We hope to see him join us shortly. So this week is Tracy's pick. Tracy tell us about the film that you chose this this month.

Tracy Harwood 01:28
Sure, this is called dysfunction, and it's by Iona Allen and was released last June. So this isn't actually a typical machinima film. I will explain why, as we kind of get to this, suffice to say, I felt this was a rather more unusual sort of Second Life pig. We've seen quite a lot of Second Life shorts over the over the last few years, but they don't all do what this film is doing particularly well. I think there's no this kind of you know you're watching this. There's no kind of real clear beginning or a clear middle or a end, an end to it, really, it's not an obvious plot, and I think that's partly to do with how, how this has been made. Instead, what we get is something a little bit more abstract, I think. And I actually think it's really quite an unsettling piece that you're watching at its core, what you've got is a portrait of a very fractured mind of a central character.

Tracy Harwood 02:59
I

Tracy Harwood 02:59
think the title gives it the biggest clue, but actually, what you're what's being alluded to is feels like some kind of breakdown, not just, not just a physical breakdown, though, but a but a psychological breakdown, an emotional breakdown, and also there's a cognitive breakdown going on in this as well. So it's rather not so much a story about someone experiencing dysfunction, I think, in the way that it's portraying this, but you are very much being made to feel as though you are inside that experience. And that's what I liked about the film. So, you know, headset on, binaural sound thing going on. I think what you're what you're experiencing is, is really kind of quite interesting. This is made up of fragments of kind of discord seem to be disconnected, visuals, quite abrupt cuts, moments that don't quite link together in a kind of logical way. And that kind of fragmentation really mirrors how disordered thinking can can feel. I don't know if you've ever been kind of overwhelmed or anxious or mentally scattered, I think you'll recognize that the sense of not being able to hold a single clear thread of thought together is exactly what this is trying to portray. And it and I think it does it really well, and it does it in a very clever way. But there's another real key thing at play here, which is the relationship between sound and image. Everything that you see really is fundamentally supported by sound and and and music and. And but I want to say the dominant thing is really the sound. But even that feels a little bit disconnected and in places conflicting. For example, you kind of hear some things that don't quite match the visual, or, you know, the audio creates a kind of tension, rather than some sort of clarity. There's, for example, something which you feel sounds like a heartbeat at times, but the imagery is of a ceiling fan. And you know, clearly what you're seeing is somebody experiencing the heat of the room and the the cloistering effect of that kind of heat, maybe, is what you what you can kind of feel as as the intensity in the story that's being told really cleverly portrays that. I think, I think that's overall that sound design really is what makes, makes it feel quite uneasy, because it's, it's telling your brain something that you're not really quite seeing. I think so to me, this story is all about symbolism, and you get lots of kind of impressions through what you're seeing lots of different types of textures, lots of fleeting images, some of it, you know, you're ultimately not too sure whether it's kind of drug induced or dream state or quite what it is that you're, you're, you're actually witnessing. I think one thing's for sure, though, what you are witnessing is mental overload and and it's that chaotic sort of imagery really, that kind of portrays that even to the state where you could be witnessing, maybe emotional paralysis and the inability to act or communicate or connect with anything in some meaningful way, really, those those vibes, I think, come through incredibly strongly. You're not really entirely sure. I think there's a lot of ambiguity about it, but there's not you, because you're not really entirely sure exactly what it is you're seeing. I think one thing is certain with it is that you cannot watch it passively. It's one of those sort of shorts that makes you want to interpret what's going on. Now, this was filmed. This is where I think it's worth reflecting on how it's done, how, how, how Iona has done this. It's filmed, obviously in Second Life, that environment isn't actually ionos These. This is a story that's told across three, three sort of landscapes in that environment, which I think is kind of interesting, because there's a sense of complementarity through the through the locations that you're seeing. Now they're worth mentioning. One is a location called murmuration, and that's by been built by Laylee sorbet and Chris who, if you recall, we reviewed their Flowers of Evil some time ago. Another is called natimal by keiju koemi kohimi and Saskia Reiko. And the third is life by a Creator called saba zurgar at artsville. Now murmuration is one where the you know the well, it conveys a sense of a murmuration, which is the idea of a flock of something becoming an intense audio visual experience. And it, and it's in that space what you're seeing is a kind of a flowing movement and sound and that kind of collective identity and emergent patterns that kind of flow through it. Natimal is a kind of interactive, ever changing virtual art project that uses space, visuals and mood to create these kind of abstract story, like experiences that you kind of explore rather than watch. And life is an immersive digital art installation that explores kind of personal experiences. And I think all of these locations and what Iona is trying to convey through the story work together as a collective really, it's not a it's not it's not about here's what this location looks like. It's a sort of story woven with all of these three. The spaces stitched together through through meaning and the title of this dysfunction really kind of reflects the narrative arc across all of these worlds, which I think is incredibly clever to have attempted to do something like this. The other thing that intrigued me about it was the kind of Americanized character that you see, which frankly, isn't at all what you would expect in association with these kinds of environments. It's, it's, it sits at odds to it really. And I don't know if you notice when you were watching it, there's also a French newspaper lying on the floor near the avatar, as it's sort of laying

Phil Rice 10:53
very particular French newspaper,

Tracy Harwood 10:55
a very particular French newspaper. In fact, it's a French Socialist newspaper that was of its time, you know, 880 late, 1800s actually, which is all about championing the working class. And I didn't, I mean, you know, the the imagery kind of portrayed that, but the time scale being portrayed wasn't at that period. It was more, I would say, 30s, 40s. I'm going by the phone in the room, so I don't know there was this. There's dysfunction going on at a lot of different levels. But anyway, I was super impressed with it. I was super impressed with the way it was stitched together, the kind of arc through it. It raised a lot of interesting thoughts. As I was I was watching it, I thought it was impressive, but maybe you took different things from

Damien Valentine 11:50
it, while you started off with the explanation and saying it was unsettling, and it's actually the first word I've got wrecked on my notes,

Tracy Harwood 11:57
right, right?

Damien Valentine 11:58
So yes, it was a very unsettling film to watch. And of course, it's meant to be, you kind of got this contrast of the I call it the real world, the black and white footage, which I think is a nice way to to do that. It's kind of dark and moody, and this person is obviously not in a good place, mentally and probably not physically. Either, you don't really get an explanation of what the problem is, if it's a mental thing, or if they're suffering from substance abuse or something else, it's not really explored. It's more about what they're experiencing. And then you've got the color shots, which are the imaginary world, whether it's caused by, again, substance abuse or a mental breakdown. It's not really talked about that much, but obviously this color world, these color imaginations, are a happier place for this person. And it kind of goes back to the black and white footage, and it's kind of shows that this person is really haunted by something. There was a shot that I was really impressed by because there'd be an easy way to do it, and then there's the hard way to do it. And this director chose the hard way to do it as at one point during on the black and white scenes, the character is looking at a mirror and seeing the reflection of themselves back. At one point, it changes to a different face. But the easy way to do it would have been to have to have the mirror on the wall and then just have a static texture of the character's face. And for a moment, I thought, did they do that? And then it blinked and then moved slightly. I thought, okay, you've gone to the trouble of making the reflection animated, which it's not that difficult, but the texture option is a lot easier. And then, you know, I think that's, I don't know why that stood out to me. It's just because it's the technique of making that isn't necessarily a huge part of the film, but it's just the attention to detail to do that. I was really impressed by that. And, yeah, it's the character blinking, and they kind of move just slightly, and then it switches the other character. You get more of a full frame shot of them, and they're moving as well. But when it's just pulled back and you just see the face, it's been so easy to not have them animated. But you know, I like attention to detail, especially when it's not necessary. But when you do it anyway, it adds a lot. Yeah, I found this very unsettling film. It's kind of, thankfully, it's not something I've had too much experience with, like hallucinations and mental breakdowns and stuff like that, so I can't really. Relate to it, and that's obviously a good thing, but this is this film kind of makes me, gives you an idea of what that must be like to go through something very difficult. So I am not going to ask anyone who has gone through that if it's if it is accurate or not, because I don't want to traumatize anyone, but I not, from what I My understanding is, it would be a fairly accurate portrayal. And I have to say, I hope it's not something the director is struggling with themselves, because it's obviously not a pleasant situation to be in. Phil,

Tracy Harwood 15:37
what did you think?

Phil Rice 15:39
All right, well, yeah, I had a very different experience with this film. So first of all, I just want to say, and I'm going to say this as carefully as I can, it's really nice to see a second life film that isn't about Second Life,

Tracy Harwood 16:02
yeah,

Phil Rice 16:03
you know, and that, look, I'm not trying to trash the body of work. There's some amazing stuff that's been made, but the tendency of Second Life is like the tendency of most video game machinima, which is to be inward focused. So most Halo Machinima is about Halo. You know, it's not something else, not just a tool that's being used to tell some other story. There are exceptions, of course, but most of it's that most, most other game Machinima is that way, and most Second Life films tend to be about either, like you mentioned, Tracy showing off a beautiful location in Second Life as a thing. Or if there's a story, it tends to be something about the experience of the virtual self and SEC in relation to the real self, and that all of that. And that's fine. This. If someone didn't know the visual esthetic of Second Life, they wouldn't know it was made with Second Life

Tracy Harwood 17:08
like

Phil Rice 17:08
it wasn't used in that way. It was used purely as a palette, as a as a tool to do this, whether that was the intent or not. That is, that is the the outcome of this is it's not a second lifey Second Life film. Does that make sense?

Tracy Harwood 17:26
Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 17:26
it does,

Tracy Harwood 17:27
yeah.

Phil Rice 17:27
And I appreciate that, because I've long felt that second life as a tool is just has incredible, incredible, still has incredible potential, even even today, you know. And some of the, some of the shots in this, I'm like Damian. I tend to watch this stuff, and can't help but think, how would I do that, or how did they do that, or how would I do that? And some of these shots, it's like, really, it was really hard for me to remind myself and convince myself that was probably not compositing, that was just filmed in one because Second Life has the ability to do these particle and visual effects that are quite challenging to pull off in other platforms. I mean, you can do it in Blender, but it's a lot more work. So these installations, these art installations that make use of those things, like Fleur de mal and like this, one of the ones here, yeah, it's quite incredible what they can pull off. So the sound and music were extremely effective. They were very, very good. I think where my, my view of this differs is I saw, I saw a narrative like, really clear. I mean, not that there weren't abstraction. There was, there was a lot of use of abstraction. But as I watched it, I thought this isn't as ambiguous as I originally was thinking it. There's some concrete elements that just kind of lifted out now, whether or not this is something that I brought to this to the film, or whether or not it's what's in there, that's the age old question, right? But here's what I saw. So the black and white is reality. Think the matrix right where, when he wake when Neo wakes up in the real world, it has a totally different look. It's different color, color correction used in etc, you know, it's the real world because it just looks different. And black and White's the real world, all that other stuff. The in color was the euphoria substance, substance abuse based euphoria, and there's a vial of heroin. A syringe that it like lingers on quite a long time to,

Tracy Harwood 20:04
you

Phil Rice 20:04
know, in the black and white world, you know, that's, I think that's what we're experiencing there in those worlds. And I wouldn't call it a happy place. It, yes, it's brighter and it's beautiful, but I think it's just euphoria. I don't think that the character is finding what we would call happiness there. It's an escape. And so then the question arises, well, escape from what? And I think that that newspaper, it's called the cry of the people in English. I don't think I can do the pronunciation justice in I don't know how to say La Cree, de, yeah, I don't know how to say that last word. I'm not going

Tracy Harwood 20:51
to butcher,

Phil Rice 20:51
but it's the the cry of the people. And yeah, it is a it is a publication. It's, of course, a defunct one, but I think it's in there as to be symbolic of revolutionary endeavors and ideals which that newspaper may not be around anymore, but revolutionary ideals and aspirations certainly are, and I think that we're in an era where, if someone is on the left and has revolutionary tendencies, let's say they're probably frustrated. There's times when it doesn't seem like the world is going to do what we want it to right? And it's very frustrating. And the temptation before anyone with revolutionary ideals is, when does this Does this ever get to a point, and if so, when does it get to a point where I'm willing to entertain the idea of violence for revolution, which is an ugly thing. It's a horrible thing, right? But it's sometimes revolutions go that way, and often it's out of just increased frustration and feeling impotent, feeling like words aren't working enough, you know. And so I'm just, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but just, you know, I think of because I'm not really on I don't really lie on the left, right. I have sympathies, but I don't I'm not there, but I know a lot of people on the left, a lot, and you know, being on the left in the era of certain world leaders that we won't name as the frustrating and sometimes desperate feeling experience of just, where's the revolution, man, what's what's going on? It seems like we were headed the wrong way, you know? So I don't know. I really that that just leaped out to me as just, this is again, this is my interpretation. I'm not claiming to know what the filmmaker meant, but the narrative that leaped out to me is this is why the protagonist is using the drugs, is trying to escape, because he's disillusioned and disappointed with these revolutionary ideals, and the world is not going along with it. And so then, now we take into the coda of the film. We're back in the black and white world now, but there starts to be some seemingly surreal elements. We're getting some symbolic representation of what's going on in the protagonist's mind, and the protagonist is reflecting on oneself after having a moment of staring into the sun, very vivid imagery associated with that. What that means when someone does that, right? And now he's instead, he's looking into the mirror, and there's this dark Alter Ego, shadow self that Freud and the like would say we all have right? And it's there, and it's winking at us, and it's, you know? And there's this temptation to, do you fight it, or do you give into it? And I think at the end of the film, the protagonist gives into it, and that's why the mirror changes. And then the next, basically the next scene we see is just that alter ego with the hat swinging what we presume is a knife or something kind of Jack the Ripper style. And then the only color that we see is the blood splatter, the embrace of violence that basically what what I've been doing, or what we've been doing isn't working and and I don't think that the filmmaker is saying that's what you should do, and I don't necessarily think the filmmaker is saying that's what I did do. Yeah, but I do think they're saying that's what that looks like. That's, that's the choice here. And it's, it's not pretty, and it's, it's kind of scary, and it involves surrender to a darker version of myself that would be capable of doing things that my current self finds abhorrent. You know, now, has Phil been watching too much David Lynch lately? I don't know, because this is, this is basically, this is a narrative idea that is explored heavily in the show Twin Peaks. In Twin Peaks, the evil is actually a separate presence, and they call it Bob, and it can inhabit a person and but they have to kind of give in to it and let it in, and then they become capable of doing horrible things that the original self wouldn't. So this is and David Lynch wasn't the first to come up with that idea, either. You know, this is, this is a really since the rise of the psychoanalysts, this has been something that has been talked about in those terms. I think the idea of of a darker version of oneself is way older than that, right?

Tracy Harwood 26:21
It's

Phil Rice 26:21
just talked about differently. The language is used differently. But I'm sure that it wouldn't take us any time at all to come up with some literary references to that. Jekyll and Hyde is the, the obvious one. That's almost on the nose, right? But it's because Jekyll and Hyde is just, I think, just a it's actually the concrete story of the drinking the potion and changing whatever that's the metaphor.

Tracy Harwood 26:48
Yes,

Phil Rice 26:49
the real, the real story is we both have these things, or this person has both these guys inside them, and they have a choice of whether or not to give into that or not, and when they do, bad things happen. I think anyone that struggles with alcohol, I think that's that's a context of understanding that certainly with other types of drugs as well, but just generally, too. And yeah, and the way that we tend to categorize that is anyone who has given into that is classified as a criminal or insane or both right and Foucault deals a lot with this. There's a book called madness and civilization that talks about our tendency in the 20th century to just sequester those people because they're different and they're strange, and so let's just get them out of our sight and put them in these buildings they can't get out of, you know, which? Okay, criticize that, but I mean, what are we going to do? We also, nobody wants to just walk around and be randomly slashed by some wacko. So it's a problem that civilization doesn't know how to solve at scale, but it's one that we contend with individually. I think that's what this film is about. I think that's what it's about. Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 28:15
I

Damien Valentine 28:15
hadn't considered any of that, but as you've been talking there was something else, Tracy, you were talking about the era that it set, and you were talking about the 40s

Phil Rice 28:26
with that too, yeah. I struggled with that too, of that, that anachronism, that seeming anachronism of that paper, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 28:33
but

Phil Rice 28:33
I think, I think it's because I mean that if you think about the time when that paper was, was when the core principles of the modern left really emerged. I mean, that's Marx. That's, that's that time, right, where that was, when it was thought to be at its arguably purest. I mean, I'm not a fan of Marx at all. But look, that's, that is what that's looked at like as these there, there was, it was talked about as the these ideals and the stuff that's in the manifesto. It's like, Yeah, this is actually possible to do this. On Earth. We could do this, you know. But, you know, my personal take on it is, it's utopian fantasy, just another type of utopian fantasy, but it's believed in. It's like a It's a thing. And, you know, you look at nowadays, and it's like, we haven't got there. Why not? We just haven't tried it the right way, or whatever the arguments are, right? But there's a lot of frustration with someone who believes those ideals and sees what this world has become. And it seems like capitalism is winning the arm wrestling contest like big time. And maybe that's not a good thing, you know, like it's, it's capitalism isn't, isn't all angelic, either. So I don't know that's just what leaped out to me. And this is, I don't know anything about the filmmakers political leanings at all. I don't know them. Personally, I don't know, and I don't presume to know. Maybe this means something else, but it just that newspaper really is what made it okay this, this may be political, and I don't mean political like elections and all that. I'm talking about these ideas of, you know, the the world has basically two main sets of ideas of how to address the world's problems they have for many, many, many centuries. It kind of bisects pretty neatly into two groups of ideas. Neither one of them have all the answers. You know, it's almost like those two sets of ideas being held in stasis are really what holds it together, and anytime it tips the balance in one or the other direction, bad stuff happens. You know, look at the 20th century. That's what that story is, you know, so but on both sides, there are people who look at these ideals and and can't reconcile them with what they're seeing in the world. And it gets frustrating, right? And at some point, sometimes someone can reach a breaking point, and they try to hide from it. They try to escape from it. But ultimately, you know what? It'd just be easier to just give in to this and surrender to it, and then this dark person comes out and slashes, you know? Oh, it's just, it's wonderful. This is my favorite film of the year, by far. Wonderful.

Damien Valentine 31:21
Another layer to it, which is probably there's nothing in the film that would suggest this, other than the look of the technology, which may just be a coincidence, because that's the objects available in Second Life to create this environment. But if it was set in the 1940s and you've got this French newspaper, which at the time would be an old document, but if the film was also set in France during the early 1940s

Tracy Harwood 31:47
that

Damien Valentine 31:48
person is

Phil Rice 31:50
great

Damien Valentine 31:51
for your even worse experience, because they're going to see, what

Phil Rice 31:54
do you think they pulled out? The French Revolution pulled that out. Yeah, and it was this sense of this, this hard, far, right, oppressive force, is coming at us. And, yeah, that's absolutely the conversations that were going on, yeah. And I think they do today too, you know? I think, I think that they it gets called back to that. So, yeah, yeah, I didn't place it specifically in the 40s, but I think that there's a good case for that, I think style of the medicine bottle label and

Tracy Harwood 32:25
the phone and the bed style,

Damien Valentine 32:27
yeah, yeah,

Phil Rice 32:28
it makes sense. So, yeah, this is, this is one of the, one of the best things I've watched all year, and it's really thought provoking,

Tracy Harwood 32:39
very Yes, but I mean, you, I'm really impressed with how you read into that. I did not read that

Damien Valentine 32:46
so

Tracy Harwood 32:46
at all. I mean, I started to look at the newspaper and and then started to get a little bit purist about it, but I completely missed some of the cues that you picked up. And I'm, I'm certain you've nailed it. Phil, that's, yeah, I was trying to go down the route of all the different environments that have been stitched together through this and the and the and the way that that's being done as a creative practice as well.

Phil Rice 33:15
You may be right, but I

Tracy Harwood 33:17
I'm sure you're right as well. I'm

Tracy Harwood 33:18
sure

Phil Rice 33:19
those were selected because they matched what the filmmaker wanted to achieve visually and for no other reason.

Tracy Harwood 33:27
Well, I'd love to hear what Iona has to say. Oh,

Phil Rice 33:30
me too. Iona goes by in the credits on the film. Iona references another name that that we're familiar with. Did you notice that

Tracy Harwood 33:41
I didn't?

Phil Rice 33:43
Tutsi,

Tracy Harwood 33:44
oh.

Phil Rice 33:45
Tutsi, Nevada, I think that iono is actually a additional No, a pseudonym.

Tracy Harwood 33:57
No, I

Phil Rice 33:57
think that. I mean it, let me, let me, let me pull it up.

Damien Valentine 34:01
Yeah, I noticed that too, actually,

Phil Rice 34:03
because it's right on the same line, right next to the Iona Allen mentioned it. I can't remember exactly how it worded it. Let me find

Tracy Harwood 34:14
Well, if it is,

Phil Rice 34:15
we'll edit this out.

Tracy Harwood 34:16
I don't think it can be, because Tootsie passed away long before this was made.

Phil Rice 34:24
Come on ads. We'll edit this part out. Don't worry.

Tracy Harwood 34:32
But certainly I've seen my own Alan's name and tootsies, yeah,

Phil Rice 34:36
okay, it says a basil. Do we know what a basil means

Tracy Harwood 34:42
in memory? Is it in loving four?

Phil Rice 34:44
Okay, so maybe it's a dedication.

Tracy Harwood 34:46
Possibly, yes.

Phil Rice 34:47
Ah, Basil aka Tutsi navaratta,

Tracy Harwood 34:51
yeah.

Phil Rice 34:51
So if this

Tracy Harwood 34:53
in memory of I would think,

Phil Rice 34:55
right, okay, okay, got it,

Tracy Harwood 34:59
which would make that. Could make sense. Because, I mean, Tootsie was,

Phil Rice 35:03
it was confusing to me because I knew that, yeah, that Tootsie had passed away, yeah, ways back. So okay, that makes much more sense. And I think I own a was, they're not new to this, this craft at all. I've seen their work before, so

Tracy Harwood 35:17
yeah, but this, this, to me, was by far one of the most interesting.

Phil Rice 35:21
It's extraordinary.

Tracy Harwood 35:22
Yeah,

Phil Rice 35:23
it's an extraordinary piece in any engine. Like it's just, it's really delightful. It's impressive that it was pulled off in Second Life. But I don't think that that's what really made the difference for me. It's just,

Tracy Harwood 35:40
yeah,

Phil Rice 35:41
some really, really extraordinary filmmaking.

Tracy Harwood 35:43
Yeah, yeah. It's funny. You

Damien Valentine 35:44
mentioned that film because I was watching it again. I know this is a second life film, but I wasn't thinking all the way through. This is a second life film. It's like, right? You recognize it instantly as soon as you see it, because it's just you recognize the style. But that was it.

Phil Rice 35:58
The only other person who's made me feel that way with their second life work was Lainey voom,

Tracy Harwood 36:04
yes, she's not the

Phil Rice 36:04
only one doing it, but that's just the one that's who comes to mind. Is her work. There were elements of it because I knew Second Life, I could spot, oh, that was made in Second Life. But then it's like, that's as long as it matters. Is that brief second where you you realize, or maybe you knew going in, you know, I don't know if I ever go into a machinima film, not even accidentally, already knowing what it was paid with. And I knew that she made stuff in Second Life, but you'd watch her stuff, and it's just like, it doesn't matter. It's just it's a totally different use of it. She's used it as a tool, as a filmmaking tool, and Iona Allen did the same thing here. It's, it's just wonderful, wonderful achievement.

Tracy Harwood 36:47
Yeah, marvelous.

Phil Rice 36:50
Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 36:51
I think Ricky would have enjoyed this one.

Phil Rice 36:52
Ricky would have really enjoyed this. Yeah. Well, we'll make sure that that he watches this, and maybe he'll have something to say about it later. So, well. Audience, what did you think? Is this a beautiful abstraction or some coded story, or is Phil nuts? What's going on? Let us know. Let us know in the comments what you think, or if anything else jumped out to you about this film, or leave us a drop us an email at talk, at completely machinima.com so my name is Phil rice, and on behalf of my co hosts, Damian Valentine and Tracy Harwood, we hope you will resist your darker selves and tune us. Tune in with us at the next episode, take care.

Tracy Harwood 37:38
Bye.