Damien Valentine 01:00
Hello, my name is Dan Valentine, and we're listening to Anna for something complete the Mashima. This week, I'm joined by my co-host Tracy Harwood.

Tracy Harwood 01:09
Hello,

Damien Valentine 01:09
Phil and Ricky are absent. I think they might have been lost in the dark room, in the the back room. So I don't know. We may see them again, or they may be lost in some yellow corridor somewhere. We'll have to wait and see. But luckily, it's Tracy's pick, and you're here. Yes. So, what have you chosen for the two of us to talk about?

Tracy Harwood 01:30
I've got a great one. Thanks for that, Damien. Yeah, Mech Warrior Five Clans Clan Mech Dioramas Directors Cup by TMC, which was released in January this year, it's not really a film, actually. I mean, it is a film, but it's not actually a typical machinima that we kind of might review as a sort of a story type based machinima. Let me start there by just sort of telling you a bit about TMC, we've we've actually talked about them before. We reviewed the first episode of their Hired Steel series originally back in August 21, and then we also covered episode two in July 22. So I'll put some links to those Other other works that we've we've kind of covered. I think we talked about their third episode in one of our project updates, and then I believe there are two other episodes of Hired Steel which are available, but I don't think we've covered those. But definitely, you know, we covered we covered the first three, so you know that what you're going to be looking at is worth the worth the look. And I think at the time, the the comment that we made about these guys was just how successfully this team was beginning to develop Character empathy, alongside the kind of spectacular mechanical action of the Mechwarrior game. So I think these guys are are pretty outstanding. Actually, they're they're in actual fact a small German collective of of this game, enthusiasts of this game. They're also 3d artists and they're filmmakers. And originally, TMC stood for Tamar Media Corporation, which reflects their origins with the Tamar Jaegers, basically a kind of a unit of game players who who played the game online together, and then when that kind of gaming unit sort of faded away, the the filmmaking kind of continued, and they they basically just retained the the TMC initial. So that's where they've they've kind of come from. The two guys in it are Constantin Korman. Did I say that right? Konstantin Corman, who's a digital educator and has a professional background in 3d animation and advertising, and Bernhard Engler, who's basically an electrical power industry professional who works as a 3d artist and animator outside of his day job, and they began in about 2012 2013 making these kind of promotional films for Mech Warrior Online player units, and their earliest productions were recorded directly inside the game. Sometimes basically positioning the player inside a mech with a kind of a large cockpit window, some sort of you know showing a view of of one of the players, and their practice has sort of since that time basically expanded into gameplay capture, and then you know they began. Then to export the game models into Blender and retexture them, and adding kind of new geometry and constructing environments, and and developing these kind of custom animation rigs, and they've basically kind of really moved their production since then into Unreal Engine, and so now what they're doing is creating more programmable kind of weapon effects and lighting and landscapes and vehicles and and kind of entirely new assets. And I think what you can say therefore is that they've evolved from being conventional machinima creators into something closer to a an indie kind of virtual production team. As I said, Hyde still really, really successful, but of course entirely unofficial, fan-made. But was so successful that it attracted the attention of the developer, Piranha Games. So in fact, they were commissioned to work on Mechwarrior Five clans to to make the teasers for it, and they produced three major cinematics for that. And as I understand it, the developers kind of gave them the assets and the art direction, and they did all the modeling and animation and environmental production, and I'll put a link in the show notes to an interview they did last year, talking about how they got involved with that and what they did with it and what the the impacts of that have have been on them.

Tracy Harwood 06:32
So it's really good to know that they've kind of you know stepped up from being just sort of fan creators to being recognized by the game as super fans, basically they're they're you know it's it's really nice to see it, and you know I would say that that's that's that's kind of a really fair sort of outcome for them because these guys are really really good. However, the important difference to that work, the the hired steel work, and today's selection is pretty significant. Actually, it's an entirely different type of content. It's a climact kind of diorama, diorama director director cup. It's not at all narrative, whereas Hired Steel kind of tells the story of battles and you know reveals information about the characters. This therefore kind of presents an entirely different side of their practice, and I think that's very interesting. The diorama film basically shows Each battle composed as as kind of largely a frozen three dimensional tableau, for want of a better word, with the with the camera traveling around the scene, it kind of moves these guys away from machinima as narrative cinema towards machinima as almost virtual photography, or perhaps more accurately, as digital sculpture, kind of explored through a moving eye or a roving eye. The the sequences were originally created as these three-dimensional battle dioramas for the loading screens of Mechwarrior Five. Here, however, what they're presenting is you know they're kind of moving renders, which basically allow us to see these previously quite static compositions from entirely new camera positions and and perspectives. And what I particularly like is the variety of diorama techniques that they've employed in this particular short. It's quite a few minutes long, longer than you would expect. My guess is you don't have to watch the whole thing to get the sense of it, but it's it's beautifully immersing as you as you're watching it. It's like flicking through a, you know, a 3d collection. It's it's it's it's it's very satisfying to do it. Each scene kind of feels as though, you know, it's an intricately constructed model that's kind of just been frozen at this kind of really decisive point in in a battle, you know. For example, you're seeing weapons discharging, you're seeing debris hanging in the air, you're kind of looking at armor rupturing, and these kind of enormous machines sort of being suspended in in gestures of kind of attack or kind of collapse in some cases, but the action isn't actually unfolding before us in in the conventional sort of you know dramatic time. I think instead time's kind of being arrested. So what you're looking at, you. Kind of really inspect. It feels like you're inspecting its kind of constituent parts, which is which is fascinating. I think that's why the camera operates as what I'd call a digital eye. You're you're basically exploring the spatial composition, and you know the camera is kind of moving around. It's above. Sometimes it's through the scene. Sometimes it's revealing these kind of relationships that, frankly, would be impossible to perceive during a kind of an ordinary gameplay, and it does it in such a way that a single battle moment becomes something that is almost sculptural. And as a viewer, we are basically being invited to examine the volume of it, the kind of the depth of it, the lighting, the arrangement, just rather than simply following what the outcome of it would be, as you as you might in a in a machine or as you're as you're playing the game, and I I think what that introduces is this kind of lovely tension between scale and miniaturization, you know, you've you've got these kind of colossal war machines, but presenting them as dioramas kind of makes them appear momentarily, at least I think, like these kind of exquisite painted tabletop miniatures in some some ways, sometimes you know it's achieved really by the by the way the camera is kind of moving, and and and it's kind of like the the fly through and the composition, and you know sometimes the camera sort of makes these things look really small, and sometimes you can kind of get the gist of the the monumental scale of what it is you're looking at, and they're doing that repeatedly through this selection of of dioramas.

Tracy Harwood 11:49
I don't know how many there are in this 1520, maybe that you're looking at of all the different assets. It feels repetitive, actually, but the the the esthetic appeal of it and the the color palettes just carry you away with the with the depth of what you're looking at. Actually, this one's been on my list for a few months now. I wasn't really sure how to present it to to you guys, it's pity Phil and Ricky aren't here really to to to talk about it. But I know you all have some things to say about it, Damien. Yeah, I'm looking forward

Damien Valentine 12:30
to talking about it.

Tracy Harwood 12:31
Yeah, it's the slow mo captures that are fascinating. I think, and these kind of animated moments that that are that are really fascinating. I think for me, because of that, this brings me closer to a kind of a bullet time principle that you know we all know has been popularized by the Matrix, where where basically the suspension of action kind of liberates the camera from ordinary time, and here, although it's it's kind of used less to sort of demonstrate physical spectacle, but it kind of definitely creates contemplative space, which I think is is interesting, and it's that kind of that to me is what extends it as virtual photography. So yeah, I think that's that's. I mean, that's the the fascination of it for me. I suppose the other thing I would say is there's very evidently lots of layers to it, some incredible lighting to it, but there are lots of other particle effects that you kind of see playing out-you know, the smoke, the sparks, the muzzle flashes, this kind of atmospheric haze, these kind of-you know-you got the debris in the foreground as you're kind of moving through it. It's all of these kinds of tiny little aspects of it is is really what builds the the the momentum for for what for what you're seeing, yeah. So yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought I thought it was it presented something we haven't really seen before as a as a as a as a sort of a you know immersive diorama, I think it sits on a really interesting and what I'd probably call a productive boundary, because I think it's treating photography as sculpture, which is a little bit different to what I've seen done. Certainly not using the game to perform a story, but you know what? It still holds you as a viewer, and for that, I think it's particularly impressive.

Damien Valentine 14:52
Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 14:53
What did you think?

Damien Valentine 14:54
First, I really enjoyed the hired guns episodes we've seen before. Didn't realize the game developers actually brought them on to work on the game, so that is a well. I can't say I'm surprised because their work is so good that they should be brought on to work on it. So I think that was a really smart move by the developers, and it must be really exciting for this group of filmmakers to actually have their work recognized at that level, they actually get to make something official rather than just being a fan production. So moving on to film itself, it was I got a lot to say about this one. The first impression I had was it was like walking through an art gallery because all the different shots of these these action moments from the game, but they're frozen, as we say, and you can pause it and just admire, even though like the scene is itself frozen, the camera's moving around a little bit and kind of showing you different angles. If you pause it, you can still look at all the detail that's in the scenes, and these are scenes that, in the game itself, that's going to be over in less than a second because it's it's already moved on to the next moment of wherever battles taking place. So you don't normally get a chance to see all the detail that goes into these kind of moments, like you're saying about the particle effects. Yeah, when you're playing the game, you see things explode. You don't really have a chance to see the explosion and look at all the sparks flying out. You see an impact from this. There's a tiny explosion, but lots of sparks coming out of it from that initial impact, and the smoke slightly to fall. There was one shot where they see two mechs in a river fighting each other, and there's water was spraying out from from the river itself. Again, you don't when you're playing the game, you're probably not even noticing it's there. Its absence you would notice because it adds something, but you don't really think have a much chance to think about it. So it makes the game very atmospheric. But you can just don't get the chance to appreciate it because you're trying to stay alive and beat the other mech. And it's the same for any fast-paced action game. You don't get a chance to see all the detail that developers have put into making this look as good as they can, and that's a good thing as far as the actual game is, because it shows the developers have put a lot of detail into it. You don't have a chance to think about it. It's it's just there, and like if you shot a mech and there was no explosion at all, you're going to notice that that's not there. But you they have the explosion there, the tiny exposure, sparks, and smoke, and all that, and bits of debris, like you were saying, that flies off. These are the kind of details that really make a game come to life. So having these frozen moments really lets you see what has gone into it and appreciate the amount of work that the developers put into their games. And I was thinking about it for this game. I've never played Meg Warrior Five, so I've never, I don't really have that familiarity with it. It did get me thinking about other games I've played, especially recent ones where they have the same kind of attention to detail, and you know, got me thinking about. Oh, you know, they must have done similar amounts of work for their games, so it's nice to see it from that perspective. I didn't count the number of shots, but I think I think you're right, 15 to 20. And even though they're all combat shots, it didn't feel like oh, it's another combat shot, the same thing. Each one feels different enough that you're looking at something new, even though it is basically mechs fighting each other on some planet somewhere, I think it 15 to 20 was probably about the right number for it because otherwise you won't have enough to really show the variety of styles for the game. And again, you can have too many, and it does get to the point of another one.

Tracy Harwood 19:02
Yeah.

Damien Valentine 19:03
So yeah, they got it right. The video is about the right length. I did see something about these were going to be the actual loading screens in the game, but they were cut for technical reasons, which we don't go into.

Tracy Harwood 19:16
Yeah.

Damien Valentine 19:17
Which is a shame because this sort of makes us some very unique loading screens, rather than just a static image. It's a shame they couldn't just, you know, render, save that a video file, and just play that as the loading screen. I'm sure there must be some technical reasons for that as well. And the other thing I found myself thinking about is each scene, like I said, the camera moves around. You get a little bit of perspective into the paintings. I wanted to go in there and move the camera myself. I didn't want it. I didn't want to press play and let the back play out. I wanted to stay paused. Yeah. I wanted to take control of the camera and turn it around to see it from the other side. Yeah. And you know all that kind of stuff. Get in really close or pull back and see how does it look. Way off in the distance, or

Tracy Harwood 20:01
yeah, yeah. This to me would have made a really good VR experience.

Damien Valentine 20:08
Yeah,

Tracy Harwood 20:08
where you know where you could you you know the richness, like you could move through the scene and around it and through the bits that you could move through and everything. That that would have been a very impressive, immersive experience. I mean, you you almost got the sense of that,

Damien Valentine 20:24
yeah.

Tracy Harwood 20:24
But like you said, I would have liked to have kind of round it a bit, you know, spend more time in in the beam of perhaps, and you know, around some of the some of the peripheral aspects of it, just to see the detail because there's so much detail that you just don't kind of really look at, and yet hired steel. We probably would have commented on the quality of the detail and and the way that that had been animated to communicate a sense of emotion. I remember us talking about about emotion. So these guys are really attuned to portraying characterization through these kind of inanimate objects, really, largely.

Damien Valentine 21:07
Yeah, but I think it's a limitation of the fact that it is a video, because no matter how much they move the camera around, we're still going to have wanted. I want to go just a little bit further, and I think that's kind of, I think that's a credit to the film as well, because it shows that what they're showing us is interesting enough that we want to see more than what they've just shown us, because it makes it feel like this is something really going on here. Can we see more of it? And no matter how much they showed us of each scene, like they could have done a whole camera going all the way around, we probably still would have wanted to take control of the camera to to control it ourselves, and you just can't because it's a video. But you know, if there was a way that they could have, like the old, very old school machinima that was done in Quake as a recorded demo, you could do it in that.

Tracy Harwood 21:53
Yes,

Damien Valentine 21:54
obviously it wouldn't look anything like this because Quake's a very old game now. But if they had that kind of option, then we could have had that, but it's just not being done anymore. But

Tracy Harwood 22:03
you know, maybe that's another you know another step that you can add to an un you know if if indeed they've made this in Unreal Engine, if they have, then you know it's not impossible to create this as an entirely immersive experience.

Damien Valentine 22:18
It's true,

Tracy Harwood 22:19
and and that's for that reason. I was thinking this is because a diorama implies kind of photography, really. You know, making making photography into a into a 3d immersive thing. Just even though it's still a photograph, but actually, the beauty of these technologies are that you really can do that. It doesn't have to stay on a flat, two-dimensional plane, and I I think that's why this is more photography into sculpture. Impressive.

Damien Valentine 22:57
Yeah, it was very impressive. Well, I think we've covered that really. So, yeah,

Tracy Harwood 23:02
yeah,

Damien Valentine 23:03
that's a great pick. Yeah, I agree with you. Shame Ricky and Phil aren't here to talk about it because it'll be interesting to hear what they have to say. But hopefully, they'll survive from the back rooms, and we'll get their comments on other films in the future. So, I think that wraps things up for this episode. I'm joined by my co-host Tracy Harwood.

Tracy Harwood 23:25
Hello. Goodbye, Eva.

Damien Valentine 23:27
If you're listening to this and you got any comments, please send us an email at talk@completenessshowing.com. You can check out our blog at completely showman.com. And in the meantime, we'll be back next week for another film. Take care and bye.

Tracy Harwood 23:41
Bye bye.