Ricky Grove 00:14
Hello, everyone. I'm Ricky Grove. And this is And Now for Something Completely Machinima podcast. We're starting March 2023 with a film pick by Tracy. It's a really interesting film. It's called The Gateway by Ritualin Film was shot in Unreal. And Tracy, tell us a little bit more about it.

Tracy Harwood 00:37
Yep, sure. Yeah, so made an unreal as you said ritual and film, released in May 2020. So this is by no means new. In actual fact, it was made in Unreal four. But I have to say I was really spoiled for choice with Unreal films. This one though, I picked it, because I really liked the pace and the suspense of it. It's a it's made by a Swedish filmmaking agency that produces mainly in game cinematics from what I can see the game trailer for Warhammer 40k, and others, a lot of VFX and commercials and and it was the the the the agency was bought by Qbrick last year, and it's now moving into the streaming content as well. But I don't know how much more of the the Unreal stuff they'll be making as creative works in its own right. So I appreciate it's a little bit older, but I actually don't think that shows too much in this. I think it shows off the the, you know, the reflections and the lighting really well. And you know, the thing that Unreal has become so well known for, as I understand it, this one was basically a test film, it took them four months to complete. And about three months to learn Unreal, before they actually started the project. There is actually also a VFX breakdown of the film, which I'll share a link to as well. So you can see how they kind of built that will be interesting. Yeah, it's quite interesting to watch that. See how they did it. It's not quite what you imagined they would have done. And yes, it's a little dark. I kind of felt it borrowed a little bit from the opening shots of the last Alien film, The Alien Covenant, you know, 2017 film, with its kind of use of an Android and then the sounds of the creature reminded me a little bit of Godzilla. But beyond that, it's really quite an interesting approach, this kind of mocap that they've used, I think is absolutely extraordinary. There's an intriguing scene with a hand through some interesting atmospherics, which is portrayed so well. Absolutely, astonishingly, well, not not unlike its portrayal of, do you remember the fire that we looked at for The Remnant film that we reviewed? Oh, yeah. Where the atmospherics were sort of playing there. That was that was another another one that I really liked the look of in the way that it did all of that. I'm not really sure what, what goes on, at the end? Not really sure what's happened, I'm not really sure that we're meant to understand it. Did the person die? Was that an experience of death? Or what exactly is The Gateway? I think, you know, you tell us anyway, what did you guys think?

Ricky Grove 03:35
Well, a gateway. The trope of a gateway in science fiction is very old. Probably the best known as the obelisk in Arthur C. Clarke's great 2001. But the notion of a gateway to another world is a very popular image and trope and science fiction. So I can see why they clung on to that as an easy way to set up a scene and set up a whole bunch of expectations. You're right at the end, they didn't. They left it ambiguous as to what happened for it. I'm interested that you said that this was a test because that changes a little bit my thinking about the film. I don't know why. But I tend to see these tests as stories, you know, interesting, short little stories, and in a sense, they're not. They're really meant to display the technology and create the sort of the bones of characters and figures in order to try out the VFX and the cinematography and the rendering capabilities of the engine. And on that level, I think it was an unqualified success. It was just beautiful, not quite as beautiful as Secret Moon by Orencloud, the one that we did last week, but nevertheless, just really beautiful, especially those close ups, as you mentioned, of the glove those, and almost in a way those close up to almost seemed like from another film, because they were so there was so technologically superior to some of the wider shots. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know, just from my own opinion, looking at this, I find that these sorts of tests are troublesome to me. Because they emphasise the spectacle of everything. As opposed to any sort of effort to really make a character, or characters or a story. The story that they have is just really more of a sketch. People arrive at a place there's a gateway, you've already told that there's a gateway in the title that go to the gateway, it's something happens. So that's what the story is, it seems pretty thin to me. And cliched from a science fiction. If you're a science fiction reader, you definitely have seen this reel before. And then the slow build up to actual what the gateway does. It was off putting because you want to get a sense, there's a way to do it so that you can be ambiguous, but it gives me gives you choices. Like, yes, they died. No, they were translated into another dimension. No, they were recruited reconfigured as completely unique characters by whatever it is. And now they're under the control of the NT. See, that? Does the gateway I mean, I'm just coming up with those things off the top of my head, but they just left the whole thing ambiguous. No, I mean, they didn't even give you a sense. The idea of just brightening the thing at the end is a cop out in a way. From from a story point of view, you know what I mean? If you if you see it, just as a test that none of that makes any difference. But I can't help myself, I look at these kinds of things. And I see them as stories. So from my point of view, I would have appreciated the film more if they had to put just a little effort in some of the storytelling aspects of it. And a little bit more into the character. I know this had no dialogue in it. Perhaps dialogue may have made a little bit of difference, especially with the lead character, maybe, I don't know. But I enjoyed it very much. I thought it was a beautiful film, but I have to be honest with you. I'm getting a little tired of the highly spectacle highly refined glossy movies that have are hollow.

Tracy Harwood 07:50
Yeah, fair point. Absolutely.

Damien Valentine 07:53
So, Tracy, I got the same Alien vibe that you did when I started watching this show so I was I feel quite surprised that you chose it because I know that's not my favourite. But because I watched it, I understood why he chose it because it is so stunning film, when you said it was made with Unreal four. Yeah, I quickly watched it again, while you were talking because I thought was Unreal five. Looks like an unreal five, kind of render. So just kind of watching them on my second monitor. So how did they pull that off in Unreal four, because it there's just so much detail on the especially this close up? And I was thinking, Well, they probably because it's so dark, that might explain it because they don't have to do the rest of the world. They can have some really high quality textures, and models that they're showing close up as the rest of the world. Like because if you had a really brightly lit scene, you'd have to build the whole world and has to match the detail of the characters. But you know, it's kind of dark and foggy don't need to show the rest of it. Yeah, so I think that's the trick there

Tracy Harwood 09:07
and that's exactly what they do in the in their little breakdown film that they present they show their watch that yeah, you know, they show they show you that they don't they only put a little bit of detail on some of the stuff which is you know, I think it's a bit of a giveaway when you when you look at it and clearly some of the assets that they've used are not great detail as well. Because I understand it the tree that they used at part of the you know, the at the end is actually only a low poly thing. So the fact so the fact that they made it slightly out of focus Yeah, hide the hide the details and you put the detail into where you want to keep the focus and whatnot. But overall, I thought they they did pretty well with it. And I think you know the fact that the the story is a little thin I kind of went into stated that you would say that and I also kind of anticipated that you would say, the the tropes, or the trope that's being used here as one that's kind of, of well, you know, it's kind of well used. And it seems to be one that folks seem to return to when they're putting these little tests together. Because it kind of obviates the need. Yeah. Obviously, they come up with something

Ricky Grove 10:23
easier so they can focus on the stuff that they're really interested in. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Tracy Harwood 10:27
And we've seen that a lot, haven't we, with some of the, the films, particularly the Unreal films that we've been looking at, because people are so wowed by the you know, what this these engines can do? That they kind of? They focus. You know, they focus on that rather than on the story, as you kind of quite rightly said, but nonetheless, I was kind of intrigued by what you wanted, you know, what you might have said about?

Ricky Grove 10:52
Oh, well, you know, I really liked the atmosphere that was created in the film, especially at the beginning, and the sort of wide, big shots, it really gave a sense of, you can actually see the atmosphere in it, you know, and it did remind me of some of those alien things, or in the early part of 2001, when the astronauts arrive at the where the obelisk, the location where the obelisk is, yes, is there as well. Speaking of science fiction, I wanted to quickly recommend, or did you have a comment about the film that we're talking about?

Tracy Harwood 11:32
No, I was going to say the the other, the other film that I'm just trying to find it on our and on notes, I picked another Unreal one. But that was like three times longer, and less well edited. But more interesting in terms of what the story was doing, and I was kind of torn. Should I show that one? Should I show this one. But I went for this one in the end, but we'll put the other one in the project update. Okay, for the month, so you still get a chance to have a look at the other one? I think the other one's got a more interesting story to it. Yeah, I think it's called Arcadia or something like that, or Archanea.

Ricky Grove 12:14
Oh, cool. Well, you know, in a way, when you look at it, the the amount of effort that goes into putting together all of the elements of a CG 3d project are so massive in order to get the right look, and you have to constantly do iterations of things, to fix problems that come up. And so the the amount of work that goes into creating that requires that the people who are working on the, on the project be highly skilled or have learned the skills. So their focus would be on problem solving in the technical realm. The crafting realm, and, and characterization and writing has its own set of skill levels. And they don't really come into creating 3d or VFX. As you're actually making the project, you know what I mean? It usually comes in way before, at least in the standard project. So the, the idea that somehow you're making this beautiful, gorgeous science fiction story that doesn't really have an equal amount of interesting story or character content is not a new one it's been going on. I mean, you can look at a string of Hollywood blockbuster films and see that you know, blatant, blatant holes in the plot and jumps that don't make any sense. I mean, good observant critics and observant viewers of those things have been pointing out those thing, those problems forever. So I don't think we're ever going to lose that. Because if it's really popular, makes a shitload of money, then who cares? Well, we do it completely machinima.com. You know, I mean, we do. Those sorts of things are interesting. And in that vein, I want to recommend a film that just came out on Netflix. And it's called Young J U N G underscore E. It was as a South Korean film. Yeon Sang-ho, I think as the director of it. He directed a fantastic science fiction call film called Train to Busan. And in this particular film, he's moved into the world of Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner. It's a live action film. And it's a kind of gentler version of Blade Runner where or the emphasis is on a mother and a daughter's relationship, and the ethics of owning artificial intelligence, and what to do with it. One of the cool things that this director knows Philip K Dick really well, because one of the things that this writer did was take social issues and political issues and put them into science fiction. And in this particular world, they've developed the technology to be able to copy brains, complete brains, and the thoughts and memories and all of that, but the rights to those brains have three tiers, the top tiers for people who are extremely wealthy, and they get complete autonomy with that brain so they can become immortal in a sense. The second b tier here, you have the right to your own brain, but you can also sell those rights to somebody else, to for use and other technology. And then the bottom level, which is completely free, and it's for the poor, means you get up all rights to your, to your the use of your brain in your consciousness. So a company can do whatever they want with it. So in this film, it's about a war hero, who's She's living with her daughter and her grandmother. And her grandmother is very elderly, and she dies in a battle. She's quite famous. She's won quite a few battles. But the very last one, she dies or comes to near death, they copy her brain. And they rushed to the her home and forced the grandmother, through cajoling to have her sign it over at the lowest tier, which means that the military and any company that wants to buy the rights to it can do what they want with it. So this particular company has been using her awareness to put in to artificially intelligent warriors to create up a battle warrior. And the film proper, is about the fact that this warrior goes through a meta battle, and always fails at one certain point. And they've gone through 18 iterations of this person using the same brain trying variations on the, on the scenario to try to break through this battle. And the cool thing about it is that the woman who is running the experiment for a high level company, like an apple type company, is the daughter that was left behind who's now almost elderly, but middle aged. So she has conflicting feelings about the whole thing. And that's all I'm going to tell you about it. But it's just the highest level of science fiction that combines just the beauty of the original Blade Runner with a less of a shade nor mystery plot. And instead, it's a plot about the ethics and mother daughter tie. What responsibility parents have towards their children and their children's have towards their parents? It's just a beautiful film. JUNG_E, it's on Netflix. It just started yesterday. Well, I want to recommend it for any science fiction fans, who might be listening to see very high quality science fiction.

Damien Valentine 18:40
sounds it sounds very interesting. It

Tracy Harwood 18:42
does sound very interesting, I was going to say probably feeds very nicely into our next blog post on AI generators and all the discussion around who owns what, alongside the ongoing saga of Musk, and Twitter, whatever, whatever.

Ricky Grove 19:05
Well, the cool thing about this film is that it it leaves the daughter with having to make a choice. And I won't tell you what that choice is. But it's a profoundly moving one in a way that Blade Runner could never even come close to, to achieving. I mean, hey, I'm not knocking Blade Runner. It's a great film a beautiful film, but the style was better than the content in many ways. This the style of the film and the content are equally as impressive all the way through. I mean some of the shots and you can recognise that it's a Blade Runner world. In fact, you could almost say it's an alternative Blade Runner story to take place in the Blade Runner universe.

Tracy Harwood 19:50
Thank you. You're not the one to watch. Thank you.

Ricky Grove 19:53
Well, that's it for our show today. Another really interesting unreal video Oh, that Tracy has found. And I'm sorry, I didn't really introduce you at the beginning Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine. Here, I'll introduce you at the end.

Damien Valentine 20:09
We're just so excited about the film. You can.

Ricky Grove 20:12
Yeah, I was I really wanted to talk about it. Because, you know, despite my complaints about it, I was quite impressed with the, the beauty of the film, not again, not quite as much as Secret Moon, but it was very affecting. Now, if I could just do as much work on creating stories that are as compelling that would be fantastic. But if you have an idea about this film or comments on this film that you want to make, if we find them interesting, we'll share them either on the blog or here live as send them to us at talk at Completely machinima.com. And don't forget our ongoing blog, it's become equally filled with interesting stuff on artificial intelligence, 3d technology, VFX, all sorts of stuff. Tracy has been doing a bang up job on that at Completelymachinima.com. So that's our show today. Thank you very much for watching. We'll have another film for you next week. We'll see you goodbye.