Phil Rice 00:10
Hello and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast about machinima and related virtual production technologies. I'm Phil Rice and I'm joined by my co hosts Tracy Harwood, Ricky Grove, and Damian Valentine. Hello. Hey guys. Good to see you. Yep. So we're just gonna dive right in here. We've got the as you know, the show's format now is focusing on the films that the stuff that we're all really the most interested in. And Ricky did something interesting since our last show, and he decided to take a deep dive into the world of TikTok. Looking for machinima rookie. What did you find?

Ricky Grove 00:57
I'd like that. Just slight pause before interesting. Betrayed you're sort of

Phil Rice 01:05
I'm not sure was not biassed at all.

Ricky Grove 01:10
Well, you know how I found these was that I, you know, I love books. And I had my own paperback podcasts and stuff like that. And a link led me to a paperback owner and seller who was putting together some paperback covers. And he did a TikTok video. And I would really I was impressed with it. And while I was watching it, I was thinking, Well, I wonder what kind of machinima is on TikTok. So I did several searches and everything. And most of it is not particularly interesting. It's fairly dull stuff. But it's, it's similar to the kinds of things that you see on YouTube and other things. But with a little bit of diligent searching, I discovered a few that I thought were quite witty and interesting, because you got to think it's a minute long, roughly, in that odd vertical phones style format. It's a bit of a challenge to come up with a story and a punch line and but the form is, would be an interesting one if you get it right. So I found two that I liked a lot. The first one is let's see what's there a Rockstar machinima by Anthro KSR D O one and it's it's very short. You gotta remember these are these are less than a minute. I liked it. I thought it was quite amusing. The only thing I didn't like was the voice text to speech. Now, Tracy, before we go any further? Was this video really text to speech? Or was it a human being? Because I don't want to have egg on my face?

Tracy Harwood 02:57
I wouldn't have a clue Ricky on that one.

Ricky Grove 03:00
Oh, good. So there's anybody else that gets boys? No, no, I'm fairly sure is text to speech. Oh, yeah, I think I'm right, but I liked it a lot. What did you guys think of it?

Tracy Harwood 03:11
Well, this is a nice way to do some machinimas. Yes. Is that the one? Yeah. Well, Rockstar machinima how to put a camera to use our point of view camera perspective. Yeah. Well, tell you what, what made me laugh about it was attaching an invisible rat.

Ricky Grove 03:33
Well, I thought that was witty. I thought that was quite funny.

Tracy Harwood 03:36
I could not. I could not stop laughing when they did that. Oh, that really? Yeah. Well, we see is about right. But But then, you know, running along with it. I mean, it clearly worked. And you know, once once you got said rat embedded in your helmet, and it was invisible? Well, yes.

Ricky Grove 03:56
So so it's a little short tutorial, but with a touch of humour. And with this under a minute, it's the kind of thing you get something you laugh and you also get a piece of knowledge. So I thought that was quite a quite a good achievement for machinima.

Tracy Harwood 04:10
Yes, and under a minute. I think it's about 35 seconds.

Damien Valentine 04:14
But I think that's a good format for it. Because if you go on YouTube, you might find an hour long tutorial teaching how to do exactly the same thing and it'd be very dry. And a lot of there'll be a lot of nonsense in between the actual parts you know, about Tiktok format is great for things, little tips like that. Obviously, there are tutorials, they have to be long because they're covering something complicated, but something like this, it can be done. It's a useful tip for anyone who wants to use GTA for machinima. And it's not something you probably think of if you're just playing around with the filmmaking tool, but then when you see that, it makes a lot of sense. And I did remember the reminded me of making a video in Jedi Academy way back. And it was it was a contest to create something about wildlife using any machinima or platform, I use Jedi Knight because that's the one I wanted to do. And I had to have a cameraman is like a documentary style thing. And of course, I didn't really know how to make the camera. Things worked at the time, it's why the trick I came up with was to remove the textures from a character, because then they'd be invisible. So it's invisible cameraman. And the point I was getting to is zooming up closest wildlife is the big rank or to the big creature from Jabba the Hutt palace. As far as the game was concerned, the character was not visible. So it reached out and grabbed the camera man and ate him. So if TikTok existed back then that would have been my Tiktok video. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, watching this reminds me of that. And it's one of my, you know, it's one of those little things. Is this a funny moment back then, and I obviously forgotten about it until then. But yeah, I think this is a good idea.

Ricky Grove 06:02
I mean, if you're a machinima filmmaker, and you're using GTA five, it might be an interesting medium, and something to explore to do these 30 seconds to a minute, short video tips, because people will will click those because they know it's only going to be 30 seconds or a minute. So they're not going to have to sit there and go. You know, while they go through third 15 minutes of credits. You just get right to the heart of it. So might be an interesting idea for people. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 06:35
Phils been very quiet.

Phil Rice 06:37
Well, I mean, yeah, well, I've always inserted a rat into my head in every machinima film I've ever made. So I didn't find it particularly particularly exciting. Yeah, we were doing in the Quake machinima days, yes. You had to model the rat and bring it into the game and then put it on the head. And it was it was a whole thing. So no, it is it's it's you know, for its, it is perfectly suited to the format and the type of content that that works on tick tock. Actually, I've there's numerous users on tick tock, who will just do general technical tips. You know how to do such and such with your iPhone, or how to do this and that with in Windows, and this is, this is precisely the format they use to just convey these little tips, and some of them will do like an omnibus edition, where it might still only be a 6 second video, but it's like seven or eight tips crammed really fast. Because if I'm not mistaken, don't TikTok will loop by default a video so I'll do them so fast, because you're gonna get to see it again if you need to. So yeah, I can, I can see the appeal.

Ricky Grove 08:01
I sense though, that underneath you've got a kind of icky feeling about tick tock though, as just a platform for media. Am I wrong? Are you

Tracy Harwood 08:15
stuck? You know? Yes.

Phil Rice 08:19
Let me let me put it let me put it this way. So if I'm hungry, I can go to you know, a really nice, I want some some good fish so I can go to a really nice seafood restaurant. Or I can go to Red Lobster. Or I can go get a fish taco from Taco Bell. Or I can search the dumpster behind Taco Bell and find a fish taco somebody's half eaten throughout. To me TikTok kind of caters more towards the dumpster end of that spectrum. In terms of food quality, generally. Oh my god meaning that to be insulting, it's just simply not it's kinda I mean that in a good way. You know, it's and what do you expect from its its content, it is designed to be disposable. And I feel the same way about YouTube shorts. That just like YouTube wanted to offer the dumpster option. So they made YouTube shorts, and you can now you can now just kind of throw up on YouTube and put it there for 10 seconds literally throw up on Yeah. So I don't know. I think some of it is just, I don't use. I don't use my phone in this way. I don't create content this way. So it's not a very inspiring platform for me. Yeah. That tends to be how I evaluate these things and I think, though, that there's a younger generation that there's the expediency of being able to very quickly put together content and just get it out there for quick reaction. And then that's it. It's done. Like, you know, that's just not a pipeline that that that appeals to me and I'm not, I'm not

Ricky Grove 10:24
Well, then why do you think it's so extraordinarily popular? I mean, this rockstar machinima that I chose has got 1000s and 1000s of likes, which are far more than more, much more serious machinima Have you seen on Vimeo and YouTube?

Phil Rice 10:45
You know, I, that's a tough one.

Damien Valentine 10:48
I were gonna say because it's short. So you could watch a 10 minute video on YouTube. Or you can watch 10 One minute videos on TikTok. And people want to if they want to watch lots of videos, they're gonna go on tick tock, and they can just watch to lots of things because it's all very short, it doesn't require a lot of time to invest in it. And so people, you know, the, on the phone or whatever, I mean, I've ended on the train or a bus or something, they'll watch a couple of videos on twice a time on their journey. And they can just go through them so quickly. So that's why they've become so popular because it doesn't require a lot of time or energy to, to sit down and watch something and they focus on the comedy element as well. You having a quick laugh wherever it is, you're going.

Ricky Grove 11:32
Yeah, I have a quick comment on your dumpster analogy fill. Back in

Phil Rice 11:39
early, you're gonna ask me, How do I know what? A dumpster tastes like?

Ricky Grove 11:44
No, no, no, I leave that donation. Listeners

Phil Rice 11:48
read my bio page. It's all there.

Ricky Grove 11:51
Back in the early 50s paperback publishers, the artwork was actually done as a physical painting recovers some pretty famous painters, painted covers, and they sent that art to the publishers one of a kind dark to the publishers. Well, at the end of the year, their contract specified that they had a choice, either they picked up the painting, or, and if they didn't, it would refer revert to the owner of the publisher. Well, the publisher didn't wanting him. They thought they were junky crappy paperback covers, because they didn't really care. They were in it for the money. So they throw him in the dumpster. Well, you know, some paperback collectors got wind of that. And they'd show up. And they usually do it on January 1 of January 2. So these guys would show up behind major paperback publishers buildings, and check the dumpsters. And they'd come away with paintings by, you know, Tim Powers and Boris Vallejo, and amazing stuff today, which is selling for 1000s and 1000s of dollars. So the point I'm trying to make with this analogy, you have to choose the right dumpster TikTok.

Damien Valentine 13:12
That is true. That is true. I

Tracy Harwood 13:15
you know, I don't think that hangs together though, because you know what they say about your digital footprint. And, you know, the current generation being the first generation that will have nothing to show for their lives. Because everything they've done is digital.

Phil Rice 13:32
I mean, I call it Ricky has a point, I think I can illustrate it on YouTube, from a from a viewers perspective, if you sign up for a new YouTube account. So you out and you don't have any subscriptions or anything like that, and you just show up, the only thing you've got driving content to your face is the algorithm is just whatever is generally popular out there. And whatever Google can sniff out about your interests from your other logins. That's it though, it's just gonna just feed you a page of content and TikTok is that way to tick tock is even more reliant on the algorithm because by default, you're just swiping your way through. But that list is all algorithm driven. Yeah, but on YouTube, once you tune your algorithm by liking videos that you like, and, you know, subscribing to channels that you like, what do you know, over time, the YouTube homepage, if you will, when you first arrive at YouTube, it tends to be populated with stuff that it's likely you're going to enjoy. Right? Right. And I'm sure that TikTok is is the same way that once you interact, that algorithm gets tuned and then you know, so if, I mean it's still loaded with garbage, but so is YouTube. I mean, let's not let's not kid ourselves, no question. Yeah, it was full of a lot of nonsense as well. So really is I think about you teaching that machine. What it is that you want to see. And then you're gonna get, then you're gonna get the best food in the dumpster. That is what it comes down to. But it's still a dumpster.

Ricky Grove 15:14
Good point. Let's move on to my second movie so we can keep this short.

Damien Valentine 15:21
It's already too long for Tiktok

Ricky Grove 15:23
Oh, no, no. The next one is called Make Your Own FNAF videos with Movieokie. Now, I'm not sure what FNAF means. But I liked this movie. It was interesting, the voice performances are fun, there's a good way it's a good way for a company to advertise something that their software by creating something inside of their software makes it much easier to choose if you like it. Now, I'm not so sure I liked the final animated result. The style is kind of kind of silly, but it might work for really young kids, you know, 12 years old, 10 years old, it might be just the kind of thing to use to create something fun and interesting. And before we go to that, the video I wanted to share a quick quote that connects to these tick tock videos from Terry Gilliam. I wanted to say this at the beginning, I just forgot about it. He said in an interview Terry Gilliam as you remember the fellow who did all of the Monty Python animations, and then went on to direct several very interesting films. But he said the whole point of animation is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter, whatever works is the thing to use. And I think that's a very practical way to look at it. And this company makes a an animated programme for people that's really simple for your phone. And they wanted to do an advertisement. And I thought it was a very effective advertisement for them. As I said, I wouldn't use it myself, but very young people might find it interesting. What did you think Damien.

Damien Valentine 17:15
So I will just start with F and AF is it stands for Five Nights at Freddy's which is a horror. Yeah, I don't, I haven't played it. But my understanding is you have to survive five nights and at least kind of cute creatures possessed by demons or something, I don't know. But they try and kill you. And you have to try and survive. I don't know, the mechanics of the game. But I do know he's very popular. And this is what these characters are from. I think I preferred you're the first one because I like the idea that it's a very informative tip. Whereas this one, I'm not quite sure I fully get it because I I know what the game is a little bit but not really. So I kind of got that. I didn't know. I thought it was well done for where it was. But I thought the other one. Okay. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 18:11
Well, yeah, it's, well, it was clearly an advert for the app. I think what amazed me was just how many followers it got. And how many likes this video had got as well. I mean, 50,000 likes or almost 8000 followers. And it's clear what it what they're doing is just advertising these ragdoll like animated characters. And I also looked up the Five Nights at Freddys and actually, once I got the Five Nights at Freddy's, and what that was about was kind of like a Chucky like, animatronics kind of characters. Those characters in the little video seemed to make a little bit more sense, because clearly what he was trying to do was tap into some other cultural phenomenon with this app, to you know, to let folks create their own kind of little memes I guess, based on Five Nights at Freddy's so yeah, I Yeah, it's interesting. Overly enamoured if I'm honest, but you know, what you can do in a minute is quite intriguing, I think.

Phil Rice 19:26
So, yeah, you know, the way that those characters animated on the screen it made me think about like, in like, at least the way it's portrayed in movies in mediaeval times, there was, you know, some guy in town who would set up the little mini stage and tell the stories with and it'd be marionettes basically, I assume is string puppets, very primitive. And probably stage actors of the time would look at that form of storytelling and kind of poopoo it is. So that's just so, you know, it's nothing like the real theatre, you know? So and I it just made me think well maybe that's what I'm doing here, you know that I feel like that the kind of stuff that that I try to create is in some way more sophisticated Of course there's if I look, you know, upward there's going to be, you know, people at Lucasfilm that would just would just guffaw at my attempts as pitiful. So maybe the dumpster analogy isn't isn't fair. I think the way that I'm looking at is like this, like, you can have a really nice microphone. You can you can get like $1,000 condenser microphone, it's just really great frequency response and all that. And then you can there's mid range, you can get a Shure SM 57 You know, that classic, dynamic microphone and it does an okay job. And then all the way down to a little microphone that's on the little thingy from your headset, which is just a piece of crap microphone. But the point is, if you fart into any of those, it's still a fart.

Ricky Grove 21:13
Wow, that's yeah, that stops the whole conversation.

Phil Rice 21:19
No, I think this was a I mean, for it for what they're they're advertising. It's a clever ad and it does fit into it. And you know, there is something to be said for, you know, one of the elements of machinima was supposed to be that expediency that immediacy. And actually in the old days of machinima, and in some current machinima, now that does seem quite a bit less sophisticated. It's something that you can just sit down and capture and capture the gameplay and come up with a little narrative. And there's not a whole lot of planning to it. And it's, it's a lot of gaming in references and things like that. So, and this is that same appeal, these tools that you can just whip up on the phone, commuting on the subway, or waiting in the doctor's office lobby, or wherever you are, and just do something. And so even though I don't, I guess I just don't have a lot of time, where I do that with my device. So maybe that's maybe that's all it comes down to is the reason that I don't dabble in this is that, like you said, Ricky, you do know somebody who spends quite a bit of time on their phone. For them that would, that would make a lot more sense. Me, I spend a lot of time on a PC. And I assemble all the tools that I want there and plus, right, I've kind of, you know, moved in the direction of I want to take that extra time to try and craft something Yeah, a little more credit. And it's and it's it's torturous sometimes how long it takes to I'm working on something right now in a video game engine. That's and then using some other tools to enhance with it. I won't. I won't say what it is yet. It'll surprise you when I release it. But it's hard. It's like really ridiculous. Like to just capture one little 10 second sequence. It's a lot of work. And you know, so if you're looking to get stuff done quickly, machinima as I do, it isn't the way to do it quickly. It's not. Not anymore. If you use an iClone to Unreal pipeline. It's not quick anymore. It's quick compared to spending days waiting for a short scene to render in old fashioned 3d rendering programmes. Yeah, it's faster than that. But, you know, to make a to craft a story for the screen. And to at least endeavour to do it. Well, it takes a lot of time. And so reasoning with tools like these, there's only so good that they that they can produce because it is very much rooted in that expediency.

Ricky Grove 24:04
Well, that's part of the reason why I chose tick tock knowing that it would be somewhat essentialist because of the type of content and format, but I thought machinima history is always supposed to like you were pointing out some of the early stuff, just get it done. It doesn't matter. You know, okay, the lighting doesn't work. Well, you don't have to spend five weeks trying to solve a lighting problem. Just do it with the lighting wrong, you know, just to get it out there. Yeah, I think there's something to be said for that. Finishing a product and getting it done and publishing it. I think one of the big flaws personally, for me, personally, is that I want every single thing that I do to be perfect. And yet, I you know, the more time I spend on him, the less likely I am going to be the publisher to actually finish the project. I have gotten reams of projects that are half done, were third done, or three quarters done or 90%. Done. And it's just because I don't want to go back to him and go through all of that agony. And it's my problem. It's not anybody else's problem. So I really in a way, I kind of like the TikTok format and style because it forces you to get something done in 30 seconds. And you could do that. So these, although you're right, they're dumpster related stuff. They're funny, silly kind of things. But as Terry Gilliam pointed out, sometimes it's just tell a quick story get, you know, get an idea out there, just the idea of it doesn't have to be a three act, story structure and all of that.

Phil Rice 25:42
So not to not to be cliche with it, but I can't help but think of Alex Chan and The French Democracy. That video that he he put together with very little polish. Some of that because the tool was was rough. And some of it was that he was new to it. But his motivation wasn't to be Francis Ford Coppola it was to convey an idea. And he needed to do it quickly because it was happening right now in his backyard. Oh, no, this needs I need to get this out. And this is a way to convey an idea. So there's, there's something to be said for remembering that that's that's a, an important use for machinima. And yes, the end result will be that there's going to be a whole lot of very forgettable stuff. created, you know, I mean, for every French Democracy, there's, there's 10,000 pieces that we will never remember. Yep, you know, that, that are just gone. They're forgotten. But that doesn't mean that expediency is bad. Yeah.

Ricky Grove 26:48
Well, the point is, is to get something done. And if it doesn't work, move on to the next thing, right, you get something that works. Yeah.

Phil Rice 26:55
And the advantage of the expediency atmosphere would be that turnaround and is it working? Is it not? Okay, move on. That cycle is much faster, in a world of a platform like tick tock, than it is in the world of a platform form. Like, how Damien makes movies, how I make movies, you know, it's, it's very different, you know, Damien to work for four months on an episode. And then if it stinks, it's like, well, now what, you know, got to retool the whole thing. Yeah. Whereas in TikTok, yeah, somebody could figure that out in an afternoon with several tests. So it's interesting.

Ricky Grove 27:32
It's particularly good because you get enormous feedback on TikTok, but yeah, the huge you put this, you put this on there, and suddenly you got 500 people responding and clicking and they all say no, this sucks. And 15 people all say, Well, you know, I can't hear what you're saying. Your recording is too low. You can Oh shit, I blew that. I've got to get my recording up. So the next video you do you make sure you recording love you chuck that specifically. So you were writing his level, you solve that problem.

Damien Valentine 28:05
Phil, you when you were talking, you reminded me that in one of our very early episodes, just before we were doing as video, we were just doing audio, we were I think we were talking about a machinima that was made with Animal Crossing. And of course, you need a Nintendo Switch, which is the device like this, it's gonna be in your pocket. And I was thinking, I was listening to you talking well TikTok allows people to create things on their phones. You don't need a big, if you've got if you're creative, and you've got ideas, but you don't necessarily have a computer that's capable of doing that, then maybe this is a way to express yourself. Maybe you could tell a longer story, you just have to do it in one minute segments. But you could you could probably do it if you wanted to. But yeah, it's a way to be creative. When you can't take if you don't have a PC or you're somewhere where you can't take the PC with you. I mean, I can't take my desktop with me everywhere I go, because it's not very practical. But yeah, you got device like your phone or something like this. You can put it in your pocket or in a bag or something and you've got something with you, you can make like the Switch has actually on it. It will record video, like you press it once it will take a screenshot you hold it down, it records like 30 seconds of video. You can play something, record that footage and then later on, you can transfer it from the Switch to a device that you can do your editing on. So there's options out there and I think

Ricky Grove 29:39
maybe what we're doing then as our conversation progresses here is we're slowly slipping out of the dumpster and onto the curb side maybe

Phil Rice 29:52
well, you know Damien the the short form content, you know, telling a longer story in short form bites. That's not a new idea that's that's actually proven. And you need no look no further than the literary world. You know, Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes, which are now only available as novels, right. But when they were released, that wasn't, that wasn't the format. He was using it all. And there's, there's plenty of other authors who that's, I mean, Dostoevsky it was that way it was, I think, even Crime and Punishment he released as like, episodes in a magazine type format, which is like, I mean, that's like, arguably one of the greatest novels of the last several centuries. It's like hard to imagine it in any other form. But that's how he did it. Because that was the medium that was available. And there's plenty of other examples that I'm completely unqualified. There's the two authors I can talk about. So

Tracy Harwood 30:55
I could be wrong here. But I honestly can't see. What's it called? Movieokie. Something like that. See, Brothers Karamazov? Could be very wrong. But I don't know, maybe well, you know, maybe.

Phil Rice 31:14
Well, here's the thing, too. When it any pick any historical instance that we can pick where someone told a rich and evocative long form story, in short form segments. They weren't doing it with the well, what should I write today? No, that was planned. There was a lot of thought put into it. There was an end game there were there was a longer arc involved. I mean, and and these were extraordinarily talented human beings. And I'm not saying that everyone on Tiktok isn't an extraordinary Yes, I am. I'm saying that. But oh, no, hang on, because I think that the medium has maybe more potential than than we've seen fully exploited yet. For the purposes of serious storytelling. Can we say that?

Tracy Harwood 32:03
We can, and I guess go to Ricky's third pick Ricky, what's your pick Ricky? No, I didn't pick a third one. You did. You said you picked you linked another one for us. Which was boyfriend. Yes, boy frogs in the back of my mind Boyfrogsims. And the reason I mentioned it then if you don't want to, is because it doesn't say very much at all. Not that I could discern. in it. It's two characters standing back to back one with bloodied arms and another one appearing to be a child. So I deduce from what it was depicting what it was just character's characterization, but in the description of it, it linked to a YouTube video. And the YouTube video was called All The Best Memories Are Hers. And it's a Sims four machinima, which was released last January. And what was interesting about that was that the content had all been custom made by the creator whose name BoyfrogSims scaping just a moment then but the the video itself, the longer video was really quite disturbing. You know, it's well, it's a form of domestic abuse that you're seeing in the in the long form video and this is just, like a, an advert or a taster for it. Probably why I missed it. Well, it's a really it's very interesting film, not one that I would have normally picked, but the fact that it was all custom content made on and and how it's portrayed, I think, is that's doing something else and it kind of made me think that all three of these films are you know, they're not they're just tasters of of some other thing. And it's you been able to understand what the some of the thing is, that that makes it quite an interesting platform I think.

Phil Rice 34:22
So it's Twitter in some some videos and Twitter like that, you know, it's about something else. Ironically, it's like this this third video here. It's trying to draw you off the platform to go see the real thing you know,

Tracy Harwood 34:39
it did that very well. I did actually watch the whole the whole film. It's not very long. But my God is that disturbing. And then when you go back to look at the TikTok thing again, you think Oh, okay, I now get what that is doing. But I'm not sure you can make a lot of sense of the TikTok without going to the video or the video with maybe without going to the TikTok as well. So that kind of a coupled type thing.

Damien Valentine 35:05
You mentioned Twitter. But actually, when I signed up for Twitter, I found that actually improved my script writing. Because instead of writing these long rambling pieces of dialogue, in my scripts, because I was thinking, been tweeting a lot, and you had that 120 character limit, it really forces you to think carefully and be very precise in what you want to say. So my dialogue is getting a lot more snappy. And it's getting to the point much more quickly, when I was writing my scripts, even though I didn't have that limit, just because I was used to that's thinking that way with writing on Twitter. So you know,

Phil Rice 35:40
I have to say that I think that experience is fairly unique, Damien, because in surveying Twitter over the years, it doesn't strike me that it has led people in the direction of thinking more before. I know exactly like that. That's the way that it goes. But no, I think the idea of tick tock as almost an advert platform for if you're, if you're making longer form content, and you want them to see that there's, it would be interesting to see. Yeah, it would take a lot of experimentation but TikTok is great for that. But what works you know what, we'll get someone off of this and over onto that, or, you know, turning their phone sideways to watch what you want them to watch kind of thing. That's, that's, that's an interesting, it's kind of like, like if you wanted to, to get all the the emergency personnel downtown, you would start a dumpster fire. Right, and then hope that they would come so it's kind of it's kind of like that does that does that keep the Yeah, analogy or metaphor working? Not quite so harsh.

Ricky Grove 36:59
I think you get more people if you did it on the curb. But I mean, your your, your your points well made. Now while I was researching, I discovered that Sims Halo and GTA five tended to dominate machinima at this platform. There was also some very interesting 2d animation that was quite fun on TikTok as well. I think machinima on tick tock is still yet to be developed. It needs to have more users who are more thoughtful. I wish I would have remembered the frog. TikTok machine, right, just somehow while I was working together, I just missed that. Thanks for bringing it up, Tracy. But when you're just like, users like that, when they get more users like that, they may be able to develop the form a bit. But for iterating and learning, I think it's quite useful.

Tracy Harwood 37:54
So yeah, that's great. So that's actually a good sum up Ricky that basically what you're saying is a TikTok content generally is forgettable. So yeah, without I think we'll

Tracy Harwood 38:08
Well hang on before you sign off. Before you sign that off. Let's do Oh, God, as we sit here at the moment recording, the European Commission is seeking to ban TikTok on devices that the 23rd of February that was announced in Wired in the US there are also there's also pushes to ban TikTok, and on CNN earlier in January, TikTok was announced as having been banned from all government devices. So you know, if you've not made your hit on TikTok, maybe your time is up?

Ricky Grove 38:48
Well, you know, all of these announcements have come out. And have you seen any decline and picked up users, or any mass exodus from TikTok? Or if you put you record that fart that Phil was talking about, and put that on TikTok and you get 1000 likes. So despite the political expediency of loathing TikTok, it's still an enormously popular platform.

Phil Rice 39:13
Yeah, yes. The actually the first the first talking of of banning it and, you know, for reading, I think legit, can security concerns were well over a year ago, close to two years ago, when we had a different president here in the United States And everybody thought it was that he was being a little over reactionary with it. And now two years later, everybody's talking about the same thing. I don't get it, but it didn't happen then either. And I think a lot of the reason for that is because there's so it's such a huge user base, you know, way bigger, they've totally surpassed what Vine was. I mean, this is kind of the successor to vine, for those who remember Vine, but that the audience is has just exploded and it's international and gigantic. So it'll be interesting what what the ramifications will be if if different entities and organisations try to stop it try to ban it. It's so big doesn't mean that it can't go away but it's it's an interesting situation.

Ricky Grove 40:26
Lots of interesting ideas in this episode. Once again I enjoy talking to you guys about interesting machinima. I knew this would be a bit controversial but I wanted to share them with you anyway.

Phil Rice
A lot of satire this episode two folks, please. Yes, please understand, good natured fun ribbing. Yeah. I do hate TikTok. Did I say that out loud? Yeah. But I'll get over it. Yeah. Good for you. Well, thanks for tuning in. And that's it for this episode. Join us for the next episode, where we'll be looking at some real machinima. And so thank you very much, Ricky this fix. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.