Machinima, real-time filmmaking, virtual production and VR. Four veteran machinimators share news, new films & filmmakers, and discuss the past, present and future of machinima.
Tracy Harwood 00:39
Hello, I'm Tracy Harwood and today I'm joined by Ricky Grove. Hello. Phil Rice. And Damien Valentine and you are listening to And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast. Today we're talking about a film that I've picked. But before we move on to that, let me just remind you that you can catch up with a project that Phil's been working on to restore some classic machinima. Remaster them 4K quality pretty amazing that you can find on on his Vimeo channel and the short address is bit.ly forward slash machiniplex. And Phil has also been working on remastering of Bloodspell one of you Hancock's classic films from 2006 2007 I think we said and you can find that on a link that I put in the notes here to Phil's YouTube channel. Right let's move on to our pick this week. Yeah, your pick. And my pick. Yeah, okay. It's particularly interestingly, this this month, three of us have picked films independently. Of course, we always pick our films independently, where we're looking at a dream theme to them. And my pick this week is a film has been made in Unreal it's called Horror and was made by a guy called Yang Hyunjun. It was released on the fourth of June 2023. And apologies if I have mispronounced your name. Now, I don't know too much about the artist. And thank goodness he's got an Art Station account otherwise I wouldn't even be able to attempt to pronounce the name but badly as I have done anyway, on on the portfolio on on Art Station Yang describes himself as a lookdev and lighting artist. Now when I look that up look devs helped build worlds and characters by creating the colour the textures, the materials for everything you see in the kind of final rendered images. So he's a real detail expert, and he's based in South Korea and and it's clearly been exploring a workflow with Unreal Engine. So insofar as I'm aware anyway, that this is pretty much the only story based work that I think he's created. So to the film, it's probably not so much a horror for me as it might be feet for you guys actually. It's about a young man who has dozed off on a subway train going we're not terribly sure where and he's hallucinating or dreaming that he's surrounded by bald men and information that he should actually be remembering to take his hair loss pills is carrying a pot of of these pills presumably his medication but he can't seem to get the lid off and the scene around him just turns horrific for him, bald men everywhere, and everything we see as a kind of a Down and out character caricature really of baldness. And eventually, he himself is shown as as as a bald character. Now what I like about this is the way that this story is told there's no music, it's just a kind of a grunting soundscape, possibly kind of representing the train as it rolls over the tracks. And also the editing and mood of the scenes is just kind of completely evocative of a horror genre, but I'm not sure it's horrific, per se. I think I'd be really interested to hear what you guys got to say about it. But to me, the subject is a little absurd. But of course, it's not both men and women lose their hair as they age. Some are predisposed to baldness through their genes and others you know, it can kind of impact sex drive. So it's, it's something that's, you know, that can really change behaviour and even personality completely. So for me this kind of this really intriguing natural sensitivity, particularly targeting men in this film, which I think is really astonishingly well illustrated through a whole range of cues, from the way the focus of the camera is used to the shock and horror on the character's face, which is probably the weakest part of this actually, to the to the environment, the details on the avatars, the other avatars in the scene, and the streaming of the LED messages and the trains information system. And also things like the the use of a heartbeat and that kind of creepy scale in the sound design as well as the course of the the subject matter portrayal. It did rather remind me of the way that Evan Ryan of Krad Productions animated that, you know, that sort of feeling of psychosis and the main character that that in that film you did Phil with him last year, what was it called? 917... 917. Yeah, it's kind of captured that a little bit as well. Anyway, what did you guys think?
Damien Valentine 05:59
Well, I was really surprised when I saw you chosen a film called Horror, because I know that's not really your, your style of choice. So I started watching it, I thought, watch Tracy picks a horror film, but this is also live action, because that was up on that subway car. And it looks like it's a live action subway car, because it's made with Unreal Engine five. And it's it's done in such a way that it looks real. It doesn't look like an animated, great opening shot. Yeah. And then you start to see the character. Okay, that is actually animated. I mean, they look, they do look pretty realistic. But you can tell there, they are still animated. And, of course, the Unreal five comes across. But yeah, it's very unsettling this film once you get into it, and you don't really know what's happening. And he's kind of hallucinating in the faces of changing. And this kind of, you know, is there is there can be a monster in it, or what because it's very dark and gloomy, and the music and the atmosphere in the sound. It's kind of like you feel really tense, and you don't really know what's going on. And of course, as you watch the film, it all kind of comes together. But yeah, it was It wasn't as horrific, like the title expected it I expected from the title. But it still is a very dark and moody film. And it's his This is his hair loss is obviously doing it's really affecting him. So when he does those off, is dreaming about it. And it's something obviously really gets to him. And it's affecting his whole life. Because even when he's asleep, we can't get away from this thing that's obviously bothering him to the point where he's getting these pills to try and change the fact that he's losing his hair. But when when you see him awake, you've got a full head of hair is the bald spots on the top or anything. He's got the full, massive head of hair. And so you kind of have probably, why you taking these pills, you don't need to question you get answered in it. I think the film was masterfully created. I mean, it takes a lot to build this kind of atmosphere in a film. There's no single line of dialogue. I mean, there's text on the on the background if there's no spoken words, out. And again, there's another thing we've talked about in previous episodes when we encounter films that have no dialogue. And it's a hard thing to pull off. Because sometimes we looked at films where it's not been quite as effective as it has been in others. And this is one of the ones that worked well not having anything, said because if you did have dialogue for this, it would ruin the effect of this whole dream nightmare. What's really going on kind of image because you add words to it, it takes that takes it away, take you away from that. So he managed to pull that off, and the camerawork and the animation and details of facial animation specifically, because you can tell that this guy is he's haunted by what he's seeing and going through. And it really comes across in the character model that the way he look of horror on his face and eyes going wide. And yeah, I was really impressed by this. And this is another one of those films where I kind of feel like what can I learn from this? So despite the fabric thing, like the other film we talked about a few weeks ago, but there's definitely others in this film, I would like to go back and watch again and see what can I do to improve my own craft? When the highest compliments I think I can pay is this makes me want to do better.
Tracy Harwood 09:42
Great comments. Damian.
Ricky Grove 09:44
I add a little Yeah, good comments and a good choice. It was an enjoyable film and I urge people to watch it. It's better than average. I had some problems though. One is that even understand a lot of stuff. For example, I thought he was taking the pills and the pills were what was creating his hallucinations. I also didn't realise it was about baldness until the end when the the label and also the there was a tiny bit of dialogue but it was unusual dialogue it was on the the digital readout in the subway, there was some dialogue take your stuff like that. So I was a little confused about the story, which made it harder for me to engage in what was going on. Also, I think of course a viewer just watching the film for the first time will have this connection but I think the film suffers a little bit in comparison to the Motzify Unreal films that we saw because those are sort of just solidly made so this wasn't quite as good as that and needed some work on trying to focus the narration to get give people enough information to get what it is that's going on. I also some of the facial animations although they were well executed they seem to have a little uncanny valley for me which took me out I don't know why but there was only briefly here and there maybe it was just in the way that they rendered it or something the textures on the face where it seemed a little clay like as opposed to skin like I'm not sure but those are minor comparisons well not minor the story is not minor but I was able to fix that but most of it is just I think a little more skill a little more work on making more films like this, but for what it is I enjoyed it. I thought it was really interesting and it really captured the mood quite well. So those are my thoughts.
Tracy Harwood 11:48
Good points. Phil.
Phil Rice 11:52
Yeah, probably the best way first I feel like I should kind of situate myself a little bit here so and then we're just gonna go like this. Oh, I deliver my whole review like this does it
Ricky Grove 12:07
give me more gives you the gravitas right so
Phil Rice 12:10
the thing about the yeah okay, so Okay, opening shot like like Damien I was wowed. Just hadn't focused on any of the characters yet but just the setting and all of that add a sheen to it that yeah, it was I mean, if it hadn't said Unreal Engine five in the title I would have I would have definitely thought that it was you know some kind of live action backdrop or whatever. But yeah, I want you to zero in on some of the characters Ricky I think I could be wrong on this and I hope I don't get myself into trouble for for saying this but main character in particular eyes just a little too close together. Whoever was setting the face there's a certain balance not every face hasn't of course there's a lot of variety and faces or whatever. But in this character like the eyes were just a little too unnaturally close together. I honestly I think we're talking a centimetre difference. And that face would be fine. I think the skin is fine. I think the render is fine. I think it's a matter of proportions. And it could be that the fan crafted and crafted characters or maybe he didn't use a tool like Character Creator 4 for example, it's kind of hard to do it wrong with Reallusion's tool. Like they they tend to help keep things balanced by moving related muscle groups together when you're doing the morphs and stuff. So this has like a handcrafted feel and I think that may be part of what made it a little bit unrealistic but very hard to pinpoint. Yeah. Yeah, the whole so it's weird because like, the the atmosphere was definitely you know, kind of a horror hallucinogen type of atmosphere and he pulled that off very well. But the the story when you when you pull out what the actual story is it's kind of like a Saturday Night Live skit. You take out all the jokes, you know, I mean, a guy is on a train. He's paranoid, sees everyone he sees his bald, he's paranoid. He's fiddling with his bottle, and at the end, he can't get it open. And he and all of a sudden he's bald and, and it's a guy and just that just as afraid of going bald. You know, and like you figure Okay, now give that to whoever the writers are at SNL. Let us spice it up. We can make this kind of funny. We'll have Jim Carrey play the guy and he'll have toupe we'll take off for like, essentially, that's the type of story is one that's at its heart, kind of silly. kind of poking fun at at, you know, people but not a group of people that I mean, men are the easiest person in the world to make fun of right now, this is just making fun of men. You know, no one criticises you for that. White men even better, but men in general, no problem. So it's a safe target. It's safer than making fun of fat people, you can make fun of men. And this isn't just, you're right, Tracy, men are not the only ones that have pattern baldness, but it's certainly a more popular topic among men. And I think, one that the pharmaceutical industry has, and other related industries have really taken advantage of that paranoia and the quote unquote, status symbol of keeping your full head of hair and all that just really preying on weak minds that essentially is a paranoia rooted in fear of death. That's what I think. I think fear of baldness is ultimately just fear of death. And there's, there's a whole industry that is taken advantage of trying to make men as insecure about that as possible to get them to buy a product, you know. So, on the one hand, this story could be seen as it's a serious commentary on this man who like Damien pointed out as a full head of hair, maybe he has genetic reasons to, you know, like, on my family, they say that, they say that it's, if you want to know if you're gonna go bald, look at your mother's father. Okay, my mother's father had nothing by age 30, you know, and all her brothers, nothing, like just gone. So and then if you've ever seen my father, gone, so even if I'm a genetic freak, either way, I'm supposed to be screwed, right? You know, I'm going to lose all my hair. Well, if I weren't shaving this on purpose, I would have a mop. I mean, it just, it's not going anywhere. It's receded a little bit or whatever. But I've just, I don't know, I had a little bit different attitude towards balding. Because at about the age of 20, I'd convinced myself that it was going to be inevitable for me. And so I just decided, I'm not going to be a person who becomes insecure about that period, and just rejected it on principle. Well, then it turns out, I cut my hair, but I still prefer being bald. But I know so many guys, who it's the end of the world, they think, when they start to lose their hair. Yeah, they'll do anything to keep it happening. We have a recent President of the United States clearly bought into that and would put a dead animal up there, basically, to not look bald, even though he looks silly. You know, so this is a real, a real thing. And young men are the best targets. Because they're most concerned about their appearance. They're in the game, you know? Yeah, they're trying to find a mate or whatever. Whatever that that urge is. And everything about our culture is told us, you know, full head of lush hair is makes you a better pick. So you better have it. So this is a story of a guy who's bought into that to the point where he's, he's putting some chemical in his body, thinking it's going to keep him have his hair, but he's still paranoid about it. So it could be Ricky, you're right, that he's hallucinating because of the side effects of the pills, that which are revealed to be hair loss prevention medicine at the end, right. But it could also just be that he is so gripped with paranoid and maybe has a particular bent towards, you know, there's some other psychosis going on, that's causing the hallucinations, but it's rooted in just abject fear of it's happening to everybody. I can't I can't let it happen to me, it's going to happen to me, you know, and that's real. It's not nearly as dramatic as it plays out in the short. He's almost it's almost comical at the end when it's revealed that all this psychosis, exactly the hair pills. Yeah. It's almost funny, except that he gave it away in the first line of the description. Yeah, I read that right before I hit play. So I had there was, there was I don't know what the effect would have been. If I'd waited till then to know Oh, all this was about hair loss. But I already knew it. So I don't know if that really disrupted my viewing.
Ricky Grove 19:32
In your analogy, your your Saturday Night Live analogy. You're talking about lifting the removing all of the humour. Do you think if they had added some humour to the film, or would have been enlivened the story of it?
Phil Rice 19:48
That's a great question. Yeah, I don't know. Because I think that for me personally, the topic like many Saturday Night Live skits, by the way, just isn't that? Isn't that intriguing to me? Isn't that? I don't know, I guess what I'm saying is I'm not optimistic about the upper limits of how funny this could be. Even if it was, you know, if you bring Conan O'Brien back out of writer retirement and get him in here, get these top comedy writers on this. Is this really even that funny a thing that I'm that I'm not sure about.
Damien Valentine 20:35
But this would be funny, I think it's meant to be an exploration of the psychology of young men who are afraid of losing their hair, turn that into a comedy would not make this work. But I'm
Ricky Grove 20:47
not talking about comedy. Yuck, yuck. I'm talking about the black comedy. We're often there were opportunities with the other people on the subway platform to do some comic reactions or things like that. Okay, which could be strange, but they didn't do any of that.
Phil Rice 21:03
Yeah. And Saturday live, by the way, they do black comedy stuff just like this. Like they would make it look like horror or whatever. And at the end, helped by the live studio audience to pipe in laughs so you know, you're supposed to laugh, but they would have landed on this joke of, he's just concerned about losing his hair or, or there would have been something and we would have come in with a weird title
Ricky Grove 21:26
is a film horror would be a miss leading. Right? It's not really hard. It's just
Phil Rice 21:32
that I don't get the sense that that was the intent of this filmmaker. Now neither do I. But I also I'm not sure what the intent of this filmmaker was. Because because it does have the makings of that reveal at the end is a punch line. Like it or not, intended or not, that's a punch line. It's just like, but it's set up. It almost feels like it wasn't on purpose. And so then, I'm not sure how well, humour works when it's okay, so there are things that aren't meant that aren't made to be funny, but end up being funny. Like, let's say, 60% of all B movies ever made. There's a chance that they're just hilarious. Ya know? You've ever seen anything by a guy named Neil Breen, he is completely serious about his work. And his movies are the funniest things you've ever seen. He has no idea. So it's, is that what this is? I don't know. So there's great craft going on here? That's for sure. Yeah. There, it's it is a cut below the films that we looked at a couple of weeks back. The ones that Ricky picked, it is definitely not in that same tier at all. In every regard, it's not in that tier, like in the planning and the writing and everything. But there's some real promise here. And I mean, that it shows that this is a what was his title? Damien, a layout?
Tracy Harwood 23:04
No. Look,
Phil Rice 23:06
look developer, basically a stylist, you know, he's a set set and atmospheric stylist. And there's no fault with that in this movie. Well, that is also
23:18
like to point out that the it's an individual making a film, as opposed to a collective, I suppose to a team, right? Yeah. And you're gonna have a difference in, in quality level for one thing. The other also feedback in in a collective, you're gonna get feedback, if you go off the wrong path on some aspect of the film, the rest of the team and go no, no, we need to go this way. Yes, as a single filmmaker, yeah, you can go down and have no idea.
Damien Valentine 23:46
Yeah, I think yeah. The set design is his strength. That's obviously is what he does, because of the way that both Phil and I thought this was a live action shot at the beginning. Before we got to see any close ups of the characters. Yeah, that's
Phil Rice 23:59
his strength. And I applaud him for going outside of his comfort zone, even though I wouldn't give this an a plus in all regards. But I love that he's stretching like that. And if this was a first attempt working with characters we have no, I have no idea. But the key is, it doesn't have to be his last attempt. Absolutely. And this is it is above average, for sure. Yeah. It's way above average in some areas, and other areas is just above average. And the story, you know, a story is tough sometimes, because when it comes even though there's not not a lot of dialogue in this there is the onscreen wording on the What about all those things? The
Ricky Grove 24:48
Yeah, the digital prompters Yeah.
Phil Rice 24:51
And that was actually effectively done because it it didn't linger on it too long, but enough to give you a sense of an idea coming through, I liked that it was very tasteful. But storytelling as, as Ricky, as many times pointed out, you know, on the other side of the world, from the West, there's different different traditions and different ways of getting the storytelling done. And there's a sense of what could be called translation. But it's I'm not talking about language, per se word to this, you know, Chinese to English or anything like that. But the whole way of approaching story is a different language, cinematic language to a degree has differences. Yeah. So I find myself questioning on this as I watch it, and I critique it, I'm thinking, but am I missing something there? Because I'm I'm culturally uprooted. You know, I'm throwing a lot of assumptions that I have from where I grew up, about the culture around men's hair loss. And I'm just accepting those as givens and then critiquing this film. And is that fair? I don't know. You know, I think attitudes about that may very clearly know, where do men think bald is a good idea. I just wish it weren't considered such a big idea. You know, it's just part of life. No, yeah, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. You can staple pant legs to your head if you want. But it's, you know, that doesn't look any better. So, anyway, an intriguing and thought provoking film made me there's a lot that I admire about it. And it made me think about a lot. So I like films that do that. Me too.
Tracy Harwood 26:44
Brilliant. Great comments. Again. Another really interesting discussion film actually made in South Korea, by Korean artists, his first machinima type film. Very cool. From what I can tell. So yeah, I think that feedback, will I'm sure feed into the next projects that he developed. Please do? You know, we
Ricky Grove 27:11
absolutely. Make more? Absolutely,
Tracy Harwood 27:13
absolutely. And probably, you know, feed into it some way, if this is even feasible, of how you might communicate the Eastern versus Western cultural context. Because that I think, you know, we've picked that up a couple of times, this month in the in some of the films that you know, the fact that we are Western consumers of culture, and these are not necessarily western films that we're looking at, we miss some of the nuances, I think, how you explain that or put that across? I don't really know. I mean, you pointed out the eyes being close. Yeah, yeah. But maybe that was deliberate. Maybe that was maybe so particular thing that the creator wanted to sort of focus on in order to evoke kind of uneasiness in what he was doing, because I got the sense that there was a lot of deliberate choices in the way that things were presented there. But nonetheless, I think
Phil Rice 28:17
I'm really interested in the fact that it was that it comes from Korea is very interesting too in this whole east west discussion, because of, of all the places save, maybe Japan, you know, South Korea has had tremendous Western influence. Yes, in the last 50 years, and it still has very deep cultural roots, you know, in Korea and Korea's history, but a lot of Western influence since since the Korean conflict. And then, I mean, there's some amazing, we talked a couple of weeks ago, Ricky about our shared appreciation for Hong Kong, and cinema from that part of the world. Oh, my goodness, the stuff that comes out of Korea. Oh, amazing. Amazing. Some of the stuff in the world.
Ricky Grove 29:12
Indeed, the cultural influence is even more complex today because the American influence culture Korea, and then Korea, Koreans come to American influence. American literally That's right, which comes back to Korea again. And then the recent winning of the South Korean film of our academy award started people jumping in so you know, it's this constant back and forth between influences, which I think are fascinating.
Phil Rice 29:45
I'm sure that we I'd be surprised if we didn't mention it, but if we didn't, Parasite it's the movie Ricky's referring to Yeah, one of the best pieces of cinema in my book ever made for me ever. In the heart of it is you cannot miss that film. It's It's extraordinary. And we could do an hour's long podcast just talking about that. Yep. Well, we won't.
30:13
Thank you, Phil. Thank you. Well, great comments, guys. Thank you.
Tracy Harwood 30:18
Absolutely really enjoyed the discussion as ever with you guys. That's it for this week. You've been listening to the And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast I'm Tracy. With me today has been Ricky, Phil and Damien and we will look forward to seeing you next week.
Phil Rice 30:37
Driving like we do in the movies.