In this episode of the Completely Machinima podcast, Ricky interviews filmmaker Rene Jacob, aka direx1974, about his fan machinima film Alien: The Message – a film we reviewed in the April 2022 Films Episode of the podcast. Through this film, Rene explains how he achieved his childhood goal of creating an homage to the Alien world and franchise – and the years of work that went into it. He discusses his use of iClone 7 to create the effects he wanted and also his development of the soundscape for the movie. You can find the links to the film and our review of it on our blog post.
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SPEAKERS
Ricky Grove, Rene Jacob
Ricky Grove 00:14
So you're the director of a fan film called Alien: The Message. When did you release the film?
Rene Jacob 00:24
The reader the film was released in June 6 to 2020 via YouTube premiere, right. I had about 500 live viewing audience. Wow, that's great. That was was very cool. Yes.
Ricky Grove 00:46
Yeah. And their response was very positive.
Rene Jacob 00:50
Yes, yes. Very positive. Everyone liked it. There were nit pickings here there, but the overall response was very positive.
Ricky Grove 01:01
Yeah. And so in January of this year, you released a 4k upscale version of it.
Rene Jacob 01:08
Right. Right. I did this because because YouTube tend to downsize the 10 ADP versions very heavily. So I decided to do 4k release, but it's not really a 4k because I couldn't afford to win that every every shot again in 4K. Yeah. But the upskill is, looks way better than the 10 ADP version.
Ricky Grove 01:38
What did you use to do the upscale? And what was your process in doing that?
Rene Jacob 01:42
I just, I just did. What's going into my video editor and I rearranged one scene which was heavily criticised by some people and I did a new colour grading. And then I just, I just rendered it out in 4k. It's just a simple, simple upscale.
Ricky Grove 02:13
I think you I think your editor was avis.
Rene Jacob 02:17
Edit EBIT. EBIT is a composer. Yeah. The editing of us Yes, good. Good. Because I'm working in Germany. I'm working as a freelance editor for movies and TV shows. I'm working in the film industry. And this machinima project is so the thing I do in my spare time,
Ricky Grove 02:43
Right. No wonder the film was so wonderfully edited that I rewatched it again last night. And I was so impressed with the editing and the film. No wonder because that's what you do do on a professional level. So that's the reason why I wanted to ask you, you put a disclaimer at the beginning of the film. And you say this film Alien: The Message is a fan film, which not does not pursue any financial interest that would be no monetization via YouTube. If, however, an advertisement is shown before this video is because the rights holders have claimed the video for themselves. Why did you feel it was necessary to put that disclaimer at the beginning?
Rene Jacob 03:24
Um, I wanted to I was thinking, okay, when I do this, maybe maybe it will stay up. It won't. It won't strike by the holders of the rights. As it turns out, Disney doesn't care very much about this. But they don't care. But the right holders for the music. Yeah. So the it's the soundtrack, because I use the original soundtrack from Jerry Goldsmith to have the this, this feeling of the first movie. And so but they let me they let the video on air. And they collect the revenue, which is I guess a few cents or something
Ricky Grove 04:18
right. Right. Right. So they so they the copyright issue is that they claim the copyrights. So if any revenue comes from advertising during your film, they get it?
Rene Jacob 04:29
Yes. Yeah. So if you have see any advertisement, and I don't want to I don't want to have the impression that I capitalised from from from IP, I don't own that. That's that's it's not what I wanted. And so for the disclaimer would be the right thing
Ricky Grove 04:46
to do. That was very smart. I think it was a very smart way to handle it, especially the music rights, because they're very aggressive even here in the United States. Now, it's copyright technically What is the cop? Where what copyright law is in effect on a video YouTube? Is it the copyright law of Germany? Because you made the film or the copyright law of the United States?
Rene Jacob 05:14
I guess it's both. So the, the hydro does, I think it's an automatic automatic process. YouTube scans the video and and they recognise certain certain tunes. And it will be it was claimed automatically and and the rights holders will be informed about that. And then they have to decide what to do. And they decided to leave it there. But take the revenue from the ads,
Ricky Grove 05:46
yeah, yeah, that makes sense. They're smart to think of that. Have you had any issues since you put it up in the two years since it's been up? And then the 4k at all? No,
Rene Jacob 05:57
no issues, no issues at all? Good. You can watch the movie and that's what I wanted.
Ricky Grove 06:04
I'm curious, why did you choose iClone 7 as your base application and making this film?
Rene Jacob 06:11
I, I'm a long, long time iClone user I started with iClone back in 2012. I was I love the software. It's it's the main purpose of the software is to do movies to create movies. And it's not a reworked game engine. It's the whole software is just to create movies. And that's that's what I liked about it. And so I started with iClone 5 and into iClone 7 was was a good, good tool to start. This long dream of mine I always wanted to do in a movie and in 2017 I thought it would be time to do it.
Ricky Grove 07:07
What is it about the Alien world and franchise that still fascinates you and makes you so inspires you?
Rene Jacob 07:15
I was 12 I think 12 or 14 When I saw the movie first in on a small TV in the night at this movie. This movie inspired me a lot inspired me to go into the into the film industry. It was such a it has such a great impression on me that I loved this movie so much and also love the second part Aliens by James Cameron. It's it's this retro sci fi dark world which is which is very, very interesting for me. And that's the reason why I decided to do this.
Ricky Grove 08:08
Yeah, yeah. What do you think exactly is a fan film or a fan creation? What are you trying to do as a fan trying to recreate the experience of the film or? Or something else?
Rene Jacob 08:20
In this case? Yeah. The Alien franchise is a bit a bit narrow in terms of, of what you can tell, ya know, it's basically surviving, heavily overpowered beast, right? And you can do this one or twice or maybe three films. And then you have to put something new on the table, which we discussed it with Prometheus. And then he did Alien Covenant. And I saw that movie and I was very furious about it. Yes. Very, very bad movie. Yeah. I saw that. I thought I can do better. And that's the reason why I started just writing the script and everything
Ricky Grove 09:06
else. I wonder how many creations and not just fan films but professional work as well. started with the idea that I can do better than that. Yes.
Rene Jacob 09:20
I have to add I called it a fan film. Because if you when you look at the movie, it's basically it's basically the the original movie, the first 20 minutes in the last 20 minutes combined into one into one short 43 minute movie.
Ricky Grove 09:39
Yeah, otherwise, I love your twist at the end. Which I'm not gonna give away but but you know what I'm talking about a twist that connects it to the original Alien film.
Rene Jacob 09:50
Yeah, that was that was a goal to have to have it. So if this the every Just a bit decide, oh, this is cool. I want to I want to show this. You can put it into the cannon and it will fit perfectly. What's the goal?
Ricky Grove 10:10
Right? Now the story development, how did you come up with the story? And did you storyboard it when you set up?
Rene Jacob 10:19
No, I didn't storyboard it. I wrote the script in early summer 2017. It was very quick, I had the idea, I had the overall idea how to end it and how to how to tell it. And so I wrote it in three or five, four days, then the script was finished. What I had to think about was, I do this, I've done this alone, I had a friend. And he asked me and he did the all the conversion work from the game Alien Isolation. So all the assets and from this game, converted over to iClone. And I had to think I do I do the animation work and everything else, I do this alone. And so I had to, I had to check that the story is not too convoluted, not too big. So I have one one female hero. Yeah, I have only a few scenes where they will see more than one one or two people. Right, um, do have to have a chance to finish this on my own.
Ricky Grove 11:40
Right? How long was the production process from start to finish?
Rene Jacob 11:45
Almost three years.
Ricky Grove 11:46
Oh, my goodness, wow. That's a lot of dedication that shows in the film, by the way, congratulations. It's such a great, great film.
Rene Jacob 11:57
It's three years because it's it's a project I do in my spare time. Sometimes I have a lot of work and as a freelancer, I have to do what comes in. And sometimes I had to stop the project and put it on hold for about six months, and do nothing. And then came the COVID situation in 2020. Business went on to zero. And that was that was the time I had time to do every day on the movie. And so I could release it in summer 2020.
Ricky Grove 12:39
Did the film change much from when you started to when you finally came up with the finished version?
Rene Jacob 12:47
No, no. I, I added a last minute scene. And this is the scene which was discussed the most. Because I felt the action or the the interaction with the with the beast was to was not to I put it the piece was too long, too long away. And I wanted wanted an interaction with a female hero in the last shot of the movie, and so I wrote a little scene with with the chair the scene with a chair. And I had to combat the lead actress come back and record new lines. And that is this was a last minute thing and was not what very well thought through. And this is the scene which is mostly just discussed and the mostly criticised I say, yeah. But everything else was there was done as planned.
Ricky Grove 13:56
So maybe you learn something there that perhaps adding something in isn't a good idea after you've finished the project. Yeah. Yeah, I know that. I know that feeling very well. You know, one of the things I liked in the film was these interesting video shots. You know, were various monitors in the ship, you'd cut to them and you'd have this sort of video interface. The low quality thing, how did you create those shots? I thought they were very effective in telling the story and keeping the action moving. It gives us It also gives a sense that somebody's watching the lead character all the time. How did you create those shots?
Rene Jacob 14:38
Those shots I rendered them normally, like every shot and every effect to every video effect and then film damage the effects were done later on the average effect libraries, which I combined to create this this old VHS kind of look
Ricky Grove 15:02
yeah, it's very very effective especially where you place them in the in the film it really gives a an eerie sense of somebody watching you know, I like
Rene Jacob 15:17
I thought it would be would be a thing on such a big ship that you have everywhere cameras to, to to control and oversee what's happening on the ship so so that was the thinking behind it. I thought it would be very cool visual effects.
Ricky Grove 15:38
Yeah, yeah. It's also an addition to the film because I don't recall shots like that in the original film. Nope. So I thought it was
Rene Jacob 15:51
in the second film we have the cameras Yeah. But not in the first film, there wasn't such a thing.
Ricky Grove 16:00
thought it was an excellent addition. One of the another thing that I liked a lot about the move is the sound design and the music choices in there. Where did you did you do all of the sound editing yourself and what were your sources?
Rene Jacob 16:14
Yes, yes. The sound everything was completely done by myself it was very tedious work to do. Took me a lot of time yeah to get this together the most most of the sound sources were from the game Alien Isolation so this game this game gave us the opportunity to use all the original sounds because they had they had the rights to use them and there were there were tools to get them out of the game and so so I could a lot of original sounds like the alien and the alarm sounds and such a thing I even use the the the original distress call yes never used in the in the original movie but delete scene you can watch on YouTube and where the crew listens to this just called Yes, that's it eerie sound and they use it even in the trailers but they never use it in the movie and that's the reason why I why I wanted to in a
Ricky Grove 17:26
nice touch nice touch. Tell me a little bit about the voice casting and the recording. What was your process behind that
Rene Jacob 17:35
the process was a very big community on the internet of semi professional actors who do a lot of voice work they tapping a lot of Japanese animes and such things and there's a website called the Casting Call Club. There are a lot of people there who have very good microphones and very good setups to do a lot of a lot of professional voice work and I did the casting there and a lot of people attended this was a paid as a paid all the actors they all got money for for the work because I don't want them to work for free right for this and so I got very very good actors to do the voice work and they record the lines they sent me the lines I listened to them and I give them directions for for redo if if necessary. And so I have in the two months I had all the lines for the for the movie with me and I could start any mating process
Ricky Grove 19:02
it was nice they did a very good job. The lead actress was quite good especially in those scenes where she wasn't saying any lines but she was making sort of voice sounds responding to various situations it was really quite good
Rene Jacob 19:19
that's that's what I was what I wanted her to do. I thought your please do a lot of screen briefing sounds, because because a lot of animation movies always, always concentrate on the voice but there's so much more like breathing and hissing
Ricky Grove 19:43
gasps
Rene Jacob 19:45
gasps and such things. And this is mostly overlooked in animations. And I find this makes the movie much more believable.
Ricky Grove 19:59
Well, that was One of the great things about the original film too is the sound design. And it included lot of vocal thing non speaking vocal noises by the the cast and also the grittiness of the of the scenes it needed that extra realism to to be believable, I think.
Rene Jacob 20:21
Yes, yes, that's true.
Ricky Grove 20:23
Let me ask you here, I was, really. I really enjoyed several scenes in the film. And I have to tell you, you know, all of us at the on the podcast, we've been involved in machinima for a long time, and we select different films each month to view and to talk about and oftentimes, we someone will select a long film. And by long I mean, most of the films we select are fairly short five to 15 minutes. But sometimes somebody will pick an hour long film or 40 minute film or sometimes even an hour and a half. And so when your film was chosen by one of our podcasters, Damien, Damien Valentine, who's a filmmaker himself, he does a space Star Wars Space fan film. Oh, he put it up and we all grown because it was over 40 minutes. Because usually the films that are that long, they can't sustain the believability of the narration. But I want to say every single one of us groaned and then went, oh my god, this is so great and couldn't stop watching. And last last night, when I sat down and I went, Oh, God, I gotta watch this whole thing again. I sat down and it was I was 30 minutes into it before I realised I was watching it and I had to take notes. So kudos to you for making a film that is animated for one thing, which is much harder to do realism and animation than that's part of the reason why Pixar is so successful because they do essentially non realistic films or cartoons, you know, but I really love that scene where she finally learns at the computer that the rest of the cast the rest of the crew are dead.
22:26
What's the current medical status of the crew? Climatologist James Richardson dead. Ship Dr. Matthew Luton dead. Pilot Sidney Taylor, dead stop. First Officer, Sophia Baker, dead. Captain Berg Anderson. I said stop dead.
Ricky Grove 22:52
And there was the way you shot it, it allowed a great deal of emotion to come up a great deal of feeling for her. And the unemotional computer voice who was talking to her added to the contrast of her situation, you know,
Rene Jacob 23:11
it was not an actor it was it would be a computer voice.
Ricky Grove 23:14
I know. I know that in the credits, I noticed that. I thought the animation in this and iPhone is a good programme. But sometimes they have a little problem with animation. It's the transitions between one animation and another. It can be a little it can be a little jerky. I thought the animation in general for the whole film was great. But this scene in particular, her response, and then her animation set was just really, really well done. Rene, congratulations on that it's not easy to create an emotional response in an animation. So you did a great job on that.
Rene Jacob 23:52
Thank you very much. It was awkward to do that. I used use face wear to do the do the facial animations. I did it it's a combination facial and hand animated facial animation. Everything else is completely animated by hand. Sometimes I used to walk animations which which will which I bought somewhere but the rest of the film was completely done by me.
Ricky Grove 24:27
Yeah, yeah. How much did you get off of the Reallusion marketplace is to contribute to the film the set design and all of that.
Rene Jacob 24:35
In this case, almost none because because we wanted to stay as true as possible to the to the original movie and so we we almost did everything from from the game Alien Isolation or from from other models we found on the internet to to to create It is this believable, retro sci fi world we all know. And there are several models from Reallusion in there, but not very much. Yep. This case,
Ricky Grove 25:16
your your camera animation was really quite masterly as well, there's a scene at around 42 minutes, which has a bird's eye shot of an alien walking left to right, with very long shadows ahead, and the camera moves down and then pans up in pushes into the heroine hiding. Yeah, that scene that shot. Well, I couldn't believe it was done an iClone, how did you manage to create such a great camera effect and make it so smooth?
Rene Jacob 25:49
Yeah, I'm, as I said, I'm using iClone since 2012. I have now I have some experience to create a smooth, smooth transition, but iClone has grown over the years and, and even in iClone 7, there are a lot of a lot of new tools to help you with that. And the thing is, there are a lot of lot of people who use iClone and and but using iClone and mastering icon is two different things. And if you don't use the tools you have there, then you won't get the shot you want to do. And it wasn't so tricky to do this work. I didn't don't recall using any paths or anything. No, no, I did the camera movement was animated. So it's about the transition between the certain movements versus move so that you wouldn't, you wouldn't realise that the animation?
Ricky Grove 27:12
Well, well, congratulations just really masterly. Basically, what was your general workflow on creating a scene?
Rene Jacob 27:23
first of all I when I have a scene with dialogue, I I import all the necessary dialogue into into the iClone project and place it where I want it to be. And then then I start the animation mostly with the overall movement like walking or the basic stuff. And if this is done then I go into deep into the into the animation of the hands and the body and the facial animation. Sometimes I create the camera animation first so I can adjust the animation of the character. But most of the time I do first the character animation with the facial animation and then the camera animation. So I create the scene and then I decide how to put the camera in the scene. The camera work was was was a very tricky thing I started where we traditional with very traditional camera work so like steady shots with basic wide shot and close up and such things but after a year I decided to do to create the the long hunted shots because I thought that would be would be closer to the feeling I wanted to get into this movie and so I re-did all the scenes after you did all the scenes I did I did until then. And all the camera shots again.
Ricky Grove 29:13
How did you add it? I have that in my notes. How did you achieve that handheld look?
Rene Jacob 29:18
I use I use the character I placed the character into the scene and I put the camera on the head of the character. I connected the head and the cat in the camera. So when you put an animation like an idle animation on the character, you have this subtle movement from the camera and then I just just animate push the character through the scene and I get this handheld stuff. When I when I have the character when the female hero is running. Then I put the running animation on the on the camera man, it's, it's literally a camera man. And he runs behind her. And so you have this kind of jerky, kind of movement.
Ricky Grove 30:15
Yeah. Oh, that's clever, very clever of you to do that. Yeah, that's excellent. There's a, there's an interesting scene that occurs about three quarters of the way through. And when she finally is confronted with the alien, and shoots him with the last shell in the gun, and acid from the alien scars her face. And I was very surprised at that scene when I first saw it, because it's the kind of thing that you would never, ever see in a Hollywood level film, The disfiguring of the lead female's face. And I it makes absolute sense in you're in your film. And it's very effective. Why did you decide to include this scene? And how did you achieve that look on the materials of the model's face?
Rene Jacob 31:11
Yeah, so I went to movie injuries, pictures of movie injuries, I could find that which, which, which will better watchable. And so I created several layers, for for her face to have this some, some burned and some deep acid wounds. It was very hard to do. It it required a lot of layers to have this kind of mushy and liquid, bloody stuff. Yeah, I thought it would be an interesting turn of events to have this to to show that she is she's fighting for her life with with everything she has. And I'm very happy that you realise that that? That in the shot gun there was only one shell left because I wasn't sure if if it's clear enough, because I don't say it. Just just show the show the graphics for a short time. And I'm very happy that that this is
Ricky Grove 32:33
good. Yeah, it's got a good. Overall, how satisfied were you with the film? Did you achieve what you set out to do with it?
Rene Jacob 32:44
This was a dream project of mine. I always I was always on I'm always a fan from from this franchise. And I always wanted to do in Alien movie. Obviously, I'm in Germany, it's not possible for me to do it in real life. So I decided I do a machinima version. I do. I do it. Like I wanted to do it without any studio, any executive heads to tell him what to do. And it took me three years, but it was it was it was a very, very great journey to do this. And I'm very happy that the movie is so well received on the internet. It has more than 130,000 views right now. And it's I'm, I'm really happy about that.
Ricky Grove 33:46
Oh, that's great. Congratulations. How have your professional colleagues do they know about the film? And what are their thoughts?
Rene Jacob 33:53
Some of them now know about this? You know, in Germany, it's, it's a bit if you if you do such firms like like, like if you do.
Rene Jacob 34:08
They don't take you seriously. Yeah, I say. So. And this is a kind of side project in my spare time. And I showed you my friends that's that's for sure. But not my colleagues.
Ricky Grove 34:25
I get it. I get it. Yes. So what are you working on next? Do you have another project you're thinking of? Or?
Rene Jacob 34:30
Yes, yes, I have another project. It's called The Tavern. It's, it's a fantasy parody. And it is in development for over a year now. But But I had so much work to do last year, so I had to put it down this time. And I have to wait until iClone 8 is out. Because I want to do the rendering in Unreal Engine. Yeah. And iClone 7 has a problem that this programme doesn't deliver steady framerate below 60 FPS. This is and if you want to record animations in Unreal from for iClone you have to do is 30 frames per second. Otherwise the animation is jerky. And I hope iClone 8 will provide the possibility to go below 60 FPS so I can I can do that. That's that's the reason why I didn't do a lot. A lot of new stuff lately. But I'm working on it I have have done a lot of a lot of casting for this had more than 1000 people attended to the casting. Wow. It was a very hard choice to choose the the actors and almost everyone has has done their lifestyle and took me a lot of money. But I I will do this. It's a serious about five to 10 minutes per per episode. Six episodes are planned. So this is the big project.
Ricky Grove 36:21
Happy. That looks great. It looks so great. And I know iClone 8 is going to be quite a quite an interesting development, certainly on the animation and they're redesigning the entire animation system. Yeah, they do. Have you given any thought to using Omniverse for rendering at all?
Rene Jacob 36:41
I haven't looked into Omni Omniverse thing. I think it's the NVIDIA thing. I'm not sure. I haven't looked into it right now.
Ricky Grove 36:51
Well, Reallusion is a well connected with Omniverse. And they provided a plug in where you can move everything character creator and iClone directly into Omniverse and Omniverse does ray traced rendering inside. So it might be worth taking a look. Although Unreal is so good. And it's so well established, it might make sense to stay with that
Rene Jacob 37:17
Unreal is a beast to conquer Unreal, this is real. This is real work. Yeah, the thing is to if you convert the that's the reason why I always use the native renderer from for iClone. If you convert your scene into other programmes like IRA or Unreal, or or this Omniverse, you will always have a lot of changes with the materials and the lighting. And it's very hard to to to assess if the lighting will be good in the Omniverse. Whether it's look looking good in iClone Yeah. That's the reason why I always, always backed. Always don't do this.
Ricky Grove 38:10
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Well, listen, I want to thank you so much for talking today about your film. Congratulations to you on your success. And we'll definitely be following your work and promoting your work as well. In the future. If there's anything I can do for you, or the completely machinima people can do for you. Just let us know.
Rene Jacob 38:32
Yeah, I thank you for the offer. I will let you know if there's anything.
Ricky Grove 38:39
Okay. Okay. And this episode will probably go up in the middle of April. I'll be sure to let you send you a link and it'll be both the podcast audio and then also the video.
Rene Jacob 38:54
Yeah, super perfect.
Ricky Grove 38:56
Well, thank you, Rene. I appreciate it. Good luck. Stay safe. And I'll see you again.
Rene Jacob 39:02
Yes, it's I hope, and it was very, very nice talking to you. And I'm looking forward to the final podcast.
Ricky Grove 39:11
Very good. Thank you, sir. Thank you