In this episode, Ricky, Tracy, Phil and Damien review some of the best short movies we’ve seen made using machinima and virtual production techniques yet! Not all are hot off the press, but certainly films like The Lord Inquisitor – Prologue allude to why Unreal Engine has become such a key tool for creators today, as beautifully exemplified in extraordinary films we review this week, The Cloud Racer and Prazinburk Ridge. Person2184, made in Unreal Tournament 2004, was an altogether different approach to experiencing real-time content – originally intended to be experienced in-game and is an early example of the promise of what VR may yet become in future.
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.
Ricky Grove 00:05
Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to announce that Completely Machinima will be discussing machinima films. My favourite part of the show, along with my good friends Tracy Harwood, Phil Rice, and Damien Valentine. Our core of professionals and crazy people who are have some of the best films we've ever had in our lineup, I kid you not. We'll be discussing them one by one, and sharing our thoughts and ideas about them. One note. Next month, we're going to be starting to examine each film individually. So there'll be a one episode per film. But in this one, we're going to give you the whole hog. Completely Machinima.com is where you get the notes. And let's start off with Tracy. You have an excellent and interesting film you found for us, what is it?
Tracy Harwood 00:58
Yes, well, okay, so I have picked this month, a film called The Cloud racer by impossible objects. It's made in Unreal Engine five, and it was released on the 15th of August about a week ago as as we're talking. And I picked this for a number of reasons really. First, the film's director is a guy called Joe Sills, who won John MacInnes his real time movie contest last year with a film called The Nemoscene, which we talked very briefly about in the interview with John a couple of months ago. And Joe plus a couple of the team that have worked on this film, are also judges and this year's movie contest to which you can also find on our on our website. So Joe and his team are clearly Unreal Engine specialists. And this is a really quite an exemplar of their talent working with that toolset. And I'd say particularly in building the world that they've used here for this particular story, which is basically a derelict Los Angeles set in 2055. Second, the studio took an interesting approach to releasing the film, which other creators might want to take note of. First of all, it was it was exclusively released through a website called Short of the Week, where it was reviewed by their curator. And then a week or so later, it was premiere premiere on the studio's own website, with a much higher res version. And in fact, actually, I'd recommend you look at that higher res version than the one on Short of the Week. But nonetheless, I put a link to both the shorter the weak version and studio's website. So you can have a look at both of those if you if you wish. The Short of the Week release is it's kind of an interesting approach, because it's clearly bringing the content new content to a wider audience. So it's definitely something I think you should consider in thinking about when you're releasing films. Now, let me talk about film itself. It's a story about a young man and his mechanic father taking part in as underdogs. In a futuristic race craft competition. It's set in Los Angeles, which has become what the story describes as a ghost city. It's derelict, it's heavily polluted, and it's dangerous. The story has shades me mannequins, Padres in Star Wars, Phantom Menace, and also Top Guns Maverick character from the 1980s version of the film, not the most recent version, mixed with a little bit of Chris Pratt humour I think. The story includes references to contemporary Formula One or or maybe you call it, Indy 500, racing hype, including down to the sponsors and names of the drivers. So you see Sony, Red Bull, Samsung, alongside SpaceX, which is a bit of a, an interesting one. And you also hear mentioned about Amazon, Uber and Honda. So this is kind of humorous undertone and a fair bit of, I'd say, speculative and gratuitous commercialization too. It didn't bother me that much, but I can imagine that it might bother others in terms of the advertising side of things. Now, what I liked about film was the relationship between father and son character and how the son's relationship developed alongside the other races as the story progressed. A little bit like we've seen, really in the in the in the media portrayal of F1 races and back chat between racism selves for a short of about 10 minutes. There are surprisingly, quite a few characters in this and I would say that not all of them were needed. Because the racing for me did drag on a little bit too much Although there were quite a few of other events in the race itself to sort of carry it through. And then there's a point in it, which you realise the story is going somewhere rather unexpected when this kind of mystery woman appears in the last couple of minutes, so I won't spoil that for and for our followers, there were a couple of technical things that I liked less. And a couple of things that I really liked. What I liked less was the shininess of the craft, in contrast to the dirtiness of the scene. In some shots, you could see that the craft were meant to be a bit battered, but they seem to bits in plastic, which became quite noticeable during the race. Then there was this gratuitous flying bug, which did absolutely nothing for me at all. And finally, whilst I think mo cap is clearly coming on amazingly well, I think what I what I didn't like so much really was the letter human lips and teeth. And I think I'm noticing these more, more and more in the various kinds of works we're seeing, and in this film, because, because they just sort of hit me in the face so much. They looked just like a mouthful of cheap dentures. I kind of started to fixate a little bit on. I don't think that's a fair comment, really, on the film. It's not really a criticism of the film. But I think it's one of the things that the meta human folks need to sort of look at a little bit. What impressed me most about it was the sound design, soundscape, the voice acting, the editing was really well done. from the, from the engines of the craft to the commentator in the background to the different tones that were represented when the speaker was in shot. I loved all that. And of course, the city design itself, you know, including the smog or fog. It was it was incredibly well detailed. What did you guys think
Damien Valentine 07:07
I'll start with my criticism, which was, the camera moves a lot. And with the race and some of the more action packed scenes, that's completely make sense. But there are times when the characters multiples the beginning before the race starts. And the characters are talking when the camera is kind of moving really fast and a little bit too excessively
Phil Rice 07:28
Exactly.
Damien Valentine 07:30
Yeah, that made it hard to watch that bit when you know, you don't need it moving a little bit, it's fine. But when it's going all over the place, it's like no too much. But I really enjoyed the film. Apart from that, you know that that's one of the things that stood out to me as a little niggle, but the film itself was so well made that over the next whatever they make next, I have the chain down, that can work just a bit, because you see the smoke into it. And it makes me want to know what they're going to do next. And they also, one thing that really stood out to me, which is something really hard to pull off with. Machinima is the speed of the race. And what I mean is game of using a game, there's a point where, especially like a racing game, or a flying game, if you make the vehicles realistically fast, they're very hard to control for the player. So you kind of have to get that balance from the gameplay perspective, if you're using it to make a film, those vehicles are not going to move as fast as you'd want them to move. But in this kind of feel like they're moving at the speed they should be. And I really appreciate that. doing that manually must have been a lot of work and they've really successfully pulled it off. So those next up film, and probably my favourite pic of them.
Phil Rice 08:49
Yeah, it makes me wonder Damien, your your comment was like the first comment that was gonna make sorry, it made me wonder No, it's okay. Like, what? I found myself wondering what's the budget of this film that they could afford to give the the camera operator this much cocaine? Because I've never worked on that kind of budget before but yeah, you know, okay, I'm dating myself here a lot. But in the US there was a TV show in the late 80s or early 90s called NYPD Blue. Oh, yeah. Which which was infamous for a few reasons. One of which was I think it was the first one to use several of George Carlin's words that you can't say on television on TV for the first time and they got away with it somehow. Very excellent acting as well. But also, that whole that's really when that whole the camera never really stays still thing started. And it was jarring. To most people who saw it. It was like what's going on here? It's very unsettling. But there's a subtly to it, I don't know what that there's probably a name for the technique. I'm not a camera operator, so I don't know. But you can overdo it. And, and the thing that I learned about that technique from watching that show, and then the shows that follow is that yeah, it's the degree of movement. It's influencing the emotion and intensity of the scenes. So when when there's quick movements, or a lot of movements, there's something you're supposed to feel chaotic, it kind of kind of plays with your emotions as a viewer the same way that musical score can do, especially when it's really cliched. You know, it's telling you how to feel. And, Ricky, you and I've talked about that in the past that that kind of annoys you, when you when you wake up and realise a score is just doing that. It's just trying to manipulate deliberately, instead of just being there. And then this one, yeah, and those early scenes of this, it was moving like it's an action shot. And the same camera technique was being used in the actual shots. And it did, it worked. Like it was acceptable. But during those dialogue shots, it just, it took me out of it, it didn't really make any sense. But barring that, I think the only areas where this film was overall extraordinary, the world building, like you mentioned, Tracy, just just delicious. These big wide shots of just this, I mean, so much time must have gone into constructing that. Something that jumped out to me was facial expressions. There were certain facial expressions, especially with the Father and the Son, there was one where the son kind of smirked at his dad. And just, you don't see that, you see that from a good actor. You don't see that in animation, there was a subtlety there that just those little back and forth between them and the little expressions, particularly on this part of the face, because you're right, Tracy down here. Maybe have the lips touch on ms a little more something, you know, it is about full of dentures was the perfect description. That's not their fault. I think it's a flaw of the tech. But in the upper face, my goodness, I don't know how they did that, if that was a mo cap thing, or if it was tweaked, but just some really interesting facial expressions that are not typical out of the box slider stuff. It was really well tailored. And I think that the the Father, Son relationships in terms in terms of storytelling, you figure there's really only this thing is only 10 minutes long. And there's really only a few minutes of dialogue between them. And yet, you get this sense of this larger, longer relationship, like very believable father, son banter, and like you said, Tracy, some of the racing banter that is typical. So that was wonderfully done. I think the areas where it suffered are the areas where it's just stuff that's really hard to do. It's ambitious, it's really hard to do a race, the pod racing thing. Tracy was exactly the exact sequence that I thought of when I watched this. And much as you know, the rest of that film. That Star Wars film doesn't really excite me. That scene, that sequence that racing sequence was masterful. Yeah. And the reason is, is because each ship had a personality. It had its own sound. Every engine was unique. And you knew what Baba Baba, baba, baba, I remember that one ship, Damien we'd never heard Star Wars universe. But there was one ship that did that kind of popping sound. And then Anakin's ship had a totally different sound. And all the ships had personalities based on their sound. In this one, there wasn't much distinction there. So while that's not a failure, it's something that would have, I think, enhanced the okay, what's going on here. The other part is when filming a race is so challenging because you have to give you know if you've got two characters walking through a hangar, it's very easy through the right angle choices through an establishing shot for all this to get to give the viewer a sense of the space and you're comfortable with Okay, so I see I, I get a feeling of where they are. And on a race. It's moving so fast and going through all these different terrains. That there's this real disorientation it's very, very, very easy to have come over the viewer and that's what I was really wrestling with is I just couldn't feel comfortable. No Where? What's the path? And breaking down and analysing the pod racing seem to determine what they did to where you don't feel that way about the pad race even though it was a bigger course. And through weirder terrain, and yet, maybe it's because they did multiple laps, Damien, you might you might have thoughts on that. Maybe the multiple lapse is why they were able to give you a sense of where they are on the course. Who's ahead of who, at what point that's all about shot selection and editing. And it is I'm not criticising it in this film, because it is extraordinarily difficult to do. You know, it's, it's, it's way beyond the normal stuff you have to do in cinematography to give that sense of space establishing shot, and then this shot and a mix of whites and close ups and all that. That already is masterful. It takes years, I think to master. But when you're on a car chase, or in this case, as a race, is just, it's infinitely more difficult to do. I think they did a very, they did a very decent job of something that, frankly, there's only a tiny tier of professionals who can do it well. In and I'm talking about like Hollywood type movies. Not everybody can do that. It's a very unique craft. So the fact that they even reached for it is admirable and awesome. And I look forward to watching more from from these guys, for sure. And I hope that there's I couldn't tell from this if this is this an actual chapter one of x chapters Tracy or it looks like it does look like it. Yeah, I would definitely watch more of this world because it's interesting enough. Yeah. So again, the kinds of criticisms that I'm doing here, like we're on Siskel and Ebert, and I'm picking apart real professionals or something. I recognise that but maybe that's maybe that in itself is the biggest compliment I could give the film is that that's what I ended up focusing on was these things that only elite professionals can pull off anyway. And here these guys tried it and did it in a in a very competent way. So pretty neat stuff. I don't know anything about their background Tracy, you may have read up on it, but very, very impressive and a lot to like here for sure.
Ricky Grove 17:33
Wow, Phil that. It's really quite a solo you just wonderful. No, no. Don't be sorry. It was fantastic. I love to listen to you riff on it. There's little I can add to it. Because every all of you hit on the things that I was thinking about. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the writing and quality of the film. World making. Jason Sondhi the shorter the week curator talked about this, called it a sci fi proof of concept short, heavily indebted to underdog sports films, cinematic aviation spectacles, and old school chase filmmaking. He said it's a pleasing amalgam of forward looking Futurism and nostalgia. I agree with all of those. And I think that's right, although I'm not sure what proof of concept means. Does that sort of decry the quality of the film because it's not a film? It's a proof of concept? I don't know. That's strange wording in that either. Yeah. I did really enjoy the performances and the soundscape, just like you talked about. The the teeth in the mouth things even though I noticed that it didn't bother me that much. As much as it bothered you guys. It's clear. This is clearly a group of filmmakers who know what they're doing and know what they want to do and achieved it. I think the problem with you articulated flawlessly in the chase sequence. You're disoriented as to who's where and where is our hero and what they're doing there. I think that was sort of the low part of the film, they could have spent more time editing more clearly. And deciding there were I think one of the problems was there too many wide shots that included too many crafts in them. So you couldn't make a distinction. That sound distinction with engines would have helped with that clarification and that so that's perfect. I enjoyed the film very much though. And I want to point out before I finish, because I want to bring this up in the subsequent film that we're going to talk about the idea of sentiment. The father, son relationship with the mother is a sentimental approach to story. Now, I generally don't like sentiment, but sentiment I've discovered as I've gotten older, it can still have a powerful effect when used in certain ways. Yes. You talked earlier, off camera, Phil about how you were, you always cry when father takes off the mask in the Star Wars, it says, I am your father Luke. Well, that's a bit of sentiment there, you know. But sometimes it just really grabs you grabbed your heart certain kinds of sentiment, the sentiment in this film was perfectly fine. I understood it. But it limited the story a bit, in terms because you knew how it was gonna turn out. You know what I mean? There was no suspense. Of course, he's gonna win the race, because the mother is dead, and he's got a father who was working for him. That's how though, sort of sentimental stories work. If you lessen the sentiment, you create more suspense. So I think they could have benefited by maybe perhaps adjusting that sentimental aspect. But keep in mind the fact that this is a sentimental theme, because later we're going to see another film to other films, that you send them in an entirely different ways. And I'd like to talk about it then. But thank you guys very much for really excellent commentary on on this great film.
Ricky Grove 21:16
Damian, you have a very unusual pick that's completely out of the wheel well, we're the kinds of film you choose. And I just like to say that the Lord Inquisitor is the name of the film. As a prologue by Erasmus Brosdau, it was directed by Erasmus Brosdau, it was designed by Erasmus Brosdau, it was overly produced by Erasmus Brosdau with a production content and concept by Erasmus Brosdau. What do you have to say about the film?
Damien Valentine 21:51
Well, we know who made it. Yeah. This is before I hadn't started, think about what we're gonna choose this month. And one of my friends actually sent this to me and said, Isn't this real time integration, the kind of stuff that you do? So I watched it? It is, but I don't know what it was made with. And that's kind of stood out to me to start with, because you know, you watch machine when you don't know it's made with you try and work out? Is it made for the Sims or Unreal or whatever? It's just like, you know, I couldn't figure it out. And I got into it. And I thought they actually did a really good job with a lot of this stuff. But the animation, the character animations really good. It looks a little bit, something about the rendering looks a little bit older. So I was trying to work out is it something an older version of iClone I don't know about or something? I don't know. And I thought, what they put a lot of work into this. And so it's basically based on the world of Warhammer 40K, which I don't know too much about myself. Obviously, this is someone who knows that world really well to create this story. And they find doing things in it that you don't see a lot in. Because it's obviously not made of the game. I figured that out as I was watching it before. This is maybe something like iClone. It wasn't maybe moviestorm, obviously, but something that you can get manual control of everything. And you start having crowds with 1000s of people walking through the streets. What can you use to make that and so I watched it, I enjoyed it. I liked the story. And the way that the characters were animating all the stuff I've already said. So I looked at the behind the scenes and there's some behind the scenes videos, whether it be think too much about what they use, but it turns out to be Blender. And I think it's the real time engine. Really? Yeah. The real time engine that Blender that they released. Many years ago it was and I haven't actually seen anything like this because I've seen test projects that we've lamented on before people do tutorials and test projects, they actually make a real film. And so this is the first time that I've seen so this is gonna be my pick for the month. So what did you guys think of it?
Ricky Grove 24:04
Well, it was I'm very surprised that it was a Blender production. It was certainly beautiful. And definitely in the epic style with huge depictions of massive amounts of people and engines and faces and everything. I found it although I enjoyed it, I have to say that and also the the work I put into it was significant, especially since it was a in Blender. There's a lot of work that you have to do in order to get that look. The voice acting was a very good, however, I was troubled a bit by a certain amount of pretentiousness to the film. I satirise the fact that they put the credits for himself. Excessively I think there's like 45 seconds of credits at the beginning, which tipped me into the idea that this is going to be a big film, you know, in contrast to the other films that were looking at when this didn't fare as well, because it tends to end these kinds of films, these epic films in the style of Game of Thrones tend to emphasise the villains. All of the villains are the protagonist, instead of being the antagonists in it, and the smarmy-ness of the acting, although it was good, it was very typical for that kind of thing, a guy, any competent actor could do that sort of law, yeah, now you're going to die. You know, that kind of thing. That kept me from getting, and because it's the quality of distance me, I couldn't get involved in the story, or give a damn about any of the characters. So as a spectacle, I thought it was really well done. Although I think it should, could have had a bit more sound design in the film, but I was always kept at a distance from it. And that that's what bothered me about the film. But overall, I enjoyed it. And I applaud the filmmakers for the amount of work they put into it.
Phil Rice 26:21
The world building aspect visually was, was really impressive. The scale of things and like you said Damien, with all the large groups of characters moving and big architecture and all of that. I don't know anything at all about world ham. What is it Warhammer? 40k? Yeah, I haven't a clue. And I and to the film's credit, I don't, I didn't need to, to get what was generally going on, you know, some kind of coup basically, I think the the the overall vibe of those large scenes in the military parade. And all of that really reminded me stylistically of some of the some of the Final Fantasy cinematics from from 1520 years ago back when the cinematic was this rich, you know, beautifully animated, and then the game was the Sims one graphics, you know. But those cinematics were just so good. You know, they, they told their own story. And this is actually one of those Final Fantasy games seven or eight, I think, had a big parade scene. And just Yeah, it's it's they, they achieved that very well have this sense of just real scale. And even though I didn't know who any of the people were, I didn't really have to, for this. I didn't think about it when watching it. But Ricky, when you were talking, it did strike me that this is there was something bugging me. And that is I'm not sure I can identify any protagonist in this piece. There's antagonist antagonists' goons, and victim. I mean, you can't call the chancellor or whoever that was, that was just basically just getting kicked around. He's not the protagonist. There's nothing about him that made me want to root for him, the best that I could say emotionally that it brought out was and these guys are bullying him, you know, but, you know, in terms of, well, it left open this sense of, well, maybe he's corrupt. You know, I mean, these guys are clearly not the good guys. But maybe this guy is corrupt, and is getting what he deserves. And there was nothing to really contradict that in what we saw, you know, just this sense of, Well, he's helpless in the face of them. But that doesn't mean that he's, you know, someone we should root to be saved. So there was that ambiguity there and lack of anybody to really latch on to because the, I think the character that was characterised most strongly, I don't have my thesaurus handy. Was somebody really, really, really unlikable. You know, that probably the best voice actor of the piece, the main dude, I don't know what his name is. He had the strongest voice performance. Yeah, it's a little bit. Some of the lines were a little bit cliched. But, you know, you've got he's the one you got the strongest sense of, and also this sense of, I don't like this guy. You know, I don't think he has. He's out for his own power it seems. He's overthrowing someone but I don't think whatever's on the other side of that overthrow is going to be good for anybody. And yeah, that's a hard. You know, ultimately, I've watched lots of villain centric TV and movies, especially over the last 15-20 years everybody has because it's, it's so widely done now. You know, and every, almost every major movie star has played a bad guy in the anti-hero role. We're used to it, you know. So anyway, some impressive stuff visually. Again, some some stuff going on with the the lip sync, that's just not quite perfect. And I always feel weird criticising that because I grew up watching Speed Racer, which has like three phonemes, including closed mouth. Whoo, that's it. It didn't bug me Speed Racer kicked ass, you know, so yeah. And the the early movies that I made were yeah, we're just if there was any lip sync at all, it was pathetic. Or it was I mean, my most recent movie, it's, it's what's called bullshit lip synching, which is character to say something and then try to get your audio to line up with it with with mixed results, you know, and here I am criticising somebody, you know, something that at least has, you get the gist of what they're saying. But the lips may be don't bend perfectly. And so what I'm gonna bitch about that no. Yeah. But honestly, again, choose to please choose to take that as a compliment. You know, you've you're operating at a certain level now where, you know, those, those are the imperfections that stand out is stuff that was impossible to achieve. Yeah, yeah, when machinima began. And that's where we are now. So that's exciting. I'm not I'm not nearly as excited about the world built in this film as I am with one in Cloud Racer, I don't think it's quite as compelling. And again, mainly because in Cloud Racer, you at least had you knew where characters stood. And, and okay, if nothing else, let's let's hope for the best for this father, son. You know, let's assume that they're decent people and hope for the best for him. And my search came up wanting for anybody that not to just bring despair in this one Yeah. So
Tracy Harwood 32:32
Yeah. Well, you know what I thought given its age, I was stunned to see how beautiful the aesthetic detail was in the environment, the lighting, the contrast the models, that gold lion, unbelievable. I could not believe that the the beauty of that that was stunning. The musical so for me was was really well done. Great drama, a really good fit for the story. But it for me, it was a better fit than the dialogue. And frankly, I expected something really sinister to happen. For the story itself to deliver them to deliver against the quality of the visuals,
Phil Rice 33:19
Sinister, or at least a little surprising. Something.
Tracy Harwood 33:23
Yeah, but But it actually fell flat. Yeah, I agree with you with you all, actually, it didn't. It didn't deliver on the dialogue. And then the lip sync was not great. But you know, what, I think our expectations have moved on so much, in a couple of years. Bearing in mind, this is 2016 this is released 2016. So it's quite a few years old. Right? And so but but again, it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't brilliant. And I kind of picked up on one person that commented on the video, and they said, Well dialogue, five out of 10 Lip Syncing three out of 10 the aesthetics 40,000 out of 10. Great comment, I thought I was actually I really liked that. Now, what really impressed me about it was the, you know, irrespective of, you know, the comments on the, on the detail of it, it was the energy that went into the project. And I looked at some of the the other videos by by this creator. And you know, it's it's very evident that it was a passion project. Fan support was what led this this project to get off the ground. And that's mainly because the publisher prohibited the team from making any money at all out of the film itself. That's why you get all these credits and so he was really making a really, I think he made a very strong point. That's what you get most strongly out of it. And yes, it's it. In actual fact, it turns out it was the only fan project for Warhammer 40,000, which was supported by Games Workshop, which is the publisher. So what's interesting, I think was how the project exploded from what they intended to be an eight minute version to a full 40 minute film based on the vision and the quality of the work for how this kind of creator started to pull it all together. And in that process, what he managed to do was bring in what he called a crack team of creatives, and professional actors, voice actors. And actually, the story writer, as far as I can see, it was it was basically co produced by a guy called Aaron Dembski Bowden, who was a New York best selling novelist. And the music composer was a guy called Adam Harvey, who also composed the music for the official Warhammer Ultra Marines movie, which star William Hurt and Terence Stamp. But I have to say I couldn't actually find the full film for Lord Inquisitor. I don't know where it is, I don't know why it's, you know, if there is a 40 minute version, I don't know why I'm to this. So it's basically just a taster a prologue, or what I basically described as an extended trailer. And what seems to me the development of just one lead character in the story who is supposedly a bad guy. So I think what I would comment on this, though, mostly, is that what it what it does show is the promise of game based storytelling in the way that it was developed. And, and it's actually a perfect illustration, I think, in terms of what happened, you know, why the publisher, the game developer, wouldn't, wouldn't allow it to generate money. It's a perfect example of why platforms such as Unreal Engine five, are now the go to platform, because if you can get a whole bunch of professionals together to create something like this, why wouldn't they do it for money? Yeah, and for, for a project of this quality to take, what would what seems to have been five or six years in the making? To get absolutely nothing out of it I think it's shameful, shameful. Crushing. We are. Yeah, I think it's inappropriate. And that I have to say there's something like seven and a half million views on YouTube for this as well. But I don't if you notice, there's no advertising over it. None whatsoever. And that's got to be to do with the limitations that the publisher put over it, right. So overall, I'd say it's a really good pick. And it illustrates a lot of the challenges that machinima has faced over the years. But I did enjoy it. And I think it's a great example of what it is, and of its time, and thank goodness for something like Unreal Engine five now because you've never made those decisions to make it in the way that they did again, I suspect.
Ricky Grove 38:25
Really good. Points. Tracy. Really good point. It occurred to me as you were all talking about the film that this might be the Machinima equivalent of heavy metal music. Yeah. Where it's really a mood as opposed to a story. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, that 7 million people are all going Yeah, bang in their heads go. Yeah. As opposed to thinking of, you know, the need to have a protagonist and antagonist and all that stuff, you know, and also makes a lot of sense. Thinking of it as an extended trailer gives a perspective into why there isn't any organised plot in as opposed to just a piece. Well, well said, Tracy. Thank you.
Tracy Harwood 39:09
But I wonder why the the 40 minute version of it is because yeah, so Damian, if any,
Ricky Grove 39:15
if anybody listening and are watching this podcast has any idea where this 40 minute version is, please let us know. Give us I'd watch it. Okay, we come to a very interesting film from you, Phil. Tell us about it.
Phil Rice 39:32
This is Person 2184. By one of machinimas Founding Fathers, let's say Friedrich Kirschner, who is an artist and photographer and all around. He's a technical wizard, amazing guy. I actually don't know when this was released, Tracy will probably be able to spot it but It's early 2000s, it was made with Unreal Tournament 2004. And it was part of a series that was intended to be three films, I think he only made two of the three. The second one was called Photographer, Friedrich Kirschner, you may be aware of from, I think the film of his that probably got the most attention, which was called The Journey or Journey. I can't remember if it has the definite article on
Ricky Grove 40:30
There, I think it's The Journey, okay.
Phil Rice 40:36
And basically, I found the original upload of his film, but then also in the search results, found this one that was just uploaded days ago. And the visual quality, it's a different render, not just a different upload, it's a different render of that film. Which brings to me the the, the part of this film that, to me is the most extraordinary and, and probably something that, I guess is technically lost now, in terms of how machinima was made. This was kind of the end of that era, where machinima was not something that you rendered out pieces of footage in real time and then bringing them into a nonlinear video editor and do post production and all that and, and distributed as a video. This was never, during its during the time around its release, it was never released as a video or not, that wasn't the primary way that you were to consume it, it was distributed as an executable, as a essentially a almost like a mod for UT2004, that you would load this into the game. And it would play back exactly as you see it in this video within the game engine using your 3d card. That's the way that machinima began, originally, because there was no YouTube. And video was just too heavy a file to distribute and and it took way too long to render on the PCs back then. So it just wasn't the way it was done. But dating all the way back to the 80s, you have the demo scene, where basically, the visual, the video production was a programme that would run and use the computer's graphics card to display something on the screen. And so Friedrich was aware of and kind of, in a way came from that tradition. But what's unique about his work is that it doesn't look anything like the game at all, ya know, like, if I'm not mistaken, every single piece of artwork, every texture, every character. When you see it, you'll, you'll see why I'm air quoting character, because, again, it doesn't look like character models of the time, the way that he handled the animation of them very interesting. But my understanding is he he's a photographer, he took pictures of and created all these graphics and assembled this film, and it's running in that game engine. But it's using almost exclusively, or maybe exclusively, original image assets. And the effect is extraordinary. I don't know who composed the music. I can't remember. But it's it's not like a known or popular piece. It's something that probably knowing him, he had a friend who did that, or maybe even does it himself, it would not shock me. The guy is pretty amazing. So
Tracy Harwood 43:47
it's original music, fellas, but it's not it's not Freidrich, which
Phil Rice 43:52
somebody else someone else. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, and actually, there is still a website, I believe it's Person2180 four.com. That's the page that he's had up for 15 16 17 years now, where you can still download it as something as a mod to run in Unreal Tournament 2004. And the original. I mean, he's just kept that page up all this time. Wow. So it's, it's, it's pretty extraordinary. Apparently, the best I can guess is that somebody who is able to get UT2004 to run on modern hardware, downloaded that and ran it and rendered it freshly with the higher fidelity capture technology that you could do nowadays. And it's a noticeable difference. The fidelity of the overall image in the film is just crisp. And the prior render that I remember seeing before was a bit faded. And at the time he released it, there was a video download, and it was kind of lower fidelity and what he would emphasise as well, this is not at all the way you're intended to watch this, you chose to watch it within the engine full screen. And this sequence of events plays out with the music and everything. So I don't know, I just you guys clearly had no trouble finding really compelling recently released stuff. I just had no luck at all. And so kind of decided to look backward and came across that came upon this, this film and remembered what an impression it made on me and it and it's sequel film, The Photographer are just just wholly unique.
Ricky Grove 45:41
I think in the I'm really glad you did. And I'd like to encourage everybody all of you to do that. If you can't find a film, or there's a certain film that you remember that you really liked. Let's add that to the group because I think it's a really nice contrast to the other films that we have. Friedrich was one of those giants in the early machinima era. One of those people, probably the most creative filmmaker of the bunch. Whereas Hugh and others were sort of recreating stories from the games, Friedrich was completely reinterpreting. And in a very contemporary way, Person2184 is almost like your, if you remember that some of those early scenes of Blade Runners where they had the crowd, it's almost like a point of view of one of those people in the crowd. You know, looking at it, it's somewhat abstracted. But there's definitely a very urban sense to it. It's exciting. It's interesting. He was just great and he was part of a big brain drain that occurred towards the end of that era in which Paul Marino and Friedrich and several others withdrew from the main every day machinima creation and moved on to other thing, Friedrich was still involved in real time filmmaking. He's gone into academic teaching, and and demonstrating, he's still creating technology. He was an exciting person and machinima lost a big contributor, although he's still contributing in a way, just not as directly as before and Person2184 was my favourite of his films. I liked The Journey a lot. But this one was just so unique.
Phil Rice 47:36
I agree. Completely. Yeah, The Journey is great. But this one, this one's always been my favourite of his.
Ricky Grove 47:42
It just has a real. Now, interestingly, if you look at a film that we're going to talk about in the future Facing the Wolf that I chose, it was Milan Machinima Festival. It's a they oftentimes choose films that have a lot of ideas and the sort of intellectual ideas. This one is a film that has a lot of ideas, but it doesn't put the ideas front and centre. It puts the filmmaking front and centre and the ideas are behind it. So you can pull out things. And to me, that's a much more interesting process because you have an emotional response to the film. This produces a kind of emotional feeling that I can't quite describe. But I really experienced it with this new render, and I just loved it. I just think it's great.
Phil Rice 48:34
Tracy's films, his films impact me the same way that good paintings do. You know, it's the same. Like you said, Ricky it's it's, it's the ideas are there but not in your face. You spend time with it. And yeah, you can draw them out almost like spirits. It's it's a wonderful experience. Good analogy.
Tracy Harwood 48:57
Yeah. I mean, painterly is a is a really good way of describing it. Actually. I also picked up on the Blade Runner esque kind of feel to the film. I'm not really sure when this was released, because I'm on on Feizi's is Vimeo channel the this and the photographer were released in 2008. But as you've already said, Phil, this was never intended to be released in a in a kind of a 2d narrative format, it was intended to be you know, and and you know, and how and how he describes it The goal was the goal of it was to present an idea or an alternative art direction that says content and story structure being interactive, and using what he described as non interactive narrative within in the game space. So the so the whole kind of purpose of a If the aesthetic style of it was it was it was to be experienced within the within the game. And and it was intended to be a mod that you played, which I think is that we've lost that in, in the at the moment. And I say at the moment because I do think people are beginning to realise that there's more to game like experiences than we've necessarily been looking at, particularly when we talk about the adoption, things like VR. But I think nobody's really pinned down the storytelling side of that too well, at the moment, there are, I think, a few interesting groups that are playing with it. But this was way ahead of its time. I think there's a really interesting historical piece, but one that I think will be held up as an exemplar for the way that it was created and intended to be experienced. Yes. As for the aesthetic style, I think what I really, really admired about this was that the layering of video, and that kind of that kind of aesthetic that he's he's he's applying all these different, what what I say appear to be post production techniques, but they're clearly not post production. Yeah. Cut out video. Yeah. How did he do that? I mean, that was that was, I mean, it's actually incredible stuff. And, as you've already said, Phil, he was an absolutely outstanding contributor to the world of machinima, and to the history of machinima. And
Phil Rice 51:45
possibly one of the nicest absolute, oh, my gosh, that I've ever met in my entire life. Yeah, for me to have a warm soul. Gentle total.
Tracy Harwood 51:56
A really, really nice person. Yeah, he came to the European Machinima Festival in 2007. First time I met, and he was an absolute delight. But what you can clearly see here is just how innovative his creative practice was at the time. And like I said, I'm not too sure what the date with this is. If it's 2008, I'd be very surprised if it is it's got to be pretty
Phil Rice 52:25
widely slightly. I think it's slightly older than that. I don't think it's 2004. The game had been out for a while before he did this. But I remember talking about it. When I was doing my podcast back then. So that would have been 2006 2007.
Tracy Harwood 52:41
Yeah. Well, we reviewed The Journey, which is another 2004, one that he did, or Ben, and Ben reviewed the to The Journey in the history episode that we just released. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So you've got that back reference, and that that will link you to The Journey itself, which was, which is another outstanding piece. Oh, yeah, he did.
Damien Valentine 53:06
I've learned a lot about this film just listening to you, because I didn't realise it was made to be watched in the game when I watched it. And so thinking about, like you said, Tracy, how did he pull off these things that look like post production effects in the game? Because, okay, I've no, I haven't used that version of Unreal. So. But what I know about it, I've never seen anything like that done in any game, maybe with that engine? So I don't know. Yeah. But, smart. Yeah, two words that come to mind. Urban grunge, is what you imagine, dark, dirty, probably crime filled city would be like, This video captures that atmosphere perfectly. And you guys have kind of left me struggling what to say. Because you've already said, I got the same playing on your vibes from it as well. And it was a really excellent film. And actually, that's part of it's not necessarily directly this film that made me think about it. These films are made to be watched in engine, there's kind of this vast where machinima started. And then you got this thing where the transition was over to catching the footage from the game. And now we've got platforms like iClone, and, and so on. So there's a bit in the middle where you cannot change the film. So anything made by that, if you want to upscale it or render through it again, you have to make the thing from scratch. Yeah, because it's been released again, by running through the game engine again, high resolution, better video capturing it, you get a much higher quality copy than the video version. It was made available now. Back then, and of course, you can do that mean iClone now you can load up and I've got an old iClone project and render it again. So they just graphical enhancements. There's this bit in the middle, where that can never happen. So it's interesting I'm kind of wondering, what about these other old machinera projects that were made to be run in the game that they were made in? You could do the same thing with them. I mean, I'd hoped that the original creator would do it, not someone else could play it out again, capture it at a much higher resolution, maybe even a modded version of the game engine or newer version of game engine to add even more enhancements to it if they want to, and then release this old film, but make it more accessible to new audiences in a high resolution.
Phil Rice 55:31
I think Ben has actually done some of that. Ben Grussi, especially with some of the really original Quake one machinima he's he's he still will watch them that way. I just don't think he's ever actually, you know, he doesn't, doesn't feel confident he would know how to render it out properly and put it up or maybe that even has the right to but yeah, that is very possible. That one last thing I'll mention about this film is that Friedrich himself is actually in the film. Yeah, he he is one of the faces and if you know what he looks like, maybe we can find a picture. Tracy, from machinima, Europe 2007. There's that one photo of where he's like, right out in front. Absolutely. You see the smile on that face there. You'll see he's He's the face that's kind of popping above the crowd and a couple of the different scenes. It always cracks me up that he put himself in there. I think in The Photographer. He is also one as well, maybe it doesn't emphasise his face quite as much. But he's there. I think the character holding the camera.
Tracy Harwood 56:38
Yeah. So
Ricky Grove 56:40
cool. bit a little bit right in the middle of where the person that character Person2124 has a repeating gesture on their face. Yeah, yeah. And it perfectly exemplifies the grunge neurotic grunge thing that you were talking about Damien, you get the feeling that this kind of neurotic person going down the street. They're very connected to modernism. And German expressionism, the notion of the person in the city or the city is a kind of monster. And the person is just terrified of everything. It was just so beautiful. So it's such a great film.
Phil Rice 57:20
It's amazing too that. Okay, so this was made, you know, sometime between, we know sometime between 2004 and 2008. And yet, there's nothing about if you look at an in game machinima made in that same time period. Hey, you, Oh, okay. That's older hardware. This. This is it's the stylistic choice he made is not one bound to a particular date on the calendar. Like it works. Now, if someone made this now, no one would be surprised that it was made now. Yeah. And that, to me is where his sensibility as an artist really came through because that's that's what they do. You know, it's nobody looks at a you can't look at a painting. Okay. Okay. You can, based on how it was painted. You could probably go oh, well, that's from this era of painting. But I don't know. This just doesn't age for me. me neither. It worked, then it works now. Yeah. And I think it'll work 20 years from now. It's because it's just a it's a style that transcends time I think.
Ricky Grove 57:33
It makes you wonder what Friedrich had he stayed into the mainstream of machinima would have done with Grand Theft Auto. Yeah, he would have moved with that. Or the Unity game engine or or the contemporary version of unreal. Yeah, yes. You know, fascinating stuff,
Phil Rice 58:54
or what he will do
Ricky Grove 58:57
will do.
Tracy Harwood 58:59
Come on. Yeah, yes. Get on with it.
Ricky Grove 59:02
Okay, our next film is a film that was submitted to us. Tracy, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Tracy Harwood 59:09
Absolutely. Yes. This has been submitted by Martin Bell. The film's called Prazinburk Ridge, and Martin created it under the studio banner of Yes, Commissioner. It's been made in Unreal Engine four, and it was released on the 27th of June this year. Now, the story is set in World War One. It's a former rugby player for Great Britain called Dougie Clark, who must rely on his rugby skills to save himself and his fellow soldiers from shot, shell and poison gas. It's actually based on a true story, focusing on a part of the story that led to Dougie's award of the Military Medal for Bravery and was written, directed and animated by Martin based on an official biography by his brother Steven Bell. In a book called The Man of all Talents, the Extraordinary life of Douglas Clark, and it includes an original score by Mike Payne. Now Martin is not an inexperienced filmmaker, he has 15 years of animation experience, and is now a film visualisation supervisor and has worked on action sequences for franchises like the Jurassic World, Marvel, Fast and Furious James Bond and the DC Universe. His credits also include the Little Mermaid, Aladdin, 1917, and the wheel. And he's been writing screenplays for years. So he's got chops. But this was a solo project, which took him about two years to make and was completed. Within about eight months of him having picked up Unreal Engine four, if you've never used it, he says he had a couple of previous edits, ready to go in autumn 2020. But he realised the project had become too ambitious to complete alone. Although he then couldn't get an animators or an animation team together, that he wanted to help him. So he tried to do it himself. He what he did is he scaled back some of the areas that he originally wanted to do, and then applied a technique that he felt would hide some of his artistic weaknesses and created a workflow that would help him cut a few corners. And I have to say, from my point of view, this is an incredibly well crafted film, as you might expect, it's very moving. And it's very detailed, or it is at least I think, in the first part of the film, I think what you can see here is, I think, for me, that story certainly ran out of steam a little bit towards the end. And certainly, what he's using at the end is some jumps forward, which are clearly quite a good way to move it along and hit some of the key points that you kind of want to make in the in the storytelling. And it's you know, it's a story of a regaled war survivor, who used his sports training skills to save his fellow soldiers during a time of intense fighting. The style that he's used, the effects that is applied to this really suits the story. It's, I think it's what I would describe as a really intense vignette of this man's experience. Its really harrowing stuff. For quite frankly, I don't think you'd want more detail than what has been presented in this or at least, if you had more detail, I don't think it would necessarily add more to what was already there. And the sound design is brilliant. It's detailed, it's very richly layered. And what I really like as well is these kind of West Yorkshire accents that have been applied there bang on in terms of accent. And although it was a solo production, Martin is very clear that its creation has been a collaborative process. And of course, the film is actually now part of the materials telling the story of this man's life, too, because it's being used as part of an exhibition about Clark in Huddersfield, when he played for, and so those of you are interested, I think what we'll do is also put a link to the book, which was written by his brother so that you can find out more it should you want to. What did you guys think?
Damien Valentine 1:03:49
He mentioned that he worked on 1917. And that's one of the films that's coming to mind knows as watching this is very harrowing and claustrophobic. I mean, this film we're talking about now, and the darkness in it, it makes you feel really shut in. When you've got all the explosions and fighting going on around you. You really feel what he must have been fit well, you know that you get that sense of, you're trapped in this dangerous place any moment you could be next to go. And I think the nighttime setting was, you know, really helped with that. And I also really liked the stylized look to it as well, as we were just talking about films that don't age so well, because of the stylized choice. This is one that I think if you watch it in 20 years, it won't look as dated as something else, maybe the same engine because it's called a stylized look, which I help think helps separate it from, you know, the the way that engine would typically look. And I think that was an excellent choice. It's nice to know that it's being used to tell the film was part of the exhibition. And to tell the story about this guy who, you know, was fighting in the war back then. And I think it's an excellent film.
Phil Rice 1:05:10
Yeah, it's almost a cell shaded Look, isn't it? Yeah, yes, yes. Maybe not quite as limiting as that, but it's it. I loved this. I absolutely loved it. The story is, this is definitely the one Ricky wanted to talk about with sentimental stories. So I'm going to leave that to him. But in terms of the telling, I, I can't find anything wrong with it. It's just exceptionally well done. And, you know, we talked with Cloud Racer, about the challenge of sequencing your shots to prevent disorientation. So at least you have a general idea of where you are. And this is textbook, perfect execution of that. Like, there is no moment in this story where you don't have enough of a sense of where you are, and who it is you're following. To me. I think this was done perfectly in that regard. And the amount of experience that you said that Martin has as a filmmaker, to me that that's, that's where that really shines, is the way in which the scenes and the shots were put together. It's it's got that pro touch, it's really, really, really, really good. We could probably spend an hour just, if we wanted to dissect Why did that work? So well, what specifically did he choose? But we don't have an hour for that. So I won't do that. But I loved it. I love the sound. I think the music fit perfectly. And I don't know there. You mentioned Tracy there was that you felt like the story ran out of steam. I didn't get that off of it.
Tracy Harwood 1:07:03
I really jumped. You know, I was I got really into the detail, you know, the blood spatter at that, you know, that early point. And it really took me on that. That journey of you know what, how horrific, horrific. It must have been a Passendale? Yeah, yeah,
Phil Rice 1:07:22
really great. Are you Were you familiar with the protagonists story at all before seeing this?
Tracy Harwood 1:07:28
No. But then I went and read a bit about it. And I realised what he'd done was kind of picked one. One part that's particularly well documented, and well remember, I don't
Phil Rice 1:07:44
know why it didn't. It didn't feel over compressed story. Time on wise to me. And
Tracy Harwood 1:07:49
it didn't on me either. But I did.
Phil Rice 1:07:51
There's a little surprise. There's a little surprise at the end, too. For me, it was quite a surprise, right at the very end, just done with text that I won't give away. But it's Yeah, worth watching all the way. I mean, I gasped because I thought I thought I understood what I had just seen. And then they gave a little detail there at the end. That was just great. So I like I like any film that can do that. To me. It's hard to surprise. Modern jaded eyes, you know, so anyway, I loved it. But I'm, I'm interested to hear what you think Ricky?
Ricky Grove 1:08:23
Well, you know, World War One is depicted, often, interestingly enough in machinima. Over the years, all of us have watched machinima films and World War One comes up in a variety of ways. But I don't think I've ever seen a more effective machinima film on World War One a more believable one. And that's strange. Because even though the film is stylized and cell shaded, it actually seems more realistic. Yes. which harkens back to the idea that animation, cartoons, machinima can actually with its stylization, tell a story that is more impactful than if you got Steven Spielberg, and $100 million worth of extras and special effects. Because what it does is it I think, and as my theory, it allows you to fill in the blanks with your imagination. It gives you just enough to show what it was like But you put in the all of that rest that Steven Spielberg would show. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Damien Valentine 1:09:33
Can I get the whole battle? Yes.
Ricky Grove 1:09:36
I think that's what I love about animation and machinima. And why oftentimes prefer it over more realistic live action fair. And I think, I don't think I have seen a film by a machinima filmmaker that was more effective in getting its world and story across in a way. Yes, there have been really Great machinima films that we love. But this one was almost perfect. It's just so great. I didn't have the same problem you did, Tracy. But I see your point. Now that you you mentioned that I could see you could see it that way. But finally, the thing I want to talk about is sentiment. Remember at the beginning of your talk about sentiment with Cloud Racer, whereas sentiment sort of limited the filmmaker in Cloud Racer from having a more elaborate and believable story in this one, it didn't do that. It actually contributed to this story in a way that is, I don't know how to explain it. But it was the sentiment, endowed the story with a kind of quality, a kind of quality that makes you feel good. Yes. People. You know, I'm
Phil Rice 1:10:52
so glad to hear you say that. I'm so glad to hear you say that. I thought surely you were going to chew this one up for it. But I, you said it's so perfect. It did somehow it enhanced it. Yeah. Oh,
Ricky Grove 1:11:04
and that sometimes sentiment can do that in a way that a more realistic film would not, you know, and it's part of the process of creating animation, and 2d characters. And that sort of shortened truncated format. You know, the way he laid it out his craft that filmmaking. And that's why I was just so moved by this film. And so, and normally my sentiment metre just goes off the charts, when that sort of stuff comes up, and I detach, it's just, that's the way I do it. But this one, this, I wanted to point out the sentiment sometimes can be a primary element of a film and be so effective in it. But they feel so good about and knowing I know a lot about World War One. And about that particular battle. Any old white guy in his 50s and 60s, would be obsessed with that kind of stuff. You know, it's just the way it is. But I put in all of this stuff that I had in my mind, and I realised, God what a what a heroic choice to say no, that's my truck. I've got to take care of it. Knowing that it could meet instant death for him. Oh my God. What a moment. What a moment. I just love this film.
Phil Rice 1:12:29
I did to
Ricky Grove 1:12:32
just a second. Mr. Bell, please make more movies. Yes.
Tracy Harwood 1:12:41
Yeah, brilliant, under.
Ricky Grove 1:12:43
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a really nice collection of films. Now we've run a bit long in this episode. There was one more film we were going to talk about. We're going to do that in a separate episode, my choice Facing the Wolf by Ian Douglas and Mark Coverdale. Because there's a lot of things I think we need to address in that one. And it would just make this episode too long. So that's going to be our show for you today. We're gonna do a separate episode next time. Please watch these movies. These are great and interesting movies. Despite our criticisms, all of them are just terrific. Yes, and deserve to check the links in our show notes. Contact us about the film's talk at Completely Machinima.com I'm Ricky Grove and for Tracy Harwood, Phil Rice and Damien Ballantine. That's our show today. Thank you very much, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye bye.