This week's film is Ricky's pick, a Team Fortress 2 composited trailer of Law Abiding Citizen (film) made using Source tools. We discuss the throwback to the mid 2000s, the Saxxy Awards and another TF2 film which we also really enjoyed, Demoman (Pure Pwnage ep 15 Intro) by GiigoPwNs.
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 00:11
Hi everyone, I'm Ricky Grove. This is And Now for Something Completely Machinima podcast. Welcome. We have Tracy Harwood as a guest, Damien Valentine and Phil Rice are regular. Hello, everybody. We had such a good time talking about our last film, we have a new one, my pick you by the way you can. This is our third season, you can check our films out or podcast out at Completely machinima.com. Now my pick is an interesting one. I, at least to me, I was rooting around and trying to find new films and I came across as you usually do when you're doing internet searches, you end up following little paths that take you down to cubby holes. And this led me to a place that was sharing a lot of Team Fortress 2 game based machinima using the old Source Filmmaker. And I came across this Team Fortress 2 Law Abiding Engineer. And what it is, it's a composited machinima which is a very interesting idea, which is they take Team Fortress 2 characters, and they composite them into a trailer of a film called Law Abiding Citizen. And they substitute citizen for the engineer character. And they've done this thing so effectively, that even today was made 12 years ago. And the film was in 2009, which was a big hit, everybody loved it. And it was made in the old Source Filmmaker, which is just impossible. I mean, as a learning curve like Everest, if you've ever tried to work in Source Filmmaker, it's just impossible. Even the documentation is impossible. But anyway, they did such a great job that I had to pick it to share with you guys. What I liked about it is a it's very funny. It's also very well crafted. And quite an interesting idea. And short, the compositing is not an easy thing to do, especially blending the lighting, because you're putting 2d characters in a live action environment. And they did the lighting and colour compositing so well, that the characters fit right in. I was so impressed with it and just laughed out loud. TrueOneMoreUser is the creator. And he has several other interesting films. One I've done a special mention, called Team Fortress 2 Demoman by Pure Pwnage, which we're going to talk about afterwards this, it's not quite as good as Law Abiding Engineer, but it's quite funny. What did you guys think of the film?
Tracy Harwood 03:07
Well, I love the throwback to Team Fortress 2, which, which I, you know, I thought it stood up surprisingly well, after 12 years. I mean, that that was 12 years, you would never know that really. It's obviously a trailer. And you know, these characters are kind of superimposed. You've got Gerard Butler as the engineer character, you got Jamie Foxx as Spike. And, and there's a whole bunch of TF two assets. Actually, I don't know the name of but there were loads of them. They weren't just, it wasn't just the engineer. There was quite a few, I think. And obviously, you've got the voice acting, which is absolutely. You know, it's it's not it's just from the film. So it's great. It's just when the original trailer. But what I think is really good about this is the way that the character positions are exactly the same as the characters in the in the in the original trailer. And so clearly what this guy has done is tried to find character poses in TF 2, and then just sort of cut away the background I guess. Composite. Well, yeah, composite, okay. But this, I think, was done, pre Source Filmmaker, which came out in 2012. Although maybe that's not completely true, because I think it was also leaked in 2007 as a beta release of
Ricky Grove 04:38
You're absolutely right. I think you're right. So for Source Filmmaker,
Tracy Harwood 04:44
Yeah, no, I think I mentioned that because there's actually quite a lot of comments on the video that seem to suggest that Source was used, but I don't think it was, although I'm not really sure. And according to the creator, it was made using Max Adobe After Effects Photoshop and Premiere. Um, so I think there's quite a lot of skill in the layering up here. Yeah. But I think there's also something something else, which is the detail that of what he's gone into. Because if you compare the original trailer of of Law Abiding Citizen to this side by side, it's absolutely spot on. And in fact, so much so that the creator has even done that as well. So you've got a split screen version of this with the original trailer. That's definitely worth watching, and that's honest enough to say that I would recommend.
Ricky Grove 05:39
Yeah, yeah, they've heard me witty,
Phil Rice 05:42
funny. been shot for shot. Go ahead, Ricky.
Ricky Grove 05:45
I was just gonna say that. Back in our first season, we did a really interesting movie that was a trailer of the Town That Dreaded Sundown by a guy who shot it in Red Dead Redemption 2. Although he didn't use the live action, he remade the trailer using the sound track in Red Dead Redemption 2 this is actually using the live action and compositing Team Fortress 2 characters within it, which I think is even harder. Yeah. Go ahead, Phil.
Phil Rice 06:20
Yeah, we've we've seen all of us I'm sure have seen shot by shot recreations of trailers using various technologies and stuff. This is like, like Tracy said, it's a whole other level because the it's shot for shot, angle per angle, position per position. I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's just about flawless. Really, really a lot of attention to detail to it. A lot of fun to watch. There's those Team Fortress characters, they really that that it's almost like, 3d version of Dragon Slayer. You remember dragon slayer animation. They've got that kind of vibrant, lively, it's cartoonish. And yet, you know, there's more depth to them and stuff. As far as what it was made with? Maybe it wasn't called Source Filmmaker at the time. But there were tools that let you make films in those Source engine games, particularly HalfLife 2 like, what what Paul Marino used for?
Ricky Grove 07:24
Still Seeing Breen?
Phil Rice 07:26
Face Poser? Was that what it was called at the time? Was it called Face poser?
Tracy Harwood 07:30
Oh, okay.
Phil Rice 07:33
Something like that. And it there, there was a tool for that, where you could pull up a character from one of the games, most people did it with the G Man. And, and then you could sequence animation of all whatever, however, they were rigged. So animation and lip sync and all of that it was very primitive. It was like Ricky remembers, it was very hard to work with. But people did it. So I'm wondering if it seems likely to me that these shots were with some kind of tool like that, rather than from within the actual game of Team Fortress, because that would be a lot harder to arrange the background for compositing, it'd be a lot harder to arrange that in the game. Whereas if you were able to bring it into that tool, I believe you could just load up whatever image behind them and, and then adjust the angle of the camera and everything to get right and see what's the movements and reactions and all of that. So I think that tool was called Face Poser, but it's once Source from the Source Filmmaker came along. They abandoned the terminology for all that. And it was that's just what it was, well, those things existed long before it was packaged as such.
Ricky Grove 08:52
Right? That's a good point. If they had, say, for example, a white background and Face Poser, they could easily use something called chroma key, any major video filmmaker, in which you choose the colour that you're going to remove. Yeah, and they just removed that colour and then you composite. You put whatever background you want on in this case, he did you use the trailer background, right? The other method, if you're going to shoot it in game would be extremely tedious. Because you would have to remove the background for every single cell in 24 frames every frame 24 frames a second. And even in that short period of time, you're still talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cells so I don't think he did that. That tech No Yeah, I
Phil Rice 09:42
think it was shot over the composite background probably green or blue. I mean, that's white it's tough to deal with because then you're you've got the whites in people's eyes and like with the engineer, he's got a little bit of white t shirt showing and black is really tough because then it's the shadows. So it's there was probably some kind have a way to put some kind of a solid colour, one of the traditional one solid green or solid blue. And they just they do that Face Poser tool. I'm pretty sure you could. You could engineer lighting and things like that to create the animations. I think Paul, Paul Marino in his Still Seeing Breen, there's a significant amount of compositing that he used there that he used that Face Poser tool. I'm pretty sure it was called down for the Breen character that was right. I remember I was lip syncing the words right and there was happening to behind him, right. Yeah, so that's probably what it was on. It's just It's rare to see that so well done because yeah, yeah, merge that footage with these this live action thing matching up that lighting and all that lighting Yes.
Ricky Grove 10:53
to That's some real skin tone and colour tone on the Team Fortress characters like nothing like the colour camera realistic live action film, so it took a lot of work. Yeah, you guys find really funny, as funny as I did. I thought it was extremely funny.
Damien Valentine 11:09
I suppose it more than once, just to appreciate the human behind it. Because it's it's kind of fun to watch it but you need to watch it again. And to really absorb it and you get more than humor because you're you know it's done with machinery you know what to expect so you can appreciate the joke behind it. And as has already been commented, it's really well done because Phil, you said we've all seen shot for shot recreations of things and that's usually the entire scene. So if the head's slightly off, it doesn't matter that much because you still get the gist of it. This has been perfect. I was at work. Do you see the original one behind? Yeah, but yeah, I
Phil Rice 11:50
found it very funny too. Yeah.
Damien Valentine 11:52
Almost wants to see the whole film with Team Fortress.
Ricky Grove 11:58
No, I really enjoyed also in that collection of Team Fortress 2 machinima which I'll we'll put a link on in our show notes for it. I also found an interesting film called Demoman by Pure Pwnage. It's a short film. It has very, very funny voice acting, excellent voice acting. Very foul language film. It has that perfect blend of what I like and classic machinima, the low budget fast and fun. I won't define what fun is. If you don't there's no reason to define it. The group has been around for over a decade. They produce humorous live action shorts as well. Pure Pwnage is a great site. A very, very funny stuff. irreverent rude, crude, raunchy. I liked it a lot. Did any of you get a chance to watch it?
Phil Rice 12:57
I did. You know, I've seen Pure Pwnage. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah. But yeah, I watched them back in the day. I hadn't seen this before. I gotta be honest with you the the this film, didn't I kind of watched it with like a smile and a nod. It didn't make me laugh until the very last line. Yeah, I just lost it. Yeah, I'm almost glad that I wasn't laughing at the rest of it. Because that just hit me like
Tracy Harwood 13:33
I almost spattered my screen with water.
Phil Rice 13:39
Not woke. Deliciously not woke.
Ricky Grove 13:44
Wonderful. Knowing that this is a more traditional mission in my film. It's not a composite at work. In a trailer. It's an actual machinima film shot inside of Team Fortress 2, classic. And it follows the sort of the kind of break room storytelling of one character to another about all of the crazy adventures that they've gone to done in this sort of Afro American style, you know, of quick, fast and irreverent. I just thought it was funny. I think you're right that last, that last piece was
Phil Rice 14:24
very busy. Yeah,
Ricky Grove 14:27
the energy of it too is very exciting. I was glad to see a machinima film that had such great energy that was reflected in the cutting in in the angles and in the expressions and you're right Phil those characters if two characters are so very expressive, especially if you think they mean
Damien Valentine 14:48
I like Phil I, I enjoyed it. And I did check a few of the times way through it and I enjoyed the energy to it because you don't see that a lot. Even in this kind of machinima where it's kind of making fun of the game. Just to find that amount of energy in the in the narration of it, that was really good. But it's that last line, which I'm not going to spoil it. I think you have to watch it. I thought that was the end because I've had to pause it. Because I was laughing. I went back and watched all the way again, I enjoyed it on the second time more because I knew that was coming and add something to it. But it's just, it's the perfect next as well because it's too short. It just wouldn't work any longer. You know, been too long. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. I have to admit, I have not seen too much Team Fortress machinima, so it's nice to go back and revisit something that was made. This is 15 years ago, I believe. Well, yeah. Okay.
Tracy Harwood 15:47
Now this is 2007. This one, okay. Oh,
Ricky Grove 15:50
okay. Okay. Yeah. 15 years.
Damien Valentine 15:53
It doesn't look like a game that was made 15 years ago. If you watch some machinima from 15 years ago, it looks like it was made 15 years ago. Oh, yeah. This looks like it could have made you know, today. Yeah. And it's because of the Team Fortress characters are stylized. So they don't age,
Phil Rice 16:10
doesn't it? Yeah.
Damien Valentine 16:13
And because the animation is very fluid as well. They don't have that. We were talking about last week, that Moviestorm. Movie storm looks dated, because the characters animation is the way it is. But with Team Fortress, the animation is so good. It doesn't look dated either. And, yeah, and the humour is really funny. So I enjoyed it. Well, that's good. I wonder
Ricky Grove 16:34
if anybody is still working with Source Filmmaker. The current version I think it's from Half Life 2, Source Filmmaker I think that was the last one that was put out
Damien Valentine 16:45
probably because fell fasten discover the number three. So people are still fans with their second games on those various series they've done. So
Phil Rice 17:00
my son actually came in the other day, he's he's just this past month played through Half Life 2 for the first time, he got it on some kind of special and he played through all the episodes. So he comes in sits on the couch the other night? He goes, Yeah. So they say that they're making Half Life 3, that game. On my son, you've got a lot to learn.
Ricky Grove 17:26
Yes. If anybody is listening, and you know, you are a Source Filmmaker, or you know about Source Filmmaker films, please contact us talk at completely machinima.com We'd love to hear more about it. Tracy, you had something you wanted to say.
Ricky Grove 17:43
we should make sure we have a link for the Saxxy award, the for those people that want to follow it up. Yeah.
Tracy Harwood 17:43
Yeah, I was gonna say I did a little bit of them digging around. Because, you know, I thought this was a lot of fun. And I have to say, I'd forgotten about Team Fortress 2, really. And the channel, you know, it kind of reminded me kind of reminded me that there were these other sorts of gamer community communities, which kind of existed at the same time, we were looking at loads of other stuff, but I kind of not followed it as well. So and, you know, so I was quite surprised to see the date of this one as well, you know, November 2007, which, you know, was at the same time that I was doing the European Machinima Festival. So this one really kind of passed me by as a community. So I never really knew all that much about it. But I started looking at it because I was kind of curious about what that was all about. And what I found was that, you know, Valve ran an annual contest, which I did know about called the Saxxy Awards. I don't know if you remember that. Yes. And, and it was, you know, it was really quite significant. There are a huge number of awards for themed content from basically everything from comedy to drama, and anything in between. But it was kind of designed for that community, primarily Team Fortress 2. But I believe also other engines were then include a little bit included a little bit later on. And Valve actually ran that contest between 2011 and 2017. So it was sort of towards the back end that we were doing the Machinima festivals, but then ran on to 2017. I didn't know it ran that long. And but it was actually between the first and the second contest that they actually formally released Source Filmmaker. And that's basically how they encourage this kind of massive growth in machinima during that sort of period. Because anything that went into one of those Saxxy contests had to be entered using Source. So then, you know, come 2017 it didn't run. But then it briefly also got picked up again in 2021 by members of the Source community, apparently, because Valve didn't want to run the contests again. So, as far as I, as far as I understand, it's, you know, the Saxxys have kind of sort of gone by the wayside, but there's still quite an active community, working in Source and thinking about how they can engage with the community, I understand the 21 contest, didn't have that many entries, although it was in the end supported by Valve on the side, which I think is quite interesting. Yeah. And it kind of, you know, those sort of machinima communities, to this group of folks. I think I was really quite fascinated to read that what Valve would do with the, with the main Saxxy award winner was fly them into their headquarter and give them a session with its filmmakers, which I thought was really lovely, isn't it? I said, sort of, again, that it all kind of passed me by a little bit. But there are awards pages for all those films that sort of went in, you know, that were awarded a Saxxy. And actually, Phil, believe it or not, your pick next week, is also a guy that was part of that community. He was one of the winners of Saxxy award. Oh, wow. Which I think is a really interesting connection between, you know, Team, Team Fortress, and all these other things, because this connection is actually the fact that they ran on Source Engine, which I think is quite interesting. And that's how come Valve used to open the open the, the the awards up to other other creators.
Tracy Harwood 22:01
But the other thing I'll say is that actually, and again, to my point last week, about the unreal trajectory, source pretty much has the same outgrowth trajectory that as Unreal Engine does have, but I think the key difference here is that it has a connection back into the game. And that's because the Saxxys are actually virtual assets, that that have to be used inside Team Fortress 2, so they're, they're actually in game weapons. So it actually takes you back into the game rather than Unreal, which is kind of now got this, you know, this vision for this tool set to be something well beyond the game origins. Source just never went there. Yeah, apparently. So I think what what these two films you've picked, Ricky, are they demonstrate to me a kind of bygone creative era. But one that has been hugely influential in the development of contemporary tools. And I think, I don't think the creative practice that you see in these films, has aged that much, actually, or changed that much even. But I think the tool sets definitely have. So, so my conclusion looking at this and then reflecting on what we talked about last week, is that I think it's up to really, it's really up to creators to think very carefully about how the game relates to the creative process. Because I do think Team Fortress and games like it have a huge future with this sort of thing. It's just how it's embedded in the process that's kind of missing a little bit at the moment.
Ricky Grove 23:48
Well, moderate, you're at a very, very good point, Tracy. And I think, well, it's well worth thinking about even some more, but I think modern games coming out at a time in which machinima was not such a high interest level in our culture makes them less interested in providing tools for machinima filmmaker. Back in the day Source was right in the middle, or Valve was right in the middle of the old machinima peak and of course they wanted to get involved in it. So it's a bit of a shame that there aren't more game companies like I'm thinking I'm talking about you Elden Ring. You rather than having a modder come up with a mod which you have to pay monthly to use, which is still galls the hell out of me. They should have done it themselves. They should have provided a tool to be able to tell stories and to because the the the rise of open world gaming is so fascinating. and the ways that you interact and the complexities of the different environments is perfect. I mean, I could see Hugh Hancock slavering over Elden Ring about all of its different locations and places and environments and characters. Well, you could come up with something incredibly Lovecraftian, in that environment. So it's a little disappointing that game companies aren't really helping with tools like that. And you're right. It's sort of a bygone era with Valve and Source Filmmaker and Team Fortress Classic. One that has really influenced our modern tool approach. Well, if that's it, we're going to call this session done. Turn it over like a pancake and serve it, put some maple syrup on top and have a big ol bite. I have no idea where that analogy came from, but I just went with it.
Damien Valentine 25:58
I want pancakes now.
Ricky Grove 26:01
Thank you, everybody, for listening. And thanks for your good comments, a link to the film Team Fortress 2 Law Abiding Engineer will be on our website. Please make sure you watch it. It's a very funny and interesting film. And I'm glad all of you enjoyed it as well. Contact us if you have anything you'd like to share, talk at Completeymachinima.com Check our show notes at Completely machinima.com. And also our news, which Tracy has been running primarily on our blog as some really, really interesting stuff there. So thanks. Thank you all for for sharing your thoughts with us and for listening to us and watching to us today. And we'll see you next week with a new film. Bye bye