Phil Rice 00:39
You. Hello and welcome to a now for something completely machinima podcast about machinima virtual production and related tech. I'm Phil rice, and I'm here with my co hosts invisible Ricky grove. Say hi, Ricky and Tracy Harwood, hello and Damian Valentine, hello. So this week, we are covering a machinima pick that is Tracy's, and it's called optimism bias. Tracy wants to tell us about
Tracy Harwood 01:17
it. Absolutely great. Well, okay, this is a film by a guy called Andrew Knight. His company's called recycled media, and it's actually released on his YouTube channel in 2015 now, it's a film that Andrew sent over to us. He's been a long time machinima fan, and has been following our channels for quite a few years now. So it's great that he finally sent this over for us to take a look at. I think what prompted him to get in touch was some of our discussions about Peter Rasmussen and Jackie Turnure's stolen life having been at its premiere in 2007 Oh, wow. And more generally, including the Artery machinima production review that you guys did last month, which of course, featured Hugh and his strange company in the ILL Clan, all of whom Andrew had met in the past. Now, Andrew also worked on the ACMI machinima Film Festival in Melbourne over a good number of years, right since it first started showcasing machinima back in the early 2000s when he got in touch, he said one of his proudest projects is this mini series called optimism bias, which he had created with his his friends and colleagues in a game called Red Faction Guerilla, which premiered as a 20 minutes machinima, originally at the Melbourne International Animation Festival, but then was later, really much later, released, actually on YouTube as a series. So although it's a 2015 release that we're looking at here as a as a mini series, originally, I think it was released in around 2013 and was actually made over, I think he said, a period of a couple of years before that. So say, filmed in around 2011 2012 is a little bit hazy on the on the timings. It's quite a while ago now. Before I talk to you about my take on the film, I wanted to say that I was lucky enough to catch up with Andrew to talk about the series, and also to ask about what he's doing these days, and not least, that's actually because when you take a look at this, it's pretty clear that he's professional, very professional, and indeed, he has got film industry chops as a cameraman, and particularly in terms of digital camera work, and currently he's working with aspiration to become a director in his own right. He's worked on plenty of real life projects like Bridgerton and The Great and a few other virtual production projects where he's particularly working with Unreal Engine, including one we took a look at several months ago called Flite if you remember that one, oh yeah. It was directed by the VFX specialist Tim Webber. He worked on camera on that. Webber, of course, is known for his work on Gravity and Avatar. So currently, Andrew is working on a couple of what I'd I'd say, and what he would say probably a more ambitious virtual production technique type projects. And both of these are yet to be released, and that's primarily, primarily, as I understand it, because he's looking to find a distribution deal for them, rather than release them through YouTube. In fact, I think that approach is because he felt they never achieved the impact that they were particularly keen that they should really from optimism bias, it never achieved what it what it should have done. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that when we've checked out the video. See what, see what you think about the that part of the story. And also just to say, well, of course, release that video of Andrew and I discussing that work and and where he's got to with his other projects as a separate video, I think, excuse me, so, taking a look at optimum bias, what I really enjoyed in this, and what I really wanted to talk to you guys about is, is the fact that this is kind of a situation, context story, and it's, it's about NPCs in a game where they have a job as NPCs to keep the player characters engaged and playing. And the NPCs are, in fact, professionals that work in different game engines. They're managed by this halo combine drone like character called Cheryl and to help with the training of new NPCs recruits in this game. Cheryl, from HR, as she's known, has introduced this kind of mentorship program. So in this mini series, you've got the NPCs themselves. You've got Cheryl's influence. You've got a noob NPC who's trying to learn from the pros. You've got a sergeant, grunts and elites, whose job it is, is basically to get killed in just such a challenging enough way that the character player, the character players themselves, get some progress, achievements, enough that keeps them coming back to the game, although the players characters themselves are pretty shit at the game they're playing, and in and amongst that, the story is about these NPCs competing with one another to get promotion to better roles. Now, clearly what you've got here on that sort of brief description is a lot of characters, but what's masterful about it, I think, certainly from my point of view, is the voice acting and the humor. And when I talked to Andrew, I wasn't a bit surprised to learn that this has been partially inspired by Rooster Teeth Red versus Blue as long ago as that. But there's certainly enough in this for there to be some quite significant differentiation from red versus blue, I'd say, with a with a large helping of what I'd call Australian flair and humor about it. The action's really well edited, although it does have that kind of wooden Halo s movement that we're familiar with. It's not obviously Halo. It's Red Faction Guerilla, but it's clearly very similar. So the characters have helmets rather than faces. The sound design, I think, is particularly good. I was absolutely fascinated to hear Andrew talk about how it was actually made, because the game itself is a first person shooter. So to get the scenes in high enough quality render, not only did he use an in camera recording process, sort of a virtual production type process, to generate the footage, rather than a screen cap type technique, which is what most folks were doing at the time. But he then cut out a part of the scene from the film without, without the first person in it, in order to get, you know, get the content, to edit it together. And it's a massively labor intensive approach. He'll talk, talk talk to you about that in the in the interview, you can have a listen to what he was doing. He also talked about how they made the film in one location. It was shot entirely in engine, using locally networked PCs, very much in the vein of of Hugh, which was described in that artery machinima documentary that we covered last month. I guess before I tell you about some of the distribution challenges, let's hear what you think to it. What was your take on it?
Phil Rice 09:33
This, this film. It's called optimism bias, but I'm gonna, I'm going to use it for confirmation bias in that I've long held the theory that everything is funnier with an Australian accent or kiwi. And you know, both of them would not be happy that I lumped them together, but there's enough similarity there. It just you. It's really funny. It is. The writing is very snappy and punchy, and then you're right, the acting, the voice acting, is just, is just terrific. So I didn't mind the sniff, the stiffness, and I I typically do, but I didn't mind it, I think because it was pretty clearly what we're seeing is puppeteered, right? Yes, absolutely. This is not, it's not key framed animation, like something that that Damian or I might do in I clone, or something like that, where you can fine tune. This is literally puppeteering, which goes back to the traditions, not just of of Hugh, but ILL Clan in particular. That was really their big emphasis, their their big area of pioneering things was with puppeteering, live puppeteering. So there's going to be a little bit of of jerkiness and stiffness with that, but I feel like that the performances, even given that they weren't over the top, they were they were subdued, you know, the movement wise, and they were appropriate, like it fit. And, you know, I hate to sound like a broken record, but for me, again, it comes back to the writing is so if it's not everything, it's so important, you know, it's, it's the success with which so part of The challenge with engagement on machinima of this style is also true for red versus blue, and that it's it's going to be a little bit more challenging to engage with and for you to to personify a character strongly when the key parts of their face that express their mood are covered, you know, either by a Full on helmet, like one of the guys, or one of them has, like, a gas mask and glasses. I mean, there's no there's no eyeballs, there's no mouth, there's no face wrinkles, there's nothing to help there. So that means it's all in the voice and the puppeteering. I think, I think this is a success in that regard, like it's it's really well done. I honestly even having, I've watched, I watched all the well, the first five seasons of red versus blue. I've watched one episode of this, the one you submitted for us. And I already feel like these characters are easily as well defined and well characterized as anything that Rooster Teeth ever did. Yeah, it's that good, like, it's really nicely done. So my favorite scene is when the HR robot, flying robot, yeah, comes in, and the guy who's been, you know, kind of talking shit, realizes, Oh, hi, I didn't see you there, and changes his whole tone. Just wonderful, the fact that they could pull off. That's a complex emotion there, but with just a little embarrassment, embarrassment and and then changing tack. It's brilliant. That's that's tough to pull off. And the fact is that we again, with no facial help on the part of the character and the robots, just this static thing, you know? So it's all pulled off with voice and some, some puppeteering to give, I guess what you would call body language, right? So that's, that's, that's a sign of some experience in in writing and in staging a scene that I found it very gratifying. The the cut off part of the frame, part of things is really surprising and funny to me, mainly because the shots are all so well centered, yeah, and you would think if you're cutting off some uneven portion of the frame, so that means this, I think, is probably the mark of you said that, that he's a camera operator, so absolutely, yeah, that takes some forethought. That means you have to film it wrong in a way. You have to film it off axis, because, you know what part to the frame you're going to lose. I mean, I realize that's not that big a deal. It's not rocket science or anything, but it's, it's, it's nice, you know, because it could have been done without that. And then if someone criticized, he could say, well, we had to cut off part of the frame, but No, instead, he maintained an awareness of that before shooting and then shot accordingly. That's very smart, and it's a very pro move, you know. So, yeah, I found a lot. Like about this. I'm shocked, honestly at the view count. Is this, is this channel where we're watching it? Is it the first place that it was published nine years ago?
Tracy Harwood 15:10
Well, no, the first place it was shown was then, was in a film festival. Oh, okay. Okay. Online. Not online, no. And the, you know, the mini series was a follow up from the attempt to distribute. And I'll tell you. I'll tell you about that in a minute. Let's just see what Damien, yes, brilliant there.
Damien Valentine 15:35
So obviously red versus blue did spawn lots of imitations, and most of them are pretty terrible, but we might turn up because this is inspired by red versus blue, but I think Andrew took an inspiration and just put so much of himself into making it his own thing. He wasn't trying to have a group of people wearing colored armor in a valley making jokes, just like a lot of those other red versus blue imitations did. He made this his own thing.
Phil Rice 16:06
There's a clear difference between imitation and inspiration, absolutely and this and this shows that difference. Yeah, yeah.
Damien Valentine 16:14
I want to watch more of this. I haven't had a chance to look to see what else he's got, but I was very impressed by the way it's written. Philly mentioned the sort of stiffness of the characters to me that actually made this better, because these are meant to be human characters in a futuristic world. They are meant to be video game characters, so we're in that stiff animation. No, it works. It works consistent. Yes, yeah, because you'd expect them to move like that. So I think that really works for it. And I think a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about stylized animation, and that's part of this. The voice acting was excellent. I'm very impressed about the way the camera angles were. I thought that was very impressive the camera work. I didn't realize that the technique was just to film everything and then just trim it down to just the corner. I've been trying to think, how would I do that if I was doing it? Because, well,
Phil Rice 17:16
how do you do that? Well, not completely destroy your resolution too. So, yeah, it's an interesting technique, very well done. And
Damien Valentine 17:23
it doesn't look like it's just a tiny, low res thing. It? It looks good, yeah? So, yeah, um, the other thing I want to mention is there's absolutely nothing wrong with XCOM terror from the deep that's one of my favorite XCOM games.
Phil Rice 17:39
That whole conversation that just cracked me up.
Tracy Harwood 17:43
Yeah, so many in jokes, isn't it? It's brilliant. Yes,
Damien Valentine 17:47
when I found a copy of a DOS emulator for my phone, I immediately put X com, the original X com one and x from Terra from the deep on my phone, so I could pay them on the go. So I have a nitpick about that. Okay, it's flawed. There's some bugs in it, but I still really enjoyed that game. So I also mentioned that it's nice though, that it got a joke in this and it brought back a lot of memories playing that game just from watching this
Phil Rice 18:13
video. Well, I think it's worth noting too, that it's, it's it's not the truth of that opinion that was expressed, that's important. It's the the context and the way it was delivered, as a dig and all of that. Just, yeah, I love Yeah. I think there's, there's in jokes, and then there's intelligent in jokes. And this one to the humor, yeah, I
Damien Valentine 18:36
completely got the joke and understood it. Because there are, there are flaws to the game. I can see why. You know that they make the joke. It works for those who know the game. Yeah, this is, this is an excellent I'm glad you sent it to us. So,
Tracy Harwood 18:50
yeah, I'm very glad. Let me tell you about the challenge and the and the disappointment, because I think this is a really interesting part of part of it, and I wanted to separate it out from the, you know, the fantastic achievement that he's made, because I think we might come up with some different points here. So basically, he said he was particularly disappointed that it didn't get so much traction online. And I can definitely see why that would be a disappointment. It was, you know, is evidently released as a kind of a short series, and that was some time after the basically been shown as a 20 minute version at the film festival. At the film festival, he had managed to gain some interest among the Nordic Games Developer folks. They they chose some interest in it, and it encouraged them the him, Andrew and his. And CO producer to visit Nordic Games, who are based in Austria, with a view to discussing how they like little bit like red versus blue did with Microsoft and Bungie get involved with the actual game developer as a view to this becoming the sort of a showcase machinima piece, you know, whereby the game would leverage the audience that they could generate through this. And they went such a long way through the process of discussing that with this game's developer, right to the point, you know, this was a go situation for them, right to the point when the game developer changed the person that they were discussing this with and the new person that came in to talk to them about it, just didn't get what machinima was. That was it? End story. That's a real shame, Isn't it a shame? And how many times have we heard that? I think, you know, Machinima is nothing, if not the story of disappointment for so for so many. And this is another story of, of, yeah, just as I've just total disappointment. I feel, I really felt for him when he was telling, telling, tell me about it, because it's a story I've heard you tell, Phil. It's a story that I heard Hugh tell back in the day as well. But I think if, if there's anything that's kind of good that's come out of it is the fact that they, you know, he fully is aware of the issues that IP generates for them from game footage. I mean, it's one, you know, it's a story also, that's very evident in the Remarkable Life of Ibelin as well. Because they, they also went all the way through making that film, including the Machinima components, and did not seek Blizzard's input into that at all. So it was a real high risk endeavor, which ultimately kind of paid off. And here is a set off, and it does not, it does not. And this is another example of where that that doesn't happen either. So, you know, they ended up going through all of this, and in the end, they decided that we'll cut it up and we'll stick it out on YouTube. And my guess is that, you know, they'd lost a bit of interest in pushing it out on that channel, which is why it never really did particularly well at this point. Though, what he's now doing, given this whole sort of disillusionment that they've got around the IP issue, is that rather than, you know, using these kind of engines in this particular way, they've pivoted to Unreal Engine, or he's pivoted to Unreal Engine. And the current work that he's doing, which is called the Gedanken experiments, after Einstein's approach to conceptual experimentation is basically taking a bit of a different path. Now it's inspired, I believe, by Red Faction Guerilla and all sorts of other types of machinima. But he will not face the same issues because of the way that he's going with it. However, whether we will ever see it on YouTube is entirely another matter, because he's really bitten by the whole YouTube experience, which is such a shame, because I do think if you can, if you can, achieve some traction through YouTube, it's kind of worth the effort. How you get it to be really sticky? I've no idea. I think it's such. I feel so sorry for him, really, because this, to me, should have got a lot more attention than it actually has. I guess you've got to be a lot more into the marketing side of things, much like you know, Sam Crane has been with his GTA five Hamlet production, and I suppose the way Benjamin Ree's has gone about the Ibelin documentary as well. So yeah, that's, that's the additional bit of it. I'm sure you've got things to say about that from your perspective as well.
Phil Rice 24:25
Not really, it's, it's the part of, it's the part of this, this enterprise that makes me sad, you know. But you know, I've also, and maybe he has, in his own way too. I've come to a peace about it in terms of, I'm not going to dwell on that anymore, and have come for me, it, it that has come through just, I just love the craft, you know, and I'm fortunate enough to be in a position. Where, you know, what I spend most of my time in the week doing affords me the ability to spend a little bit of time doing this stuff. You know, so and, you know, maybe it's a little greedy to expect anything more than that, right? You know, there's many who can't even do that so, but yeah, the the I relate to the to the to the story and to the disappointment, for sure, yeah, it's, it's because it is. It's such a it was and is such a promising medium. And it's one of those things where, you know, the world should be a certain way, but it isn't. I bet we, and we, we keep bumping our head against that, in this, in this, in this medium, you know,
Tracy Harwood 25:51
but he, he did this before, before COVID. And I do kind of feel the world's a little bit different with VFX, yeah, than it than it was pre COVID. My My gut feeling, really, is, if this came out today, or was maybe remastered, or you're never going to reshape, I mean, this is brilliant as it is, but you know, if this came to the attention of an of a new type of audience today, it's got to stick. Surely, I've got to appreciate what this is. Yeah,
Phil Rice 26:23
even if, even if, the only thing that is brought forward is those, those performances, yeah, and the writing that underlies them, you know, take that audio. It's who, who keeps their audio masters around that long? I don't know. Not everybody does, I guess, but that would that's if it were me, if I was in his shoes, that's what I would be tempted to do. Is now that I've got these new technical tools that free me from the potential bonds of other people's IP I still believe in my story, so now I'm gonna migrate it there. Now it's a big endeavor. You know, there's nothing. There's not, not any, whether you're talking I clone or, uh, Unreal Engine or a combination of both, none of that's going to be as easy as it was to make this not that it was easy, but it was easier to actually generate the action, let's say to to do what they show on screen here using keyframes performances and things like that. It's like, whoa, even, and then mocap. It'd be too expensive for most people, so, but the end result would be something that that you could improve the look of. And if you were, if you were releasing it through Unreal Engine, then clearly it's a smart marketing move there is to make sure people know that, because there's a lot of audience that just, just because it's made with Unreal Engine, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna give it a chance. That's smart to leverage
Damien Valentine 27:53
that title, unreal trumpet. Absolutely,
Phil Rice 27:55
absolutely, there's no benefit to doing that with iClone, really. And that's not a dig against I clone. It's just the audience, the potential audience for Unreal Engine stuff right now, there's a real hunger for it so, but that's an awful lot of work to put in on something that you feel like is rehashing the old instead of moving to the new. And then you don't really know for sure it's gonna work. There's no guarantees, so it'd be a tough decision, for sure. I admire. I will mention, too, you mentioned that the shows that he's involved with. Have you watched the great?
Tracy Harwood 28:32
No, I did look it up.
Phil Rice 28:36
Good. It's so good. I think it's on Hulu. Oh, I think that's the only place where it's, it's streaming,
Damien Valentine 28:44
right? That'll be on Disney, plus here all Hulu, yeah,
Tracy Harwood 28:47
is it right? Okay, yeah,
Phil Rice 28:49
it's, it's so good, yeah, Bridgerton, I watched a little bit up, but that's just not my kind of story. But it's a quality production for sure. Like, it's really beautiful.
Damien Valentine 29:01
They film purchased a near me.
Phil Rice 29:03
Yeah, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful photography, gorgeous. The set design, the costume design, it's gorgeous. It's just, it's, essentially, it's, it's Dawson's Creek, you know, it's a nighttime soap opera for kids, basically. So there's a great audience for that. It's just not my thing. The great that's not, that's something else. That's like a, I don't even know how to, I don't even know how to pop a genre on that. It's not really a comedy, it's not really just a drama. It's it's a mix, it's it. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's very funny, but there's much more to it than that. It's like, got real depth, the lead performances of Catherine and then her her king, that this young actor, that you'll know his face as soon as you see it, but I don't know his name. Oh, they're terrific. It's really, really funny, really, really good and really racy, too. So it's not, it's not one for kids. No,
Tracy Harwood 30:01
it's Tom Holland, does it? It's not somebody, no, but
Phil Rice 30:05
same age bracket. But I don't remember now, you guys, yeah,
Tracy Harwood 30:08
I did. I did look it up, but I haven't seen it. So, yeah,
Damien Valentine 30:11
I just looked up this on Amazon Prime. Oh, okay.
Tracy Harwood 30:14
Nicholas Hault, of course. He's just amazing. How's a boy? Yeah,
Phil Rice 30:21
yeah, he's terrific in it. This character is my favorite that he's ever done. Like, it's, it's, he really, he really, it's out of the park, wonderful. And then Elle Fanning is the, is the female lead, and she's just, just great, just great. So the supporting cast is wonderful, too. So yeah, that's definitely one to watch.
Tracy Harwood 30:45
Well, I'll tell you what the Andrew, to me is such a talented filmmaker I have in a lot of lot of ways, not just in terms of, you know, the writing and the comedy, but in terms of the skill and technique that he's brought to to the Machinima that we're looking at here. I am really going to look forward to seeing the Gedanken experiment, because I have no doubt that's going to be equally as interesting to check out. And there's another project that he's working on as well, which is also not out yet. So I am just really looking forward
Phil Rice 31:21
to, sure to alert us when those, when those become available. Yeah, I'd be interested to see that too,
Tracy Harwood 31:26
yeah, and you can hear all that he's got to say about this in the interview that we'll put out alongside this episode. Yeah, we'll do
Phil Rice 31:35
a special episode for that review. All right. Well, that is our episode for today, and that is that wraps up the month for us, I believe. So if you've got any feedback for us, or any info that we're missing, or any comments at all, just feel free to email us at talk, at completely machinima.com, or you can comment wherever you see this video, or, I don't know, do podcast outlets even let you comment? I guess they don't. So drop us an email in that case. So I'm Phil rice on behalf of my co hosts, Tracy and Damian and invisible Ricky, we wish you the best and we'll see you next
32:10
time bye. Bye.