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.
Phil Rice 00:09
Wow, the motorcyclist likes to come through here on Sundays.
Damien Valentine 00:13
I think it's Ricky. He's coming
Tracy Harwood 00:17
along. He's got Eric the Red's, you know, ponytail and
Phil Rice 00:26
oh, sorry. Yeah. Hello, and welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast about machinima and virtual production and other related technologies. I'm here with Ricky on the motorcycle up here outside. Well as my co-host, Damien Valentine and Tracy Harwood. Are you guys?
Tracy Harwood 00:44
Great, thank you.
Phil Rice 00:46
Yeah, I'm great. So we are going to, Damien, you've got a film for us to discuss this week. And it or this yeah, this week. And it is Top Gun related. Tell us about it.
Damien Valentine 01:00
Ah so, I it's no secret. I've really enjoyed Top Gun Maverick last year. And I actually, last year also chose a Top Gun video for us to look at. And it recreated the opening sequence of an aircraft carrier with all the jets coming and landing and taking off. And that one was made in a flight simulator. And I was really impressed by how accurate they managed to make it. Especially when the film wasn't actually available for home release, yet. They had to go to the cinema to watch it and then memorise it, but they got it spot on. And then, of course, come to now, and I was looking for what to pick and I came across another recreation of that opening sequence. Except this time, it's made with Second Life. And I was quite surprised, because previously, it makes sense that a flight simulator be the perfect engine to recreate that sequence. And, you know, as I said, it did it perfectly. So I was really curious how they managed to pull it off in Second Life. So I watched it. And I thought, this is also pretty close. I mean, there's some additions like the dancing girls, which or not, the dancing girls are not in the real film. But I am assuming that something in the bills that they used to make this in Second Life. But it is still very close to what the the actual film does. And this is Second Life we're talking about, which isn't a flight simulator, it doesn't have good vehicle controls or any of the other stuff that you think you would need to make your project this. And I thought, I know I've covered here before, but I'm choosing another one because I was really impressed by the skill that went into making this and making it so close to the actual film. So that's my pick this month. What do you guys think?
Phil Rice 02:53
So basically, you you thought, well, I've already picked a Top Gun film, but I want more jiggle. So success. You found it.
Damien Valentine 03:11
Like this thing that the real film was missing was the dancing girls on the aircraft?
Phil Rice 03:16
Yeah, the the the physics of the jets, of the jets. Yes. Is. It's, it's it is impressive. Yes. Yes. I've not seen the film, but I've seen I feel like I've seen the I mean, I'm not seeing the Top Gun. Oh,
Tracy Harwood 03:38
you can't.
Phil Rice 03:40
Now I haven't seen it yet. It's in my it just now came to streaming. I think on Amazon, so it's in the queue. But I've seen you know, obviously I watched the recreation of yours, which I feel like that that opening scene if that's what it is over the opening, probably over the opening credits or something early in the movie. Yeah, is it feels very familiar to me. So I feel like it's in some ways an homage to that there was a similar set of scenes and opening for the original Top Gun. Yeah. Am I right about that?
Damien Valentine 04:13
Yes. First they had the original have the jets at the time and had the same music. And obviously they wanted to recreate that feeling. Right. And it works very well in both films. That's
Phil Rice 04:25
not having seen Top Gun Maverick. I have to ask does this Top Gun Maverick have more jiggle than the original Top Gun?
Damien Valentine 04:35
Um, I don't want to spoil it for you because you haven't seen it yet. I don't think any spoilers so. Okay.
Phil Rice 04:42
Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, I mean, I've worked in Second Life. It for machinima purposes and it's it's. It's got it's technically a challenge. It's a technically challenging environment to get, like you said Damien, the the types of movements that are done here with with the planes and all that are I don't know, it's, it's not a trivial thing to do. For sure. It does take a lot of work a lot of patience. And especially since you're you're not dealing in any kind of environment where you can script or pre record things and then get them to replay exactly the same way. It's all kind of live right, you know, I guess there's some, some things that can be animated, that will be repeatable, but with larger movements like this with the jets and stuff, I have to think that those were that there was multiplayer involvement to get it done and things like that. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's impressive, too, you don't see a whole lot of attempts at precision. By that, I mean, like the precision required to recreate some other scene, you know, it's more of kind of leaning into the the way that things work in Second Life. That's typically, that's, that's what I would call the typical Second Life movie that you would see is stuff that the engine does well, on its own naturally. And this I would imagine the person probably had to kind of push against what the engine wanted to do naturally to get some of these things to happen. And that's pretty impressive. I mean, that's, that's, that is an old school machinima technique for sure. You know that that's, that's originally what it was, is getting the environment to do something that it doesn't necessarily want to do on its own. So yeah, pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. It was hard not to be distracted by the planes, right? manoeuvres of things. But thank you for picking this, Damian.
Damien Valentine 07:03
I do admire that skill of taking a game engine and doing something that it's not designed for. The previous one, I said, it's a flight sim, that's the perfect choice for it. But doing a second life. It's just it takes a lot of skill to be able to pull it off. So well. I thought. I agree.
Tracy Harwood 07:23
Yeah, I agree. Do you mean, if you got? Yeah, well, I was gonna say, is it Godiva or Good diva. The person that created this Godiva, I think, however, from what I can gather, it's the third. The third big project that that she's done. And you're right, Phil, it was a massive community endeavour. And as far as I understand it, it was recorded on what they call the Gulf of Tonkin sim. Which apparently, is
Phil Rice 07:58
to interject, just interject. It looked to me, I didn't see any evidence that like one way to get some of these larger scale scenes done. Come on, Ricky. You guys hear that? Where are you? Oh, you can't hear it. So now I'll just look like a complete idiot. So you get larger scale scenes like that done. One technique is, well, let's layer it. You know, we'll, we'll assemble this and After Effects are in our video editor or whatever, and we'll composite together. I didn't see. I didn't see anything that made me think, oh, that's composited this feels like that every shot was taken on the sim, which means there's a lot of personnel. Yes. That were involved at once here. Absolutely. And that's wow, that's really admirable. Like that's, that's, that's hard.
Tracy Harwood 08:47
That's very impressive, I think. Yeah, but in terms of I've read here, it says, The Gulf of Tonkin sin is the the home of the Seventh Fleet. So God knows who's put the, the aircraft carrier in there. And you know, recreated that because I thought that was amazingly well done as a, as a sim in in its own right. So obviously, you know, the sets are, you know, the IP of whoever and the avatars or the IP or the individuals that are kind of logged in, but there's loads I mean, I don't know I don't know how many characters there would have been on the on that you know, in that must be honest, I'm just trying to think there must be at least 10 or something at least yeah,
Phil Rice 09:37
that's that would be my guest to attend to 12 Yeah, quite a lot. Not including your camera person either. Exactly. Be multiple camera people. So yeah, pretty, pretty neat.
Tracy Harwood 09:45
But like you guys, the bit that kind of made me smile was the you know, the hyper sexualized female representations wearing these, these kind of tight body suits which, which, you know, is that an homage to the original Maverick? I don't think so. But it's an interesting approach, I think, very interesting approach. But what impressed me with it was the editing. Because you know how I do this sort of play it side by side with the original, while I found the you know, somebody that's opening few scenes from the from the maverick movie and played it side by side. And I'll tell you what is pretty spot on, even down to the colour of the sky. And the colour was really well done. Absolutely brilliant. But also the scene choices, you know, the key scene choices, we're, we're, we're pretty much there in timing to the music. So you know, where the, the plane comes into land and hooks on whatever the line is, Bob on the bit where the flaps or whatever that flap thing is that comes up. Bang on same same timing as with the original movie. The bit that was, you know, slightly different was obviously, the dancing and the jiggling or what have you. But, you know what, that that was that massively distracting? Little, you know, some of those representations?
Phil Rice 11:22
I made more of it than it was?
Tracy Harwood 11:23
Yeah, well, I don't think you did really, I think I think some of it just pushes it a little bit in a way that is probably I don't know, I don't for that very reason. I'm not a great Second Life fan, if I'm honest, neither am I a Sims fan, and same kind of reason. But I have to say this, the editing here was very good. And the way that it was kind of reenacted and the choices made at the points where they decided not follow the original film, also very well done. Also, you know, somebody with a great sense of humour, some fabulous reference shots in there, but showing something a little bit different. I thought they probably in the process of making this learnt quite a lot, as we commented on before, from the from the pros, having put this together with all the cuts that they were making, and all the right, and all the you know, the camera directions and all the choices that they made, you could see that they were enjoying putting this thing together. But with this kind of unique Second Lifeness on top of it as well. I suppose really the only thing I'd say about the gender eyes sort of side of it, it is actually quite nice to see a female representation on something like a Navy aircraft carrier, even though I can be critical about it as well. But I think overall, this is brilliantly well done for the whole team involved in this Godiva and and who whoever else was involved with it. Some of them when I was looking at the list and folks that I recognised from Chantal Harvey's Machinima Mondays group, they, they meet up there as well. So, you know, there was a whole team of folks that that our regular machinima creators using Second Life as their as their platform of choice.
Phil Rice 13:14
That group was very active, aren't they? Yeah,
Tracy Harwood 13:16
really impressed. Really impressed. I think they did. A really nice job. Really enjoyed it. Thank you very much Damien for sharing that one with us. It was a different take on the whole Maverick thing.
Damien Valentine 13:28
Well, I hope you both enjoy the real film as well when you get rental. Oh,
Tracy Harwood 13:32
I've seen it. I loved it.
Damien Valentine 13:35
I fell in that case. I hope you enjoy it. Would you see it?
Phil Rice 13:37
I'm sure I will. I've heard lots of good stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, that is that is this pic. And that will wrap it up for us today. So thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Tracy. Damian, Ricky, we miss you. We'll see you soon. And have a great day.